State of the Prototype

System requirements and characteristics:

- the Asterisk prototype was written for and first tested on a PC running Windows XP.

- it runs successfully under Microsoft Vista and Windows 7.

- the prototype is based on Mozilla Firefox version 2.0.0.4

- changes/additions to FireFox allow an asterisk to be displayed in domain names.  This addressing token is used for convenience, the names themselves are registered in a slightly more complex standard format

Known Issues:

- If you normally use Firefox, Asterisk on first starting will check for compatibility of any plug-ins you have installed (click to close this), and will present your home page.  Under a separate tab it will open a page saying: "404: Page not Found."  Since Asterisk is based on Firefox 2.x, Mozilla presents this warning;  simply close that tab and begin playing with our test suite of multiplexed names.

- If you run a more recent version of Firefox after running Asterisk, the newer version will serve up a welcome page and Firefox will again check for plug-in compatibility.  If you subsequently re-start Asterisk, the sequence of events described above will repeat.

- Under Windows 7, after closing Asterisk you may need to reboot (clear cache) before running Firefox again. This has happened infrequently.

- Google's Gmail may crash the browser when a mail text includes an example of a multiplexed name.  It seems that Gmail tries to pre-fetch and resolve the domain name (it has also interpreted interpunctuated stings of digits as IP numbers).  Other tested mail systems don't exhibit this behavior.

- the browser does not translate [name]*0.tld into the intended [name].tld

- names written with upper case MLX--[name]--[number] are not translated, only lower case mlx--[name]--[number].   If you enter a name with upper case 'MLX' the browser presents the name on the address bar with lower case 'mlx'.  Press Enter again to generate the expected [name]*[number] address format.

- if you already run Firefox, Asterisk will not adopt your current settings and bookmarks.  New bookmarks saved in Asterisk will not load into FireFox automatically.

Comments and fault reports are welcomed.

Last updated October 4, 2011