An idea for transition principles

Shawn Steele Shawn.Steele at microsoft.com
Tue Dec 15 00:22:26 CET 2009


I agree that terming it a "deadline" is bad since some (likely most) zones will probably just ignore it anyway.  But a target date would be good to keep everyone in-sync.  I'd suggest 6 months as a reasonable time period.  That would let people that can act in between release cycles adjust to the new situations.  Products that are stuck with their release cycle aren't going to be able to use a guideline anyway, so I don't think it helps to make it longer.

My second comment is more rudimentary:  I'm skeptical of the success of any opt-in transition plan.  The same problem exists in the other transition plans, but Vint mentions the millions of zones more directly here.  .De, etc. will "do the right thing" regardless of whether a transition plan exists, though a plan gives them some time to react.  Most zones however aren't even going to be aware that there's an issue, or whether they need to do something.  I'm thinking largely of the numerous blogging/sharing type sites that let users pick a subdomain name.  We have to expect that someone's going to register some interesting name that ends up with an existing case going to a different server.

I'm not saying this argues against a transition plan, I think a target transition date would be helpful in many cases.  I am saying that the transition won't magically solve the compatibility problems.  Perhaps zone operators, registrants, and/or clients may want to think of ways to handle that scenario.  For example, (just thinking out loud), if a client found an IDNA2008 eszett, they may want to double check if the 2003 form takes them some place different.  (and then do what?)

-Shawn

-----Original Message-----
From: idna-update-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:idna-update-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Vint Cerf
Sent: ,  13,  2009 20:49
To: idna-update at alvestrand.no
Subject: An idea for transition principles

please see:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AUIeBYngPBqkZGdxbnhzMmZfMTBnNXg4OHRjcw&hl=en

Your comments will be much appreciated. I do not believe that we need to create yet a new RFC from the IDNABIS working group. We might forward suggestions to the DNSOPS working group and post an Internet- Draft for reference by registries (in the most general sense of "registry").

vint






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