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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 5 October 2007

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

ICANN in the News

These links lead to external news stories. ICANN is not responsible for the content of these pages.

Sample Non-English Domains Coming Soon (washingtonpost.com)

4 October 2007 | Sample addresses in nearly a dozen languages will be added to the Internet's central directories as early as next week, paving the way for Web surfers around the world to get online without knowing any English.

ICANN at Work

ICANN staff members, Anne-Rachel Inné, David Conrad and Leo Vegoda attended the AfriNIC 7 meeting in Durban, South Africa between 24 and 28 September 2007. Anne-Rachel gave an update on ICANN's work, concentrating on IDNs and the new gTLDs process and calling for more participation from Africa. Leo gave an update on the work IANA is doing and the work he has done to reclaim 14.0.0.0/8. In addition to the policy discussions there was an IPv6 conference and an Internet governance day.

The meeting details, including presentations and agendas and minutes are available on the meeting web site at: http://www.afrinic.net/meeting/afrinic-7/.

ICANN Featured Individual: Craig Schwartz, Chief gTLD Registry Liaison

Craig Schwartz is ICANN's Chief gTLD Registry Liaison. In that capacity he leads the team responsible for registry relations. Craig's primary focus is creating the implementation program for the new gTLD deployment project. And, he also serves as project manger for the registry-registrar outreach initiative.

Craig joined ICANN in August 2006, after working for ten years at a public relations and strategic communications firm in Washington, DC. He most recently served as Vice President of Operations which included managing relationships with internal and external customers.

Prior to his time in public relations, Craig worked in public affairs at Youth for Understanding (YFU) International Exchange – an organization committed to fostering global understanding by facilitating student exchanges at the high school and community college levels. Craig actively conducted cross-cultural training workshops for program participants, in their home country, prior to departure to the United States.

When Craig isn't working he enjoys spending time with his five nieces and nephews, health and fitness activities, reading and traveling.

Craig earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from the University of Maryland.

Upcoming Events

19-21 October 2007 - Taipei Regional Meeting: "Toward the New Era of Internet"

17-19 October 2007 - ARIN XX - Albuquerque, NM, USA

22-26 October 2007 - RIPE 55 - Amsterdam, Netherlands

29 October - 2 November 2007: 30th International Public ICANN Meeting - Los Angeles, CA USA

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, July 2007 - June 2010

Operating Plan (Draft) Fiscal Year 2007 - 2008

Adopted Budget Fiscal Year 2007 - 2008 [PDF, 426 KB]

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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."