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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 12 September 2008

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Interest Sought in Receiving Names from De-Accredited Registrar

12 September 2008 | As the result of the de-accreditation of Esoftwiz Inc. (IANA ID 614), ICANN is seeking Statements of Interest from ICANN-accredited registrars that are interested in assuming sponsorship of the gTLD names that had been managed by Esoftwiz Inc.

Public Comment: Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy -- Part A 'New IRTP Issues'

8 September 2008 | The Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy (IRTP) aims to provide a straightforward procedure for domain name holders to transfer their names from one ICANN-accredited registrar to another. As part of a broader review of this policy, a Policy Development Process (PDP) is currently ongoing on new Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy issues.

Global Policy Proposal for Remaining IPv4 Address Space – Background Report - Updated 8 September 2008

8 September 2008 | At its meeting on 20 November 2007, the Board resolved to request tracking of the development of a global policy proposal for allocation of remaining IPv4 address space, under discussion in the Regional Internet Registries. The status overview presented here is compiled in response to this request.

Upcoming Events

2 - 7 November 2008: 33rd International Public ICANN Meeting - Cairo, Egypt

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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."