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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 3 June 2011

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

ICANN Final Status Report to the GNSO Council on AGP Limits Policy Implementation

2 June 2011 | ICANN posted its fifth and final status report to the GNSO on the implementation of its recommendations for the Add Grace Period (AGP) Limits Policy.

Increase of the Registrar Accreditation Application Fee and Introduction of Further Due Diligence Background Checks

1 June 2011 | To offset the costs of increased due diligence, the application fee for submitting an ICANN accreditation application will be increased from the current fee of US $2,500 to US $3,500 effective on 1 July 2011.

The New GNSO Policy Development Process Presented for Approval

31 May 2011 | The Policy Development Process Work Team (PDP-WT) has submitted its Final Report to the GNSO Council for its consideration.

May 2011 New gTLD Applicant Guidebook

30 May 2011 | This version contains updates based on community feedback and the recent consultations between ICANN's Board of Directors and the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC).

Draft Timeline: 2012-2015 Strategic Plan Development Process

30 May 2011 | To kick off the annual Strategic Planning process, a 2012-2015 Strategic Plan Timeline has been established.

Nine Recommendations to Improve the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy (IRTP)

30 May 2011 | The Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy Part B Working Group has submitted its Final Report to the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council.


Upcoming Events

19 - 24 June 2011: 41st International Public ICANN Meeting - Singapore

About ICANN

ICANN Bylaws

Our bylaws are very important to us. They capture our mission of security, stability and accessibility, and compel the organization to be open and transparent. Learn more at www.ICANN.org.

Strategic Plan, 2010 - 2013

Adopted FY11 Operating Plan and Budget

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."