[UA-discuss] Wanted: Some thoughts on measuring EAI

Thu Apr 28 16:19:47 UTC 2016

Dear Stuart,

Sorry for my late response .. pleases find my answers highlighted in yellow below:

________________________________
From: Stuart Stuple [stuartst at exchange.microsoft.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2016 05:42 PM
To: Raed Al-Fayez; Mark Svancarek
Cc: UA-discuss at icann.org
Subject: RE: [UA-discuss] Wanted: Some thoughts on measuring EAI

These are great additions.

Comments on a few:
-           Can view RTL EAI correctly.
Is there a standard being proposed? This is relatively high-risk for protocols that go to the file level and still is debated for IDNs.
No there is no such standard for this, but there are some good potential solutions for it(for example the Arabic email address should be intact and stable regardless of the text direction).

-           Can configure IDN hosts as SMTP, POP and IMAP servers.
This seems more like a server action than a mail client action. I read your first item as the mail client should be able to connect to an existing account on all such servers and agree. But I wouldn’t expect it to be able to be able to change (configure) the server settings. Can you explain further what you mean?
Well both sides should understand IDN/EAI, client should be configured in way that can establish connection with server and to be able to handle the new EAI protocol. For example if you want to configure your client to fetch emails from the server then you need to identify the host and port address...etc

-           Can recognize an EAI/IDN-style email address in the body (i.e., can be used with "mail to:")
Actually mailto:// support would be something we’d expect outside of mail clients as well. Folks might at the same time want to validate the IDN relative protocols as well (ftp:// and http:// coming to mind).

Agree. but also the mail client should be able to identify email address (that contain the @ sign) in automatic way.

-           Can search messages (all fields) for an EAI/IDN-style email address
Might be good to add details about how this differs from EAI rule-based filters. There’s also being able to sort and group by (which I put under filters in my mind).
 Well they should be the same but we need to make sure that we can use something like this when serching for messages sent by someone ("From:رائد@رسيل.السعودية")

Hope this feedback / contribution is helpful.

-Stuart

From: Raed Al-Fayez [mailto:rfayez at citc.gov.sa]
Sent: Monday, April 25, 2016 10:55 PM
To: Mark Svancarek <marksv at microsoft.com>; Stuart Stuple <stuartst at exchange.microsoft.com>
Cc: UA-discuss at icann.org
Subject: RE: [UA-discuss] Wanted: Some thoughts on measuring EAI

Dear Mark,

Can I add the following checks for an email server/client/app:
-           Can add EAI aliases
-           Can configure IDN hosts as SMTP, POP and IMAP servers.
-           Can add and handle EAI rule based filters
-           Can recognize an EAI/IDN-style email address in the body (i.e., can be used with "mail to:")
-           Can search messages (all fields) for an EAI/IDN-style email address
-           Can use an EAI/IDN-style email address in all configuration items
-           Can view RTL EAI correctly.
-           Can be used in address book

With best regards,

Raed I. Al-Fayez
------------------------------------------
Saudi Network Information Center (SaudiNIC)
Communication and Information Technology Commission (CITC)
Tel: + 966-11-4618216   - Fax: + 966-11-2639393
http://www.nic.net.sa<http://www.nic.net.sa/>

From: ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org<mailto:ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org> [mailto:ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Mark Svancarek
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2016 7:41 PM
To: Stuart Stuple
Cc: UA-discuss at icann.org<mailto:UA-discuss at icann.org>
Subject: Re: [UA-discuss] Wanted: Some thoughts on measuring EAI

Stuart, this is great, thanks!

Everyone, feedback?

From: Stuart Stuple
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2016 7:06 AM
To: Mark Svancarek <marksv at microsoft.com<mailto:marksv at microsoft.com>>
Cc: UA-discuss at icann.org<mailto:UA-discuss at icann.org>
Subject: RE: [UA-discuss] Wanted: Some thoughts on measuring EAI

My first time speaking up here but global readiness validation is one of the areas I’m familiar with from a self-certification process.

Below is what I’d expect a company to do for self-certification and I believe that could be done via a bot model.

inline

From: Mark Svancarek [mailto:marksv at microsoft.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2016 11:23 AM
To: Abdeslam NASRI <don.hollander at icann.org<mailto:don.hollander at icann.org>>; UA-discuss at icann.org<mailto:UA-discuss at icann.org>
Subject: Re: [UA-discuss] Wanted: Some thoughts on measuring EAI

I was thinking about the following levels of EAI support.  We can assign each a different weighting dependent on importance of scenario (which is a judgment call we must make up front), and measure support levels by how many points a client, server or service gets.

Technical Support (clients)
Can send to an EAI address
Can send to an IDN-style email address
Can receive from an EAI address
Can receive from an IDN-style email address
Can associate EAI and IDN-style addresses as the same account for searching and sorting purposes

For typical productivity application testing, you need to cover a full a matrix along the lines of:

Send

Recieve

Email name is non- ASCII /domain is ASCII

Email name is ASCII /domain is non- ASCII

Email and domain are both non-ASCII

To/Cc a collection of email address with a mixture of formats – single From format as all ASCII

To/Cc a collection of email address with a mixture of formats – single From format as non-ASCII

To a single ASCII format and from a simple ASCII format with Cc of a collection of email address with a mixture of formats

At the very least, products could self-certify for these. The last one is, of course, the most tricky as the client may try to do a “simple” path logic if the To address is all ASCII.

For full evaluation, you’d need to test across the various hosting services to confirm and end-to-end story. A bot could handle monitoring these.

Then I’d see the following features for grouping:

•         Can group by equivalent ASCII and non-ASCII domain names

•         Can alias ASCII and non-ASCII email name when at same domain name
I actually would expect these to be at the server/service level so repeating below.

Technical Support (servers and services)
Can receive mail sent to an EAI address and send it to a compliant client
Can receive mail sent to an IDN-style email address and send it to a compliant client

For testing servers providing productivity interaction, it would be great to identify these as a matrix along the lines of:

Auto-generated alerts can send to

Replies for approving system tasks can be processed from

“Pass-along Messages” can be received from this format

“Pass-along Messages” can be sent to format

“Pass-along Messages” can be set to choose between alias format depending upon client

Email name is non- ASCII /domain is ASCII

Email name is ASCII /domain is non- ASCII

Email and domain are both non-ASCII

Admin can:

•         Group by equivalent ASCII and non-ASCII domain names

•         Alias ASCII and non-ASCII email name when at same domain name

User can configure their account to:

•         Alias ASCII and non-ASCII email name when at same domain name

•         Alias various combinations of ASCII and non-ASSII email names (even at separate domains)

Measuring and Monitoring Support
Can track the number of EAI accounts supported by each provider (e.g.. Coremail has ~50K; SaudiNIC is “negligible”; 163 is still at 0, etc.) as they are offered and grow over time
Can track the number of incoming EAI messages being received over time per provider
Can track the number of incoming “IDN-style” messages being received over time per provider

From: ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org<mailto:ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org> [mailto:ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Abdeslam NASRI
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2016 11:51 PM
To: Don Hollander <don.hollander at icann.org<mailto:don.hollander at icann.org>>; UA-discuss at icann.org<mailto:UA-discuss at icann.org>
Subject: Re: [UA-discuss] Wanted: Some thoughts on measuring EAI

Hello Don and All,

In some earlier discussion with an EURid report présenter I suggested that UASG can issue a kind of UA IDN and EAI certification levels that can be acquired by software vendors and community developers. A certification level is gained by a software (client app, server App or API) when a standardized Test Suite -automated or not- is passed successfully.

The Test Suite evolve over time as we keep discovering issues. Tests should go far beyond a few ping commands to protocol implementation level and optional functionalities.

This way, either ICANN or any organization can initiate the EAI-IDN-compliance-validation process.

Bests,
Abdeslam NASRI
________________________________
From: Don Hollander<mailto:don.hollander at icann.org>
Sent: ‎4/‎14/‎2016 1:08 AM
To: UA-discuss at icann.org<mailto:UA-discuss at icann.org>
Subject: [UA-discuss] Wanted:  Some thoughts on measuring EAI
One of the things I would like to do is measure the extent of EAI deployment today  (which is included in this year’s business plan and budget) and for each of the next few years.
I’d also like to get a measure of how different client and server applications are able to handle both EAI and IDNs, with ‘handle' being the ability to ACCEPT and DISPLAY the different permutations we’ve got in our UA Use Cases.
I think that there should be some automatable way of testing servers – perhaps sending an SMTPUTF8 Request and measuring the response.   But how do we identify the servers to query?   Is there a list somewhere?   Do we leverage the work of the Anti-Virus and Spam monitors?
Could we automate the client software evaluation or will this require an install and manual exercise and evaluation?
So, before we issue a Help Wanted request for email evaluation I would appreciate your thoughts on how we might do this evaluation.
 Thanks in advance.
Don

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer:
This message and its attachment, if any, are confidential and may contain legally
privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the
sender immediately and delete this message and its attachment, if any, from your
system. You should not copy this message or disclose its contents to any other
person or use it for any purpose. Statements and opinions expressed in this e-mail
are those of the sender, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Communications
and Information Technology Commission (CITC). CITC accepts no liability for damage
caused by this email.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/ua-discuss/attachments/20160428/a4ec463b/attachment.html>