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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 17 December 2010

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Extension of Public Comment Period on New gTLD Proposed Final Applicant Guidebook and Economic Study Phase II Report

17 December 2010 | Taking into account public comment and decisions made during ICANN's Cartagena meeting, the public comment period for the Proposed Final Applicant Guidebook and supporting documentation have been extended to 15 January 2011 (1200 UTC).

Extending Public Comments: Fast Track Review

17 December 2010 | Per community request the first annual review of the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process has been extended through 31 January 2011.

Apply Now for ICANN's Leadership Positions

17 December 2010 | ICANN's Nominating Committee (Nom Com) invites Statements of Interest and candidate recommendations from the Internet community for key leadership positions to fulfill ICANN's technical and policy coordination role.

The At-Large Advisory Committee Announces Incoming ALAC Officers, Representatives, and Liaisons, and At-Large Regional Officers and Thanks Departing Members

15 December 2010 | The ALAC is pleased to announce the incoming ALAC Officers, Representatives, and Liaisons, and At-Large Regional Officers.


Upcoming Events

13 - 18 March 2011: 40th International Public ICANN Meeting - San Francisco, CA, USA

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, 2010 - 2013

Adopted FY11 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."