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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 26 October 2007

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

ICANN Ombudsman Releases Annual Report

26 October 2007 | The Ombudsman for ICANN released his annual report today, which lays out how his office has helped individuals and organizations with disputes come to a resolution while avoiding formal processes like the courts.

IPv6 Factsheet

26 October 2007 | ICANN today released a factsheet covering Internet Protocol 6, or IPv6. The factsheet is intended to provide an explanation of the protocol upgrade for a non-technical audience in the hope of enlarging public understanding surrounding this and related issues.

Fellowship Program Brings Global Voices Together at ICANN

24 October 2007 | Global input and ideas will be on the rise at the 30th International Public Meeting of ICANN thanks to ICANN's on-going fellowship program.

Nominating Committee Independent Review - Interisle Consulting Group Report Posted

24 October 2007 | ICANN has been provided with the Interisle Consulting Group's review of ICANN's Nominating Committee (NomCom). [PDF, 1.11 MB]. This report will be used to inform ICANN's effort to develop detailed proposals for improving the way ICANN fills leaderhsip positions.

ICANN Releases RAA Public Consultation Comments

23 October 2007 | ICANN today released a compilation of the public input received during the public comment period of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) consultation process.

ICANN's gTLD Registry Failover Plan

20 October 2007 | ICANN is today posting its gTLD Registry Failover Plan for public comment.

ICANN Opens Comment Period on Revised Telnic Contract Amendment

19 October 2007 | ICANN is opening a public comment period on revised contract changes to alter the terms for the public display of Whois information in the .TEL Registry Agreement.

ICANN in the News

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

ICANN investigates domain name sharp practice (The Register)

25 October 2007 | Internet oversight agency ICANN has launched an investigation into the possibility that insider information is being used to snap up desirable domain names before the person or organisation likely to be interested in them has had a chance to buy. ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee is looking into suspicions that someone with access to search requests has been using this data to snap up potentially desirable domains, a process dubbed domain name front running.

ICANN makes net global with non-English script domains (Computerworld New Zealand)

24 October 2007 | ICANN has created 11 new top-level domains named with the suffix ".test" in them. These are in the 11 languages of those who have shown the most interest in internationalising domain names.

ICANN Featured Individual: Sara Stohl, Technical Writer

Sara Stohl joined ICANN in 2006 as a Technical Writer. In that capacity, she prepares speeches, presentations, and other media for senior staff and Board members, and assists in formulating ICANN's image and messages. She also helps ICANN staff members in preparing reports, policies, procedures, and training modules, among other documents, relying on more than 30 years' experience as a technical writer and editor.

Before joining ICANN, she owned a technical communications consultancy with a broad base of clients in the aerospace, biomedical, opto-electronics/photonics, environmental sciences, construction management, and many other industries. For the past 18 years, she has also taught technical communications courses as an adjunct professor at local universities such as the University of Southern California and the University of California at Los Angeles.

Away from the job, she enjoys gardening, reading history and biographies, writing, and genealogy, and is an avid ice hockey fan.

Sara attended Utah State University and the University of California at Los Angeles, majoring in English Literature and Applied Linguistics.

ICANN at Work

ICANN staff members, David Conrad, Barbara Roseman, Bart Boswinkel and Leo Vegoda attended the back-to-back NANOG 41 and ARIN XX meetings in Albuquerque, NM, between 15 and 19 October 2007. Leo gave a lightning talk on the problem of unallocated but widely-used IPv4 address space and presented an update on the status of IANA. David presented a policy proposal to ease the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 services for RIR customers.

The details of both meetings, including presentations, agendas and slidepacks are available on the meeting web sites at: http://www.nanog.org/mtg-0710/agenda.html and http://www.arin.net/ARIN-XX/.

Upcoming Events

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."