Amani M. Bin Sewaif Senior Engineer Services Operations & Maintenance

1. IDNS. Internationalized Domain Names Amani M. Bin Sewaif Senior Engineer Services Operations & Maintenance Etisalat – Intenet & e Solution amani@ies.etisalat.ae November 22, 2004 ecompany/amani

2. Outline • Introduction • Overview • GCC project for Arabic Domain Names • How IDNS works? • Client Requirements • IDN conversion Tool • A list of supported IDNS applications • Conclusion ecompany/amani

3. Introduction • Domain names are used widely by Internet users to find resources on the Internet. They contain alphanumeric strings separated by dots, e.g. www.etisalat.ae It is used for human convenience. • Domain names are used instead of the numerical addresses that are known as Internet protocol (IP) addresses, which are mainly used by machines to route data packets on the Internet. Name resolution is carried out by the Internet domain name system (DNS). It further contains a mapping or conversion between each name and one or more IP addresses. • The DNS is a distributed database and organize all registered names in a tree structure. ecompany/amani

4. IDNS Overview • IDN abbreviation stands for Internationalized Domain Name. It defines a domain name which contains specific characters for particular language. • Example of IDNS: ADNS (Arabic Domain Names) • Since the Internet begin, it supported only 7-bit ASCII code (English characters), and the Domain name System (DNS) supports alphabets, numbers and hyphen of the ASCII code. • There is a need to support multilingual characters in domain names in order to make the Internet globally accessible. ecompany/amani

5. IDNS Overview • IDNA works by allowing applications to use certain ASCII name labels (beginning with a special prefix) to represent non-ASCII name labels. Lower-layer protocols need not be aware of this; therefore IDNA does not depend on changes to any infrastructure. In particular, IDNA does not depend on any changes to DNS servers, resolvers, or protocol elements, because the ASCII name service provided by the existing DNS is entirely sufficient for IDNA. ‘rfc3490’ ecompany/amani

6. Mission: To implement a test bed for Arabic Domain names in the GCC countries. This will allow all GCC countries to early experience the use of Arabic domain names, identify our needs, locate possible problems, and develop some tools. Objectives: 1. To gain experience and knowledge of the Arabic Domain names and share it with Arab countries.2. Test the implantations of Arabic Domain names.3. Build the local awareness about Arabic Domain names.4. Establish joint work with other entities (i.e., ISPs, universities, 5. Possibly develop some tools related to Arabic domain names and DNS. The GCC Project for Arabic Domain Name ecompany/amani

7. GCC Participation ecompany/amani

8. The Arabic root and ccTLD AR-ROOT.NIC.AE GCC Arabic Root Server AR-ROOT.NIC.NET.SA GCC Arabic Root Server Slave for the Arabic GCC ccTLDs. Master for the Arabic GCC ccTLDs. “ “ السعودية امارات قطر SA Arabic ccTLD AE Arabic ccTLD QA Arabic ccTLD ecompany/amani

9. Completed zone with addresses Referrals to 2nd level DNS servers Referrals to ccTLD servers Ar-root.nic.ae DNS SERVER UAEnic 2 3 7 DNS SERVER 6 xn--mgbaam7a8h 194.170.195.16 5 4 NS Records of etisalat college Etisalat college xn--mgbaam7a8h 194.170.195.16 Caching A records of موقع xn--mgbaam7a8h 194.170.195.16 NS Records o ccTLD موقع.كلية-اتصالات-للهندسة.امارات. DNS SERVER DNS SERVER client 1 موقع.كلية-اتصالات-للهندسة.امارات. 8 How ADNS Works? ecompany/amani

10. How to resolve Arabic Domain Name? ecompany/amani

11. Client Requirements • These are a list of requirements for a client in order to resolve/reach Arabic test domain names: • These problems occurred because some main Internet entities and software developer have not fully supported internationalized domain names (IDN) (such as ICANN and Microsoft). Therefore a client should match some requirements in order to resolve/reach Arabic domain names. • Personal Computer and Internet connectivity. • The Internet Service Provider (ISP) name server (resolver) should support Arabic domain names (by participating in this project) or the client can setup his own name server (resolver). • Any browser that support Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) ecompany/amani

12. IDNS/ADNS Converting Tool • Tool to convert Unicode to ASCII format • The ACE prefix (ASCII compatible encoding) for IDNA is "xn--" http://xn--mgbaakc7dvf.xn--mgbaam7a8h http://اتصالات.امارات ecompany/amani

13. A list of support IDNS application • Browsers • Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 and higher + Verisign i-Nav TM PlugIn • Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 and higher + ISC´s IDN-OSS • Netscape 7.1 and higher • Mozilla 1.4 and higher • Mozilla Firefox 0.6 and higher (former Mozilla Firebird) • Opera 7.20 and higher • Konqueror (from KDE 3.2 + GNU IDN Library) • Epiphany 1.2.2 and higher • Galeon 1.3.14 and higher • Safari 1.2 and higher • Mozilla Camino 0.7 and higher • To enable IDN in an IE browser, it is necessary to install special plug-in supporting IDNs. ecompany/amani

14. A list of support IDNS application • EMAIL • Microsoft Outlook 2000, 2002 (XP), 2003; Outlook Express 5.0 and • higher + - Verisign i-Nav PlugIn + Foxmail 5.0 and higher • VisNetic MailServer 7.2.4 build 0 and higher • Merak Mail Server 7.4.0 and higher • PHlyMail • FTP • SmartFTP 1.0 Build 980 • Core FTP Version 1.3a • SecureFTP 4.0.2004 Release and higher • FTP Voyager 11.0 and higher ecompany/amani

15. Browsing اتصالات.امارت ecompany/amani

16. Browsing a domain with “xn- -” prefix ecompany/amani

17. http://www.arabic-domains.org.sa/main-en.php http://arabic-domains.org.sa/ar/how2use.php http://idn.isc.org/ http://دليل.امارات IDNS RFCs: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3490.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3491.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3492.txt More information.. ecompany/amani

18. QUESTIONS ? ecompany/amani