Skip to main content

Join us!

Registration is open for the ICANN63 Annual General in Barcelona, Spain. The Public Meeting will take place from 20-25 October 2018 at the Centre de Convencions Internacional de Barcelona (CCIB). Look forward to seeing you at the Annual General in Barcelona.

Register today

Quicklinks

Blog Posts

GNSO Council Launches EPDP on the Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data

A Review of Our FY18 Middle East Journey

Minimal User Impact Expected From Root Zone Key Signing Key (KSK) Rollover

BROWSE ALL BLOG POSTS

News and Announcements

Minimal User Impact Expected From Root Zone KSK Rollover

Thumb ksk 18 july

Read the latest blog from Matt Larson, ICANN VP of Research, OCTO, where he outlines the latest developments in the planned root zone Key Signing Key (KSK) rollover. As a result of recent analysis, the ICANN organization believes that the rollover is expected to affect only a very small number of DNS users.

Data Protection/Privacy Update: Additional GDPR Guidance from the EDPB

Thumb gdpr 13july feature 01

Read the latest blog from John Jeffrey, ICANN General Counsel and Secretary where he highlights key points from a letter received from the European Data Protection Board (EDPR) and shares possible options for incorporating this guidance into WHOIS. The blog also provides answers to open questions in the Temporary Specification.

ICANN Publishes Paper on the Methodology Review of the DAAR System

Thumb daar feature 01

ICANN announced the publication of a paper describing the methodology used in the Domain Abuse Activity Reporting (DAAR) system and two reviews of that methodology. DAAR was designed to provide the ICANN community with reliable, persistent, and reproducible data from which security threat (abuse) analyses could be performed.

Post-ICANN62 Policy Report Now Available

Thumb post icann62 policy report graphic

Read the Post-ICANN62 Policy Report that covers the decisions and outcomes from the Supporting Organizations (SOs) and Advisory Committees (ACs) in Panama City this past June. The report looks ahead and presents resources to support continued community engagement on important issues.

View all

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."