Skip to main content

Join us!

Registration is open for the ICANN62 Policy Forum in Panama City, Panama. The Public Meeting will take place from 25-28 June 2018 at the Megapolis Convention Center. Look forward to seeing you at the Policy Forum in Panama City.

Register today

Quicklinks

Blog Posts

Chair's Blog: A Preview of the Panama Board Workshop

Engagement Efforts with Local Stakeholders in Moscow

Fourth Annual 2018 GDD Industry Summit Recap

BROWSE ALL BLOG POSTS

News and Announcements

The Sixth Africa DNS Forum to take place in Cotonou, Benin

Thumb sm template 10 icannorg 492x279

On 3-5 July, the sixth Africa DNS Forum will take place under the theme “Building a Sustainable Domain Name Industry in Africa” in Cotonou, Benin. The Forum is co-organized by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Africa Top Level Domains Organization (AfTLD), and AfRegistrar.

Fourth Annual 2018 GDD Industry Summit Recap

Thumb gdd industry summit recap 1557x881 12jun18 en

The Global Domains Division (GDD) of the ICANN organization held its fourth annual Industry Summit in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. This year's Summit comprised of 410 attendees from over 32 countries, with dozens more participating remotely.

Second Security, Stability, and Resiliency of the DNS Review (SSR2) Restarts

Thumb ssr2

ICANN has announced the formal restart of the Second Review of the Security, Stability, and Resiliency of the Domain Name System (SSR2). The formal restart is marked by the addition of new review team members to the existing roster and the engagement of a facilitator to assist the review team with the transition process.

GNSO Policy Briefing

Thumb gnso feature 01

Read the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Policy Briefing ICANN62 Edition and learn about the important work by the GNSO taking place at the ICANN62 Policy Forum in Panama City, Panama from 25-28 June. This report provides you with helpful links about the GNSO and background information on relevant GNSO policy efforts.

View all
Home groups
ICANN Groups

We depend on the support of many different types of groups and sub-structures: Advisory Commitees, Supporting Organizations, standingcommittees, working groups, review teams, task forces, and more.

Explore all Groups

A note about our privacy policies and terms of service:

We have updated our privacy policies and certain website terms of service to provide greater transparency, promote simplification, and align with recent changes in privacy laws applicable to us. Learn more.

This site uses cookies to deliver an efficient user experience and to help us see how the site is used. Learn more.OK

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."