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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 3 November 2006

A weekly electronic newsletter from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Workshop Report — Towards a Multilingual Global Internet: Avoiding the Risk of Fragmentation

2 November 2006

Internationalised Domain Names Roadmap — Progress and Future

1 November 2006

ICANN Launches Weekly Newsletter Service

1 November 2006

IDNA Protocol Review and Proposals for Changes

31 October 2006

ICANN at the Internet Governance Forum, Athens, Greece, 30 October - 2 November 2006

30 October 2006

Greek and Egyptian Governments Applaud ICANN's Move Toward Autonomy

30 October 2006

Chairman Vint Cerf's Opening Remarks at Internet Governance Forum, Athens, Greece, 30 October - 2 November 2006

30 October 2006

ICANN in the News

Listed below are key media mentions involving ICANN over the course of the last week.

World Internet Summit Ends With Promise and Concern for Future (The Age)

3 November 2006

Internet Forum Participants Clash (InfoWorld)

2 November 2006

ICANN Warns Mistake On Non-English Web Addresses Could 'Permanently Break Internet' (The Age)

1 November 2006

IGF - Major Changes Ahead for Domain Name System (PC Pro)

31 October 2006

International Net Domains 'Risky' (BBC News)

30 October 2006

'Gambits' Are A Risk To Internet Domain System (International Herald Tribune)

29 October 2006

ICANN Featured Individual: Hagen Hultzsch, Board Member

Hagen Hultzsch has more than 35 years of experience in technology management. Until he stepped down in 2001, Dr. Hultzsch was a member of the Management Board of Deutsche Telekom, where he was responsible for research and development, information technology, and quality. During Dr. Hultzsch's tenure, Deutsche Telekom evolved from a government-owned organization into a publicly-owned corporation with four separate business units. Prior to his work with Deutsche Telekom, Dr. Hultzsch held various executive positions at Volkswagen AG, Electronic Data Systems (EDS), and GSI, a German research organization.

Until the end of 2001, Dr. Hultzsch served as Chair of the Supervisory Board of T-Venture Holding in Bonn, Germany, a corporate venture capital firm focused on high-technology investments in telecom software, wireless communications equipment, computer software, and Internet infrastructure.

Dr. Hultzsch was the founder of EARN, the European Academic and Research Network, for which he also served as a member of the Board of Directors. He also served as an Assistant Professor at Mainz University and completed a fellowship at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He currently serves as a board member for some 20 commercial and academic organizations in the United States and Europe.

Hagen Hultzsch was selected for the ICANN Board by the Nominating Committee. His current term, which started after the 2004 annual meeting, will end after the conclusion of ICANN's annual meeting in 2006.

ICANN At Work

During the past week, ICANN staff have provided input to the internet community at events such as:

  • The Internet Governance Forum in Athens. Staff hosted workshops on Internet participation and a global multilingual Internet.
  • The Devnet conference in Guyana. Staff delivered a presentation on the future of the Internet, ICANN's role and current issues. Staff also met with local user groups, ccTLD and government officials to discuss Guyanese involvement with ICANN.
  • The Caribbean Internet Governance Forum in Grenada, a regional event being organised in parallel to the Global Internet Governance forum in Greece. Staff presented an overview of ICANN's work.

Major Upcoming Events

5-10 November 2006: IETF Meeting, San Diego

13-14 November 2006: APTLD Meeting, Bangkok, Thailand

14-15 November 2006: RIPE Regional Meeting, Manama, Bahrain

27 November - 1 December 2006: AFRINIC Meeting, Mauritius

2 – 8 December 2006: ICANN Meeting, São Paulo, Brazil

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

July 2006 — June 2009

Operating Plan (Draft)

Fiscal Year 2006 — 07

Proposed Budget [PDF, 180 KB]

Fiscal Year 2006 — 2007

2— 8 December 2006 — ICANN Meeting, São Paulo, Brazil

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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."