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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 20 April 2012

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

TAS Interruption - Update (20 April 2012)

20 April 2012 | We understand that the dates for the reopening and closing of the application system are important to new gTLD applicants.

TAS Interruption - Update (19 April 2012)

19 April 2012 | Yesterday we promised to provide more information, and today we have prepared a video interview with Jeff Moss, ICANN's Vice President and Chief Security Officer, answering questions about the glitch.

Period of 19-29, April 2012: Public Comment Periods Approaching Closing Date

19 April 2012 | The Following Public Comment periods are approaching their Comment or Reply Period Close dates, April 19-29 2012.

TAS Interruption - Update (18 April 2012)

18 April 2012 | ICANN has been providing regular updates on the recent technical glitch that resulted in the TLD application system being taken offline. As reported earlier, we believe that we have fixed the glitch. We continue to test the solution and to conduct research to determine which file names and user names were potentially viewable, as well as which applicants had the ability to see them.

TAS Interruption - Update (17 April 2012)

17 April 2012 | ICANN's review of the technical glitch that resulted in the TLD application system being taken offline indicates that the issue stems from a problem in the way the system handled interrupted deletions of file attachments.

TAS Interruption - Update (16 April 2012)

16 April 2012 | The TLD application system, or TAS, was taken offline on Thursday, 12 April due to a technical issue. We believe that we have fixed the glitch, and we are testing it to make sure.

TAS Interruption - Update (15 April 2012)

15 April 2012 | We are currently reviewing the data to confirm which applicants were affected. As soon as the data is confirmed, we will inform all applicants whether they were affected.

TAS Interruption - Update (14 April 2012 06:50 UTC)

14 April 2012 | As we have reported, ICANN has learned of a technical issue with the TLD application system software, or TAS, that allowed a limited number of users to view some other users' file names and user names in certain scenarios. We temporarily shut the system down on 12 April 2012 to protect applicant data, and to look into the technical issue and fix it. As part of that process, we are sifting through the thousands of customer service inquiries received since the opening of the application submission period.

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24 - 29 June 2012: 44th International Public ICANN Meeting - Prague

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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."