Skip to main content
Pages under review

Pages under review

As a result of the IANA Stewardship Transition, you may find some site content that is out of date. Please use the “Feedback” button in the bottom right corner of the page if you have questions or discover content that requires updating.

Historic Moment

Today, 1 October 2016, the IANA functions contract officially expired. As a result, the coordination and management of the Internet’s unique identifiers is now privatized and in the hands of the volunteer-based multistakeholder community.

Read ICANN's statement

Quicklinks

Blog Posts

Cheers to the Multistakeholder Community

  |   By Steve Crocker

Final Implementation Update

  |   By Akram Atallah

Exploring Cybersecurity Topics on a Whirlwind Tour of Eastern Europe

  |   By Dave Piscitello, VP of Security and ICT Coordinator

BROWSE ALL BLOG POSTS

News and Announcements

ICANN58 NextGen@ICANN Application Round Now Open

ICANN58 NextGen@ICANN Application Round

ICANN launches the application round for those interested in participating at the ICANN58 meeting through the NextGen Program. The meeting will be held 11-16 March 2017. This round remains open until 4 November 2016 & successful candidates will be announced on the ICANN website, icann.org, 2 December 2016. Click on the link above to learn more.

Help improve ICANN, take the At-Large Review Survey!

At-Large Review Survey - We want your feedback!

Independent Examiner ITEMS is seeking broad community input to measure community perception of the effectiveness of At-Large internal procedure, work output and the leadership team. The survey closes on 21 October 2016. We need your feedback, click the link above to take the survey today!

Updated Expected Standards of Behaviors

Updated Expected Standards of Behavior

Learn the Updated Expected Standards of Behavior by reading through the infographic. Everyone who takes part in the ICANN multistakeholder process, including Board, staff and those involved in Supporting Organization and Advisory Committee councils should review this document by clicking the link above.

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 tracking cookies:

This site is using "tracking cookies" on your computer to deliver the best experience possible. Read more to see how they are being used.

This notice is intended to appear only the first time you visit the site on any computer.Dismiss

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."