[db-wg] Internationalized domain names in the data abase?

Hello Ronald, DB-WG,

> On 6 Nov 2019, at 00:13, Ronald F. Guilmette via db-wg <db-wg at ripe.net> wrote:
> 
>>> I have found at least one specific case where an IDN does appear
>>> in the data base as a UTF-8 encoded string, but since I had
>>> never seen that before, I just wanted to know if that was an
>>> anomalous mistake or if it was consider normal, acceptable,
>>> and routine.
> 
> Mea culpa!  I misspoke.
> 

Thanks for clarifying!

> What I found was *not* an internationalized domain name, per se.  Well,
> maybe it was/is and maybe it wasn't/isn't.  I'll let you all decide,
> and then you can tell me if I have used improper terminology to
> descrtbe what I found.
> 

The email address you found, is the only IDN (i.e. non-ASCII) email address in the RIPE database (so far).

It's currently considered a valid value in the RIPE database, as it's composed of Latin-1 characters, and the attribute syntax check passes.

There is also an MX record for the domain (although the host dc-eb0309b6496a.xn--zrich-kva.email is currently unreachable for me).

However, it may cause inter-operability issues, as the sending mail server needs to handle IDN addresses correctly.

DB-WG: should we allow non-ASCII addresses in the RIPE database?

> P.S.  Not that anybody should really care, but for this one lone resarcher
> it would be maximally convenient if all domain names represented within the
> data base were encoded as punycode, where necessary.  In fact, it is my
> belief that 99.99% of them already are, which thus renders the "transition"
> to that standard essentially pain free.
> 

DB-WG: is punycode for domain names a viable alternative for encoding non-ASCII email addresses?

For example, the punycode equivalent abuse at xn--zrich-kva.email is already a valid value for the e-mail (or abuse-c) attribute.

Regards
Ed Shryane
RIPE NCC