How to allow the use of IDNs

There's a plug-in available from http://www.idnnow.com for both Internet Explorer and Outlook that enables the use of an IDN in a web or e-mail address.  Installation is easy, and the program is mostly transparent, allowing you to type IDNs into http and e-mail address bars normally.

How it works

The IDN plug-in performs a simple translation from UTF-8 into an agreed IDN standard (named Punycode: RFC 3492).  Punycode uses standard ASCII characters, and so is compatible with current DNS servers.  When a user enters an IDN into the IE explorer bar, or into the address bar in Outlook, the IDNNOW plug in kicks in to translate the domain part of the address to Punycode.  There is an online converter that will do this for you, and is used for some examples below.  The converter is available at http://mct.verisign-grs.com/index.shtml (for it to work properly, you must change your browsers encoding to UTF-8, as explained on the page). 

Interaction with MailSite

Sending messages

MailSite can cope with sending outgoing messages to an IDN.  The message has to be sent from an IDN enabled client such as Outlook with the IDNNOW plug-in.  For example, when an IDN domain name is used in an e-mail, e.g. test@tést.com, it comes through to the SMTPRA agent as a Punycode address (test@xn--tst-bma.com).  

It should be noted that for the IDNNOW plug-in to work in Outlook, Microsoft Word cannot be used to edit the e-mail.  The following is from the IDNNOW FAQ:

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6. Using Word as default editor in Outlook XP/Outlook 2003.

The current implementation of i-NavOutlook does not support sending email when Word is set as the default editor. If you have this option enabled, to use i-NavOutlook you must change this to normal text editing by going to: Tools-->Options-->Mail Format-->Message Format and un-ticking the check box which says "Use Microsoft Word to edit e-mail messages".

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Receiving messages

It is possible for a mail administrator to set up an IDN for his mail server.  To do this, he would need to find the translated Punycode equivalent of the IDN he wants to use, and enter this as the domain name in the MailSite console.  Administrators can do this by using the conversion tool given above.  For example, if a mail administrator wanted to have "îlovemãilsité.com" as a domain, you would enter "xn--lovemilsit-j5a1f9b.com" as the domain name.  Any mail sent to îlovemãilsité.com using the IDNNOW plug-in will then be sent to this domain. 

Administration of IDNs is fairly easy through the MailSite console for two reasons.  Firstly, every Punycode address starts with the characters "xn--".  Secondly, the standard ASCII characters belonging to the original domain name are used to make up part of the new Punycode domain name e.g. xn--lovemilsit-j5a1f9b.com and xn--tst-bma.com.

MailSite Express

The IDNNOW plug-in will not function with MailSite Express.  This is because the plug-in only translated foreign characters that are present in the IE address bar, and not for web page text boxes (such as the To: and From: fields on the MailSite Express compose screen).

Conclusion

MailSite is compatible with IDNs as they are currently used.  This is because IDNs are simply Punycode.  Any external software such as IDNNOW that deals with IDNs simply translates the IDN to and from Punycode.

The only improvements to MailSite that can be done are to provide automatic translation for administrators to and from Punycode in the MailSite admin console, and to integrate IDNs with MailSite Express.