Internet Community Seeks Universal Acceptance for All Domain Names

Massive changes in the global domain name system are causing connectivity problems, stakeholders said. The burgeoning number of top-level domains (TLDs) with more than three characters behind the dot (such as .connectivity) and the growing number of internationalized domain names (IDNs) in non-ASCII characters means not all domain names and email addresses work in all applications, they said. Universal acceptance (UA) is now a key issue for ICANN, standards bodies and the domain industry in general. It's the "concept that all domain names should be treated equally," and that domains and email addresses should be accepted, stored, processed and displayed in "a consistent and effective manner," said the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG).

The online community created the UASG to tackle the problem, Chair Ajay Data said in an interview. Its mission is to mobilize software application developers to get their products UA-ready. UA has been a challenge since the 2000 round of new TLDs introduced the concept of a TLD longer than three characters, emailed Domain Name Association Executive Director Jothan Frakes, whose organization works with the steering group. Other groups involved include the Internet Society and the Internet Engineering Task Force. But UA is about more than IDNs or new TLDs, he said: it's about the "2019 Namespace -- and having systems that support that namespace and not the pre-Y2K namespace." UA "is essentially a Y2K without a Y2K date driving it to happen."

ICANN recently made UA one of its strategic objectives, board member Akinori Maemura noted at a session at the June 24-27 ICANN meeting in Marrakech. The unique identifier systems must be evolved to serve more internet users, he said. ICANN wants to expand the domain space through new generic TLDs and IDNs, but board members have done nothing to guide top-down UA principles, he said. Directors are considering how they can encourage UA.

The biggest challenge is that most people aren't aware of the issue, Data told us. They don't realize they may be missing messages and content that can't be delivered because mail servers and browsers don't recognize long TLDs or non-ASCII domains. Additionally there are technical issues. The software developer community needs to take care of UA applications; platforms such as Java must make their software libraries UA-ready; and the Internet Engineering Task Force and other standards bodies must include UA protocols in their new standards.

Another challenge is to take the actions needed to correct the problem, Data said. Someone has to act to make the resources, coding, software and procurement processes UA-ready, which UASG is doing via guidance documents on its website. Another issue is that 70 percent of the world doesn't speak English, so the group is trying to put its content in as many languages as possible, he said.

Governments could do more by adopting IDNs and UA in their procurement policies, Data said. UA is one of three elements critical to allowing end-to-end connectivity on the internet, ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee Chair Manal Ismael said at the ICANN session. With all services moving online, no one should be left behind and everyone should be able to carry out daily affairs in one's mother tongue, she said. The next billions of internet users are expected to come from developing countries where second languages aren't that common, and UA would give them a better experience. It also helps with internet penetration and bridges the digital divide, she said.

UA technical issues usually aren't difficult to fix, but making sure organizations have the appropriate resources and priorities can be a problem, said Mark Svancarek, Microsoft principal program manager-privacy and regulatory affairs, at the meeting.