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We bring together individuals, industry, non-commercial and government representatives to discuss, debate and develop policies about the technical coordination of the Internet's Domain Name System.

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Hero1 dnssec securing cctlds africa 750x425 14oct14

DNSSEC For Securing ccTLDs in Africa

  |   By Yaovi Atohoun, Stakeholder Engagement and Operations Manager, Africa

Hero1 icann51 compliance 912x685 13oct14

ICANN 51 DAY 3: Contractual Compliance Improves Online Dashboard

  |   By Maguy Serad, VP, Contractual Compliance Services

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ICANN 51: DAY 3: Collaborative Planning

  |   By Denise Michel, ICANN VP Strategic Initiatives

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The Internet Today and Tomorrow

Warsaw University Library

This daylong event will explore how Internet Governance shapes the way the Internet works and how we use it. This event takes place on 30th October 2014 at Warsaw University Library.

Revised Enhancing ICANN Accountability: Process and Next Steps

Enhancing ICANN Accountability Image of ICANN Logo with Magnifying Glass

ICANN published Revised Enhancing ICANN Accountability: Process and Next Steps, a document that describes the process to examine how ICANN's accountability mechanisms should be strengthened to address the absence of its historical relationship with the U.S. Government. This revision incorporates comments from the 21-day comment period from 6-27 Sep

IANA Stewardship Transition

ICG logo

The IANA Stewardship Coordination Group (ICG) is holding a Community Discussion Session at ICANN 51, and will have their third face-to-face meeting the following day. Transition proposals are being accepted until 15 January 2015. For more information, click the link above.

ATRT2 Implementation Program

ATRT2 By the Numbers: Recommendations Update (1234)

The first update on the implementation of recommendations from the Second Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT2) is now available. ICANN has kicked off the implementation work, following methodology rooted in project management industry standards. Click here to find out 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."