Subject: [homenet] Naming and internationalization

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2013 23:03:54 -0400

Dear colleagues,

I've just been looking at the -arch-07 document, and I'm wondering
whether there's an issue here that ought to be noted.

The document is clear enough that the plan is for a name service that
is somewhat compatible with DNS and that works reasonably well with
it.  At the same time, there is a goal for locally-scoped and
globally-scoped names for the same resource to work reliably.

In the global DNS, the way we write internationalized names is IDNA
(of some flavour), which means the underlying labels are either
IDNA2003 Punycode labels, or else they're IDNA2008 A-labels.  These
labels have a lot of restrictions on what they may contain.

mDNS labels are in UTF-8, and there are no rules about what labels you
can use.  It's sort of implied in its use of RFC 5198, but not
perfectly clear, that the strings are in NFC form.  Apart from that,
hearts, space characters, and other such things are legal in mDNS
names but not DNS (even IDNA) names.

I'm wondering whether text about using the homenet name service in a
way that is compatible with the Internet name service is worth
including.  Here is a small proposal:

    In the event the homenet is accessible from outside the homenet
    (using the global name space), it is vital that the homenet name
    space follow the rules and conventions of the global name space.
    In this mode of operation, names in the homenet (including those
    automatically generated by devices) must be usable as labels in
    the global name space.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 08:25:38 +0000

>     automatically generated by devices) must be usable as labels in

Yes, but shouldn't there be a normative reference to IDNA?

   Brian

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From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 09:46:30 -0400

> Yes, but shouldn't there be a normative reference to IDNA?

If so, we should also include a reference to the "preferred syntax"
discussion in STD 13 or maybe to the hostname syntax.  But sure.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]