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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 27 May 2011

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Public Comment: Preliminary Issue Report on the Current State of the UDRP

27 May 2011 | ICANN Staff is seeking comments on its Preliminary Issue Report on the Current State of the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy.

Fellowship Application Round Opens for ICANN International Public Meeting 42 in Dakar, Senegal

27 May 2011 | ICANN is now accepting online applications for the 14th round of the Fellowship program.

GAC Comments on the Applicant Guidebook (April 15th, 2011 Version) [PDF, 112 KB]

27 May 2011

Public Comment: The FY12 Travel Support Guidelines DRAFT

25 May 2011 | The FY12 Travel Support Guidelines DRAFT has been posted for public comment.

Munich Registry/Registrar Event

25 May 2011 | On 12-13 May 2011, ICANN hosted its Europe Regional Registry/Registrar Event in Munich, Germany.

Report on the Assessment of Security and Stability Implications of the Use of DNAME Resource Records in the Root Zone of the DNS

24 May 2011 | ICANN commissioned a technical study into the security and stability implications of using the Domain Name System (DNS) DNAME Resource Record [RFC2672] in the root zone of the DNS.

Joint ICANN Board - GAC Statement: Teleconference on New gTLDs

22 May 2011 | The ICANN Board and ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) held another productive meeting to discuss the limited number of remaining issues related to the anticipated launch of the new gTLD program.

Upcoming Events

19 - 24 June 2011: 41st International Public ICANN Meeting - Singapore

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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."