Multilingual Domains

[Nic]

Does anyone know anything new about the test bed?
Do they work at all?

There does not seem to be that "enthusiasm" that was around when they first appeard. do you think so too?

 

[Nic]

For example Register.com does not even have them on their main page.
and Netsol has a small link to them that you can't even see.

but Alldomains however has it loud and proud
what in the blue cheese is going on?

 

[Nic]

Does anyone know anything about multilingual domain names ?

 

[eliteNIC]

Multilingual domain names are a crock. They are vapourware
bordering on a scam. They don't work in DNS and they won't work with DNS in the forseeable future. Even if the root servers are upgraded tomorrow, you need every single nameserver operator in the world to upgrade their resolver software or its all a bust.

Not likely. For multilingual domains to work they need to have been incorporated into the protocol from the original specification phase. It'll never get retro-fitted successfully.

 

Even then Nic, you would not be able to register ÌÁËÁÊÁÓ.gr

 

[Nic]

thanks,
i have the same feelings for them too.

 

[jimr]

Well, I believe multilingual domains work. I have two for trials and they resolve, from time to time at least
No, eliteNIC the DNS system doesn't have to be changed. Thats not how it is intended. The key issue is the browser, that will convert the multilingual name to an ASCII string and the only browser that will do it is IE, as I'm aware of.

I have one domain spånga.com (I'm not shure that you all will see the correct characters) which is equal to "bq--abzxbzlom5qq.com" but during the testbed trial the browser will convert to and resolve "bq--abzxbzlom5qq.mltbd.com" which all name servers should be able to resolve.

I think multilingual domain will be a big thing not in the western world but in Asia.

Jim R

My multilingual domains are:

spånga.com (swedish characters)
нева.com (cyrillic characters (russian))

I have written everything in Unicode with UTF-8 encoding and you should be able to see correct characters if this board and your browser supports unicode.

 

[jimr]

If you see garbage characters, change your browsers encoding to Unicode UTF-8.

Jim R

 

[Nic]

Originally posted by jimr
Well, I believe multilingual domains work. I have two for trials and they resolve, from time to time at least
No, eliteNIC the DNS system doesn't have to be changed. Thats not how it is intended. The key issue is the browser, that will convert the multilingual name to an ASCII string and the only browser that will do it is IE, as I'm aware of.

From time to time?
Arn't they suposed to resolve all the time?

 

[jimr]

That is what I thought...

I believe the RACE converted domain resolves, i.e. bq--abzxbzlom5qq.mltbd.com.

If I enter my Swedish character name into IE nothing happens today. It used to work very smoothly earlier. The cyrillic name is allright and resolves. It seems, to me, that it is something within the browser that doesn't convert the name from local characters to RACE encoding and I haven't looked into why and how it is done.

I also read in some paper that it has been decided to leave RACE encoding in favour of DUDE and that the exchange should take effect in test phase 3.3. Maybe that has started with some character sets. There is a lack of information...

You can find some information, altough a little old, at:
http://www.verisign-grs.com/idn/

If you have any other source of recent information I would appreciate it if you could share it.

Jim

 

[eliteNIC]

There is more to the internet than web browsing (*gasp*), so even if your browser tries to end run around DNS by converting UTF to ASCII, what happens when you try to send an email to a multilingual domain name using a mail client that isn't a web browser? What about ICQ? What about ping? Traceroute? NNTP? SNMP? Or any other protocol or application that wants to talk to a multilingual domain? In order for it to work ubiquitously the conversion will need to take place at the DNS layer.

 

[jimr]

eliteNIC, do your homework.

The original poster asked about the progress of the Multi language Domain Name Testbed.

Verisign press release about the MLTB:

"
Mountain View, California, June 20, 2001-VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN), the leading provider of Internet trust services, today announced that Internet users can now reach Web site destinations by typing domain names with characters used in their own languages into their Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher browser software. These Internationalized Domain Names, or IDNs, contain non-ASCII characters to the left of the "dot" and are available in more than 350 languages. Using technology from RealNames Corporation, Microsoft modified a search function of Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 to enable the IDNs to work without the use of special plug-ins or client software.
... "



Personally I think there is more to *Internet* than *Microsoft* web browsing. This is a way of selling new domain names to the a rapidly growing market in Asia but that would be another topic.

 

[eliteNIC]

Even if it works in some web browsers, the names are still useless. In my opinion for a domain name to "work" it must bw able to function out-of-box across all protocols and all application layers, something which this doesn't. And before you tell somebody to do their homework, do yours, Realnames is toast, they're shutting down around the end of June. Microsoft pulled the plug on them.

 

[Nic]

MLD are not dependant on REALNAMES

 

[Nic]

MLD News Update !!!!!

"VeriSign Inc is on the verge of launching the next phase in the prolonged roll-out of so-called "internationalized domain names", addresses written in languages, such as Chinese, than use non-ASCII characters."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/25698.html

"In about eleven days, the company will start marketing a free plug-in for Internet Explorer and Outlook that converts IDNs into ASCII, so users will be able to address web sites and email in their native languages. VeriSign will open a multilingual site, IDNNow.com, to push the software. "

http://www.idnnow.com <--- coming soon

Finally some update

 

[Nic]

http://www.idnnow.com is working now and they have a software for Download that is a web browser companion upgrade enables you to navigate the web in your own language. Type IDN addresses in your browser bookmark your favorites and much more.
Take the tour http://www.idnnow.com/index.jsp#

 

[Nic]

well i downloaded the intallation at http://www.idnnow.com and both my IDN domains work like a charm.
I wonder...is this a temp solution until the testbed concludes, or is it the conclusion.
if it is the latter, verisign is no different from new.net, which is sad and ironic if you ask me.

 

[fizz]

At the risk of sounding cynical, isn't it very convenient that all this 'activity' and 'progress' with multilingual names coincides with renewal time for the Verisign ML names.

 

[Nic]

I was thinking of that too Fizz, but Versign extended the registrations of IDNames registered with them.

 

[fizz]

You mean all 500,000 of them - for what period was the extension Nic? I'll be very pleased if there has been a good extension.