{"draft":"draft-klensin-idn-tld-05","doc_id":"RFC4185","title":"National and Local Characters for DNS Top Level Domain (TLD) Names","authors":["J. Klensin"],"format":["ASCII","HTML"],"page_count":"19","pub_status":"INFORMATIONAL","status":"INFORMATIONAL","source":"INDEPENDENT","abstract":"In the context of work on internationalizing the Domain Name System\r\n(DNS), there have been extensive discussions about \"multilingual\" or\r\n\"internationalized\" top level domain names (TLDs), especially for\r\ncountries whose predominant language is not written in a Roman-based\r\nscript.  This document reviews some of the motivations for such\r\ndomains, several suggestions that have been made to provide needed\r\nfunctionality, and the constraints that the DNS imposes.  It then\r\nsuggests an alternative, local translation, that may solve a superset\r\nof the problem while avoiding protocol changes, serious deployment\r\ndelays, and other difficulties.  The suggestion utilizes a\r\nlocalization technique in applications to permit any TLD to be\r\naccessed using the vocabulary and characters of any language.  It is\r\nnot restricted to language- or country-specific \"multilingual\" TLDs\r\nin the language(s) and script(s) of that country.  This memo provides information for the Internet community.","pub_date":"September 2005","keywords":["domain name system","multilingual","internationalized","local translation"],"obsoletes":[],"obsoleted_by":[],"updates":[],"updated_by":[],"see_also":[],"doi":"10.17487\/RFC4185","errata_url":null}