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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 25 June 2010

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Community Notice: Revised Process for Selection of Sites for ICANN International Public Meetings

21 June 2010 | The ICANN Board Committee on Public Participation has approved a modified process for identifying the location of ICANN International Public Meetings.

Statement - ICANN Accountability and Transparency Review Team - Interaction with the Community

21 June 2010 | The Accountability and Transparency Review Team makes a statement on Rod Beckstrom's comments during the "Affirmation Reviews - Interaction with Community" meeting in Brussels.

ICANN Board Resolutions Wiki Launched - Public Comment Encouraged

21 June 2010 | As part of ICANN's ongoing effort to build upon its strong record of accountability and transparency, ICANN has launched a searchable wiki to provide the public with easy-to-access information on every substantive resolution approved by the Board of Directors.


Upcoming Events

5 - 10 December 2010: 39th International ICANN Meeting - Cartagena, Colombia

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 FY10 Operating Plan and Budget


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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."