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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 18 March 2011

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

ICANN Signs Accountability Framework with ccTLD Manager for Montserrat (.MS)

17 March 2011 | ICANN has announced that it has signed an Accountability Framework with the country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) manager for .MS (Montserrat), MNI Networks Limited (MNI), on 17 March 2011.

Bulk Transfer of Domain Names from Best Bulk Register to BigRock Solutions

15 March 2011 | ICANN has authorized the bulk transfer of Best Bulk Register, Inc.'s gTLD domain names to Big Rock Solutions Pvt Ltd., due to a compliance action taken by ICANN that resulted in the de-accreditation of registrar Best Bulk Register, Inc. (Best Bulk Register).

ICANN Seeks Expressions of Interest for Registrar Data Escrow Service

15 March 2011 | Since the launch of the RDE program, the data storage marketplace has evolved significantly. ICANN is currently exploring whether these developments, such as use of cloud storage and virtualization, could allow for more efficient operation of RDE services. To that end, ICANN is initiating a Request for Expressions of Interest to help identify technology escrow agents that could provide cost effective data storage and data verification services to ICANN in furtherance of the RDE program.

Upcoming Events

19 - 24 June 2011: 41st International Public ICANN Meeting - Singapore

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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."