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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 18 June 2010

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Major Milestone for the Internet and ICANN

16 June 2010 | Today in the small town of Culpeper, Virginia, ICANN technical staff played host to an unusual and somewhat arcane event. Volunteers from over ten countries made their way by plane, train and automobile to witness and participate in the generation of the cryptographic key that will be used to secure the root zone of the Domain Name System using DNSSEC for the first time.

New gTLD Program: Three Documents Available for Comment, including Economics Study

16 June 2010 | ICANN is pleased to release three additional documents related to the New generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) Program: An Economic Framework for the Analysis of the Expansion of Generic Top-Level Domain Names; the Joint SO/AC Working Group on New gTLD Applicant Support Snapshot; and the Draft Program Development Snapshot #2- High Security Zone Top-Level Domain Advisory Group (HSTLD Advisory Group).

Public Comments Requested on ccNSO Working Group Paper on Delegation, Redelegation and Retirement of ccTLDs

16 June 2010 | The Chair of the ccNSO's working group on delegation, re-delegation and retirement of ccTLD's is pleased to announce the publication of the working groups Issue Analysis report. The objective of the report is to inform and solicit input and comment from the community on the classification methodology developed by the working group and the issues identified and classified using that methodology.

ICANN Posting External Review of Root Zone Change Request Process

16 June 2010 | ICANN is posting a summary of actions it has taken in response to recommendations made by JAS Communications LLC (JAS), an external consultant, related to ICANN's IANA functions process. The JAS Evaluation document, "IANA Process for Implementing Root Zone Change Requests – Review and Assessment of Risk Management strategy and Comparison of Implementation Options" is also posted in order to share with the community the findings and recommendations made by the external consultant and to add transparency to how ICANN manages the IANA functions process.

ccNSO Review – External Reviewers' Final Report for Public Comment

15 June 2010 | In November 2009, ICANN appointed ITEMS International to carry out the external review of its country code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO). ITEMS International has delivered its recommendations and conclusions in a final report based on a survey and interviews conducted.

Public Comment: Phased Allocation Program in .JOBS

15 June 2010 | ICANN opened a public comment period on a proposed amendment from EmployMedia LLC to Appendix S of the .JOBS Registry Agreement.

RSSAC Review – Final WG Report

15 June 2010 | The Root Server System Advisory Committee (RSSAC) Review WG submitted its draft final report for public comment on April 27 2010.

Bulk Transfer of Domain Names from Mobiline and Western United to NamesBeyond

14 June 2010 | ICANN has authorized the bulk transfers of Mobiline USA, Inc.'s and Western United Domains, Inc.'s gTLD domain names to 2030138 Ontario Inc. (dba NamesBeyond.com), due to a compliance action taken by ICANN that resulted in the de-accreditation of registrars Mobiline USA, Inc. (dba domainbonus.com) and Western United Domains, Inc.

Updated: AoC Accountability and Transparency Review: Independent Expert – Request for Proposals

12 June 2010 | Deadline extended to: 12 June 2010 – 23.59 UTC


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20 - 25 June 2010: 38th International Public ICANN Meeting - Brussels, Belgium

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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."