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Middle East DNS Forum will take place in Amman, Jordan from 9-10 March at TAG University. The goal of this event is to build bridges between interested parties within the region and world experts in the field. This forum is open to anyone interested in the domain name industry.

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Blog Posts

The Stakeholder Journey - Los Angeles to Singapore and Beyond

  |   By Christoper Mondini, VP for Business Engagement

Update on IANA Stewardship Discussion - 24 February 2015

  |   By Samantha Dickinson

Service update on some ICANN hosted blogs

  |   By Ashwin Rangan

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News and Announcements

ICANN 52 Comes to a Close

Photo of Singapore Skyline

ICANN 52 took place in Singapore from 8-12 February. Click the link above to find information from the meeting.

500+ new gTLDs Introduced into the Internet

500 New GTLDS Delegated

ICANN announces 500+ new generic top-level domains now introduced into the Internet. Click the link above to learn more about this announcement and how to join our New gTLD Program session at ICANN 52 in Singapore.

Help Design WHOIS Accuracy Reports

Globe Graphic with Text: Public Comment: WHOIS Accuracy Reporting System Pilot Report

Click here to provide your feedback on the WHOIS Accuracy Reporting System Pilot Report. Your input on the approach, methodology, and reporting formats used in the Pilot will help shape the final design of the Accuracy Reporting System.

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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."