The Security and Stability Advisory Committee has been invited to comment on ICANN's proposal for IDN deployment at the root level of the DNS. The committee offers the following comments and observations:

SSAC concurs with the RSSAC 18 March 2007 public statement [see http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-18jun07.htm] that that policies regarding IDNs is out of the committee's scope and takes no position on composition of strings (except that they be unique) and the number of strings per TLD.
SSAC further concurs with RSSAC that the root zone should accommodate a factor of 2-5 times the number of TLDs without introducing technical instability.
SSAC favors the introduction of a set of IDN labels associated with the .TEST TLD to provide ongoing testing of IDN deployment at the root level of the DNS
.
SSAC is content to leave the duration of the test is left to the discretion of the parties engaged in testing but recommends that an end date be specified.

With regards to technical and operational issues, SSAC has considered the findings from 18 March RSSAC meeting in the Praha and concurs with said findings regarding the addition of standard delegations (NS records) to the root zone to instantiate IDN at the root and the the value of consulting with DNS experts to determine appropriate TTL values for test IDNs. SSAC will also work with RSSAC should either committee be asked to provide input on the matter of aliasing of domain names in the root zone.

SSAC requests the courtesy of continued notices from ICANN during the course of testing, from inception to conclusion, and looks forward to the opportunity to review findings from the tests, including data or measurements provided by the root server operators during the course of the testing.

Stephen Crocker, Chairman
(On behalf of the Security and Stability Advisory Committee)