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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 17 September 2010

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Public Comment: Numbers and Hyphens in .NAME Domain Names

16 September 2010 | ICANN opened a public comment period on a proposed amendment from VeriSign Information Services, Inc. to Appendices 6 and 11 of the .NAME Registry Agreement.

Location Recommendations Now Being Accepted for ICANN's 2012 Meeting in Europe

16 September 2010 | ICANN is actively seeking a location for its 44th meeting to be held 24-29 June 2012 in Europe.

Location Recommendations Now Being Accepted for ICANN's 2012 Meeting in Latin America

16 September 2010 | ICANN is actively seeking a location for its 43rd meeting to be held 11-16 March 2012 in Latin America.

IDN ccTLD Request From India Successfully Passes String Evaluation

15 September 2010 | ICANN is pleased to announce the successful completion of String Evaluation on proposed a IDN ccTLD string for India.

IDN ccTLD Request From the Republic of Korea Successfully Passes String Evaluation

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

Results of ICANN Study on the Prevalence of Domain Names Registered Using a Privacy or Proxy Registration Service

14 September 2010 | Over the years, the ICANN community has expressed interest in and raised questions about domain names registered using a privacy or proxy registration service. In response, ICANN conducted an exploratory study in 2009 to assess an approximate percentage of domain names (through a statistical sampling plan) contained in the top 5 gTLD registries that used privacy or proxy registration services.

FY 11 Update to Plan for Enhancing Internet Security, Stability & Resiliency

13 September 2010 | In June 2009, the ICANN Board accepted the first ICANN Plan for Enhancing Internet Security, Stability & Resiliency. ICANN is today releasing an update for FY 11.

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."