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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 21 September 2012

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Fellowship Application Round Opens for ICANN 46 in Beijing, People's Republic of China

19 September 2012 | How Do I Apply for the Fellowship Program? The Fellowship Program has demonstrated success in its mission to build capacity in the ICANN multi-stakeholder environment through focused interactive engagement between newcomers to ICANN and community members at each of the ICANN meetings.

Proposed Bylaws Amendments to Align Board Terms

18 September 2012 | ICANN is seeking public comments on proposed Bylaws amendments drafted to align the terms of all Board members to begin at the conclusion of the Annual General Meeting each year.

WHOIS Technical Requirements Survey Invitation (Avail Until 31 OCT 2012)

17 September 2012 | The Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council's WHOIS Survey Working Group (WSWG) invites the Internet community to participate in a survey designed around an inventory of WHOIS technical components.

Upcoming Events

14 – 19 October 2012: 45th International Public ICANN Meeting – Toronto

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, 2012 – 2015

Adopted FY13 Operating Plan and Budget

A note about our terms of service:

We have updated our electronic terms of service to provide greater transparency and align with laws applicable to us. Learn more.

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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."