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Registration is open for the ICANN67 Community Forum in Cancún, México. The Public Meeting will take place from 7-12 March 2020 at Cancún International Convention Center. Look forward to seeing you at the Community Forum in Cancún.

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Blog Posts

It’s Time to Move Away From Using SHA-1 in the DNS

Board Blog: A Preview of the Los Angeles Board Workshop

Open Call for Community Members to Join the New Africa Strategy Working Group

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Make Your Voice Heard on ICANN’s Future

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ICANN org is seeking your input and feedback on the Draft FY21-FY25 Operating and Financial Plan and Draft FY21 Operating Plan and Budget. ICANN org’s FY21–25 Operating Plan and FY21 Operating Plan include descriptions of the major work ICANN org will undertake to achieve its Strategic Plan, operate the organization, and implement its mission.

Register for ICANN67 Prep Week Webinars

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The schedule for ICANN67 Prep Week, which features a series of nine webinars to prepare the community ahead of the Community Forum in March, are now available. To attend any of the webinars, please register by Friday 14 February 2020 to receive joining instructions. Click the link above for more information.

Apply Now for ICANN and PTI Leadership Positions

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Interested in key leadership positions within ICANN and Public Technical Identifiers (PTI), an affiliate of ICANN organization? Applications are now open. Selected individuals will have a unique opportunity to work with accomplished colleagues from around the globe to help shape the the Internet's technical coordination and policy development.

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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."