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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 6 July 2012

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Extension to Reply Comment Period: Draft Statement of ICANN's Role and Remit in SSR

5 July 2012 | Based on community feedback received during the ICANN meeting in Prague, CZ from 23-28 June, ICANN is extending the reply comment period on the Draft Statement of ICANN's role and remit in the security, stability and resiliency of the Internet's unique identifier systems.

New gTLD Program: Technical Resources for Trademark Clearinghouse Available to Prospective New gTLD Registry Operators

3 July 2012 | In response to community request, ICANN is establishing an open mailing list to further refine and complete the technical specification of the interface between the new gTLD Registries and the Trademark Clearinghouse.

.name Registry Agreement Renewal

3 July 2012 | ICANN is posting today for public comment Verisign's proposed agreement for renewal of the 2007 .name Registry Agreement.

ICANN Awarded Contract to Continue to Perform Internet Assigned Numbers Authority Functions [PDF, 199 KB]

2 July 2012 | Washington, D.C... ICANN will continue to perform the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions following the awarding of a new contract by the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

IANA 2012 Customer Survey Results Summary

2 July 2012 | In April and May 2012 ICANN invited users of the root zone management; protocol parameters management; and Internet Number Resources management services to participate in a customer satisfaction survey.


Upcoming Events

14-19 October 2012: 45th International Public ICANN Meeting - Toronto

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, 2012 - 2015

Adopted FY13 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."