Windows 2000 DNS

Unicode Character Set Considerations

Windows 2000 supports RFC 2044, which enlarges the character set allowed in DNS names to include UTF-8 character encoding. However, many DNS servers, including Windows NT 4.0 DNS servers, follow RFC 1123, which permits a smaller character set. If you perform a zone transfer from a zone containing UTF-8 encoded characters to a third-party secondary server that does not support UTF-8 encoded characters, the secondary server might drop resource records, or the zone transfer might fail. Therefore, if you plan to use any characters from the UTF-8 character set, consider the issues described in "Naming Restrictions for Hosts and Domains," earlier in this chapter.