Skip to main content
Resources

ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 29 February 2008

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

ICANN Makes Presentation to Midterm Review Public Meeting

28 February 2008 | ICANN made its presentation on the Midterm Review of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) between itself and the United States Department of Commerce at a public meeting held in Washington, DC.

ICANN Opens Comment Period on Proposed Add Grace Period Modifications for NeuStar and Afilias

27 February 2008 | ICANN is today opening public comment periods on requests submitted by NeuStar, the .BIZ registry, and Afilias, the .INFO registry, to modify terms regarding the add grace period (AGP) in their respective registry agreements.

Registration Open for ICANN's 32nd International Public Meeting to be held in Paris, France

25 February 2008 | ICANN's next meeting will be held 22 – 27 June 2008 in Paris, France at Le Méridien Montparnasse.

ICANN in the News

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

ICC Makes Recommendations for ICANN's Transition (AGIP News)

28 February 2008 | The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Commission on E-Business, IT and Telecoms and its Task Force on Internet and Telecoms Infrastructure and Services have submitted global business views on the transition of the Internet domain name and addressing organization from the current US government oversight to a private sector multi-stakeholder model of leadership.

Upcoming Events

1 - 3 April 2008 - ICANN Regional Outreach Meeting - Dubai, UAE

7 - 11 April 2008 - AFTLD Meeting - Johannesburg, South Africa

20 June 2008 - EGENI Europe 2008 - Paris, France

22 - 27 June: 32nd International Public ICANN Meeting - Paris, France

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]

Sign up for ICANN's Monthly Magazine

To unsubscribe from this mailing list, please visit http://www.icann.org/newsletter

If you have questions or comments about this mailing list, send an email to ICANN-Newsletter@icann.org

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.

This site uses cookies to deliver an efficient user experience and to help us see how the site is used. Learn more.OK

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."