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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 15 October 2010

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

IDN ccTLD Request From the Islamic Republic of Iran Successfully Passes String Evaluation

15 October 2010 | ICANN is pleased to announce the successful completion of String Evaluation on a proposed IDN ccTLD string for the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Public Comment: Allow the Allocation of Numeric-Only (Excluding Single-Digit) Domains in .TEL

14 October 2010 | ICANN opened a public comment period on a proposed amendment from Telnic Ltd. to Appendices 6 and S of the .TEL Registry Agreement.

Updated: Request for Information Issued on Proposed High Security Zone Verification Program

13 October 2010 | ICANN updated the posting on the Request for Information (RFI) for the proposed High Security Zone Verification Program.

Public Comment: One and Two-Character ASCII .TEL Domain Names

11 October 2010 | ICANN opened a public comment period on a proposed amendment from Telnic Ltd. to Appendices 6 and 7 of the .TEL Registry Agreement.

Proposals Sought For DNS Operations/L-root Contingency Exercise Consultant

11 October 2010 | ICANN is posting a request for proposals for an exercise consultant to assist with an internal ICANN DNS operations & L-root contingency exercise to be conducted in Q1 2011.

Upcoming Events

5 - 10 December 2010: 39th International ICANN Meeting - Cartagena, Colombia

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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."