メニュー

Japanese

  1. Top > 
  2. Topics > 
  3. 2009 > 
  4. RFC on EAI Co-Authored by JPRS Engineers Was Published

Topics: 2009

RFC on EAI Co-Authored by JPRS Engineers Was Published

- Contributing to the Standardization Activity of the E-mail Address Internationalization -

(6 April 2009)


On 31 March 2009, an RFC which specifies a standard for E-mail Address Internationalization (EAI) and was co-authored by two (2) engineers of JPRS was published. This means that EAI is prepared for the field tests toward the actual utilization.

An e-mail address is described in the form of "user-name@domain-name". In terms of standardization of "domain name" which is on the right part to @, a standard is already defined as Internationalized Domain Name (IDN). EAI is the technology which internationalizes the whole e-mail address including the left part to @, i.e., "local part"; also, it is the technology whereby non-ASCII characters of various languages including Japanese can be used in any part of an e-mail address.

Internationalization of e-mail address is one of the significant technical developments to break down barriers to the use of the Internet; thus, it is beneficial for those whose mother tongue is not English. E-mail is one of the fundamental services of the Internet. Therefore, we need to internationalize e-mail through retaining the compatibility with the current system, while making them interface with the future extensions.

With this publication, the fundamental standards to keep the backward compatibility and extend the respective protocols which set up the e-mail system are compiled in four (4) RFCs (RFC 5335, RFC 5336, RFC 5337 and RFC 5504) as experimental standards. RFC 5504 specifically defines a standard for the backword compatibility with the existing e-mail system in case the internationalized e-mail address is used. RFC 5504 is co-authored by Mr. Kazunori Fujiwara and Mr.Yoshiro Yoneya from JPRS.

Now that these RFCs are published, all the fundamental RFCs required to handle the internationalized e-mail address are in place, so the development of experimental implementation and the field test on the Internet toward the actual utilization are now available. From now on, implementation to e-mail softwares and the review toward the preparation of a variety of RFCs which become standard track are going to be proceeded through the field tests and other related activities.


References:


PAGE TOP