Skip to main content
Resources

ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 13 February 2009

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Public Comment: Single and Two-Character .BIZ Domains

13 February 2009 | ICANN has opened a public comment forum on a proposed amendment from NeuStar to Appendix 6 and 7 of the .BIZ Registry Agreement.

Microsoft Collaborates With Industry to Disrupt Conficker Worm

12 February 2009 | Together with security researchers, ICANN, and operators within the Domain Name System, Microsoft coordinated a response designed to disable domains targeted by Conficker.

Recruitment for ICANN Leadership Positions: 2009 Nominating Committee

12 February 2009 | The 2009 Nominating Committee began its work in November 2008 following the ICANN Annual Meeting in Cairo, Egypt, and is actively seeking qualified candidates for key positions within ICANN.

What Do You Want to Ask in Mexico City?

11 February 2009 | To allow community members that are not able to physically attend, to account for those attendees that do not wish to speak into a public microphone, and to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to ask a question directly of ICANN staff and/or the ICANN Board, we have set up an online question box.

Public Comment: ALAC Review WG Draft Final Report

11 February 2009 | The ALAC Review Working Group (WG) has released its draft Final Report presenting its conclusions on ALAC improvements.

Governments and Country-Code Managers' Interest in the Fast Track Process

10 February 2009 | A total of 252 letters were sent to national governments, and copied to country code top-level domain managers. So far we have received 74 responses.

July 2009 – June 2012 Strategic Plan Posted

9 February 2009 | After extensive consultation with the community, the July 2009 - June 2012 Strategic Plan is being posted following its approval by the ICANN Board at its February meeting.


Upcoming Events

23 - 24 February 2009: APTLD - Manila, The Philippines

1 - 6 March 2009: 34rd International Public ICANN Meeting - Mexico City, Mexico

19 March 2009: CENTR General Assembly - Barcelona, Spain

13 - 17 April 2009: AfTLD Meeting - Arusha, Tanzania


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

Adopted FY09 Operating Plan and Budget [PDF, 489 KB]


Sign up for ICANN's Monthly Magazine

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."