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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 21 September 2007

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Request for Comments — ICANN Board Review Draft Terms of Reference

20 September 2007 | As part of the 2002-03 Evolution and Reform process, the ICANN community and Board established a principle of ongoing review of ICANN's structures to ensure their continuing relevance and effectiveness.

ICANN, TWNIC Host "Toward the New Era of Internet" in Taipei

20 September 2007 | ICANN is joining forces with the Taiwan Network Information Centre (TWNIC) to host a special regional meeting — "Toward the New Era of Internet" — in Taipei 19-21 October 2007.

Notice of Intent to Issue Advisory Regarding the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy

19 September 2007 | ICANN has observed that there is confusion within the registrar community concerning the circumstances under which registrars may validly deny transfer requests pursuant to the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy ("Transfer Policy"). The purpose of this Notice of Intent to Issue an Advisory regarding the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy is to allow interested parties 30 days to comment on the proposed advisory.


ICANN in the News

These links lead to external news stories. ICANN is not responsible for the content of these pages.

Montenegro Gets New Internet Domain Name (Balkan Investigative Reporting Network)

14 September 2007 | ICANN has approved a request for assigning the .me domain to Montenegro, which will replace current .yu sub-domains.

ICANN approves .RS domain (B92)

14 September 2007 | ICANN envisages the transition from the .YU domain to .RS being complete by September 30, 2009. According to ICANN's decision, activation of the .RS domain is expected by the end of the month.


ICANN at Work

ICANN staff member Leo Vegoda attended the UKNOF 8 meeting in London 17 September 2007 where he gave an update on the work IANA has done to reclaim 14.0.0.0/8. Eighty attendees discussed a wide range of Internet operational issues, including resource certification (RPKI), IPv6 deployment, BGP routing and ENUM. The meeting details, including presentations and agendas and minutes are available on the meeting web site at: http://www.uknof.org.uk/uknof8/agenda.html.


ICANN Featured Individual: Naela Sarras, IANA Project Specialist

Naela joined ICANN as an IANA Project Specialist in June 2005. In her role, Naela primarily works in the DNS root-zone management area. Prior to joining ICANN, Naela worked at Hertzler Systems Inc. for eight years where she held several positions in software development and customer support. Naela received a BA in Computer Systems from Goshen College in 1996.


Upcoming Events

23 - 28 September 2007 - AfriNIC 7 - Durban, South Africa

17-19 October 2007 - ARIN XX - Albuquerque, NM, USA

22-26 October 2007 - RIPE 55 - Amsterdam, Netherlands

29 October - 2 November 2007: 30th International Public ICANN Meeting - Los Angeles, 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, July 2007 - June 2010

Operating Plan (Draft) Fiscal Year 2007 - 2008

Adopted Budget Fiscal Year 2007 - 2008 [PDF, 426 KB]


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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."