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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 22 July 2011

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

ICANN Files Comments on IANA Functions Contract in Response to US Department of Commerce Further Notice of Inquiry [PDF, 158 KB]

22 July 2011

Global Policy Proposal for Post Exhaustion IPv4 Allocation Mechanisms by IANA – Updated Background Report

22 July 2011 | As part of the ALAC/At-Large Improvements Project, the Office of the General Counsel – in coordination with the ALAC, At-Large Improvements Work Team A, and the At-Large Staff – drafted proposed Bylaw revisions to reflect the ALAC's continuing purpose within ICANN.

Reminder: Apply Now for the At-Large Advisory Committee, ALAC

20 July 2011 | Following the resignation of the ALAC representative from the North American region, appointed by ICANN's 2010 Nominating Committee (NomCom), the 2011 NomCom invites Statements of Interest for this important ICANN leadership position.

Public Comment: Proposed Revisions to Chapters 3 and 4 of the GNSO Council Operating Procedures Relating to Proxy Voting

19 July 2011 | The GNSO Council recently identified areas for improvement in the GNSO Council Operating Procedures that would simplify and clarify the procedures relating to proxy voting.


Upcoming Events

23 - 28 October 2011: 42nd International Public ICANN Meeting - Dakar

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."