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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 14 October 2011

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

ICANN to Manage Time Zone Database

14 October 2011 | ICANN has taken over operation of an Internet Time Zone Database that is used by a number of major computer systems.

ICANN FY11 Financials – Open, Transparent and CLEAN!

13 October 2011 | For the 12th straight year, ICANN has received an unqualified "clean" opinion from the independent auditors, Moss Adams LLP.

Public Comment: Work Continues to Increase Developing Economies Participation in the New gTLD Program

13 October 2011 | Public comment is requested concerning the Joint Applicant Support Final Report which deals with a very important issue: How can ICANN assist applicants from developing economies increase their participation in the new generic Top-Level Domain (New gTLD) Program?

Public Comment: Framework of Interpretation Working Group – Interim Report

12 October 2011 | The Framework of Interpretation Working Group (FOIWG) is seeking public comment on Interim Report on the first topic it has addressed: obtaining and documenting consent for delegation and re-delegation requests.

ICANN Leader Stresses Benefits of New gTLD Program to Arabic Speakers and Middle East

10 October 2011 | ICANN's New Generic Top-Level Domain Program offers significant opportunities for Middle Eastern organizations to expand their online presence, according to Rod Beckstrom, CEO and President of ICANN.

Upcoming Events

23 - 28 October 2011: 42nd International Public ICANN Meeting - Dakar

About ICANN

ICANN Bylaws

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Strategic Plan, 2011 – 2014

Adopted FY12 Operating Plan and Budget

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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."