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Appendix 1 | Prospective Registry Evaluation Matrix

Transition type What is being changed Evaluation type
Registry Front-end Back-End Operator Financial Technical and Operations* Due Diligence
Name change Same Same Limited Minimal Limited
Current registry was not in breach Same Same Limited Minimal Limited
Same New Limited Full Limited
New Same Full Limited Full
New New Full Full Full
Registry was in breach - Same Full Limited Full
- New Full Full Full

* Technical and Operations evaluation includes review of a plan for Migrating Services and data from current registry.

Full represents a review that is similar in scope to the review of applicants in the new gTLD program. Prospective registry will cover the costs associated with the evaluation. It will be performed by one of the firms engaged in evaluating applications for new gTLDs.

Limited represents a more narrow scope of review. For example, for Technical and Operations, this could consist of ensuring that the new organization has similar arrangements in place with the Back-End Registry Operator. Whether this type of evaluation will be performed internally and with or without cost for the prospective registry will depend on the specific case at hand.

Minimal represents a very narrow scope of review performed internally by ICANN and therefore without cost to the prospective registry.

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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."