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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 24 August 2007

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Update: IDN .test Root-Zone Evaluation

23 August 2007 | ICANN finalized the IDN .test Evaluation Plan and continued taking steps toward insertion of IDN strings in the root zone.

Clarification Regarding .KP Country Code Top-Level Domain

17 August 2007 | A number of incorrect media reports are circulating that the ICANN — the manager of the domain name system root zone — is scheduled to approve ".KP" as the country code top-level domain for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) at ICANN's meeting in Los Angeles in October.

ICANN in the News

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

The Tech Lab: Vint Cerf (BBC News)

24 August 2007 | Vint Cerf is the latest guest in the BBC News technology column The Tech Lab.

ICANN Launches Latest Consultation (Web Host Industry Review)

21 August 2007 | ICANN recently announced that it has launched a public consultation on a key report from ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organization.

ICANN Featured Individual: Dave Piscitello, Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) Fellow

Dave is a recognized expert in the fields of Internet routing, broadband access and security. Prior to accepting the SSAC Fellow position, Dave ran his own firm, providing advisory and consulting services to providers and consumers of Internet technology. An enthusiastic freelance writer, Dave has published articles with the Business Communications Review, Wall Street Ticker, CMP Security Pipeline, the ISSA and ENISA Journals and Information Security Magazine, and has performed software and product evaluations for numerous trade publications. He has co-authored two books on Internet technologies and served as an acquisitions editor for a major publisher. Dave has also provided editorial supervision of web information portals and conference program development for major conference operators.

In his earlier career, Dave worked on a variety of projects as a member of technical staff for Bell Communications Research and Unisys Corporation. He served as the Transport Area Director of IESG and was the author/co-author of several RFCs.

Dave holds a BS in Mathematics from Villanova University. He has also achieved a number of personal honors and awards including a President's Recognition Award during his tenure at Bellcore. He is the Founder and former Chair of The Internet Security Conference, a member of ISSA, the Information Systems Security Association, and a certified Internet firewall administrator.

Upcoming Events

29 August - 7 September 2007 - APNIC 24 - New Delhi, India

29 August - 7 September 2007 - SANOG 10 - New Delhi, India

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."