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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 13 July 2012

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Tell Us What You Think: Meeting Guide Survey

13 July 2012 | ICANN staff publishes a printed meeting guide for each of its three annual public meetings. We are reviewing this practice and want your feedback.

Period of 12 – 22 July 2012: Public Comment Periods Recently Opened and Approaching Closing Date

13 July 2012 | The Following Public Comment periods have Recently Opened or are approaching their Comment or Reply Period Close dates, 12 – 22 July 2012.

FY13 Operating Plan and Budget Adopted by Board in Prague

13 July 2012 | On 23 June 2012 in Prague, the ICANN Board approved the FY13 Operating Plan and Budget which was then posted to the ICANN Financials page on 26 June 2012.

ICANN Proposal to Perform IANA Functions Now Posted

9 July 2012 | The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers posted a redacted version of its 31 May 2012 proposal to provide the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions.

Proposed Modifications to GNSO Operating Procedures

9 July 2012 | The Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Standing Committee on Improvements Implementation (SCI) has recommended adding a new section to the GNSO Operating Procedures outlining a procedure for a consent agenda as well as updating the GNSO Council Voting Results Table to bring it in line with the GNSO voting thresholds in the ICANN Bylaws which were recently updated as a result of the recent approval of the revised GNSO Policy Development Process (PDP).

Upcoming Events

14 - 19 October 2012: 45th International Public ICANN Meeting - Toronto

About ICANN

ICANN Bylaws

Our bylaws are very important to us. They capture our mission of security, stability and accessibility, and compel the organization to be open and transparent. Learn more at www.ICANN.org.

Strategic Plan, 2012 - 2015

Adopted FY13 Operating Plan and Budget

A note about our terms of service:

We have updated our electronic terms of service to provide greater transparency and align with laws applicable to us. Learn more.

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Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."