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30 Jul 2020

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ICANN Extends Call for Expressions of Interest

30 Jul 2020

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ICANN President & CEO Goals for Fiscal Year 2021

30 Jul 2020

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ITI Webinar Recordings Now Available

30 Jul 2020

Announcements

ICANN Extends Call for Expressions of Interest: Standing Panel for ICANN's Independent Review Process

LOS ANGELES - 23 July 2020 - The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is seeking Expressions of Interest for panelists to serve on the omnibus Standing Panel for ICANN's Independent Review Process (IRP). The deadline to...

23 Jul 2020  |  Technology, Announcement

Nomination Opens for Dr. Tarek Kamel Award for Capacity Building

LOS ANGELES – 20 July 2020 – Today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) opened a one-month nomination period for the Dr. Tarek Kamel Award for Capacity Building. ICANN first introduced the Dr. Tarek Kamel Award for...

20 Jul 2020  |  Developing World, Announcement

The Eighth Africa Domain Name System (DNS) Forum 2020 Goes Virtual

ISTANBUL – 6 JULY 2020 – The eighth Africa Domain Name System (DNS) Forum, which was to be held in Dakar Senegal under the auspices of Senegal Network Information Centre with the support of the government of Senegal, will now be held virtually....

06 Jul 2020  |  Technology, Announcement

First ICANN Managed Root Server Instance Installed in Palau

SINGAPORE – 2 July 2020 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced the successful installation of an ICANN Managed Root Server (IMRS) instance in the Republic of Palau (Palau). The installation of the first...

02 Jul 2020

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ICANN's Julia Charvolen speaks with Community Excellence Award Recipient, Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond

Julia Charvolen, ICANN Policy Development Support, sits down with Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, the 2020 Community Excellence Award Recipient.

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ICANN Board Chair Maarten Botterman welcomes participants to ICANN68

Register and see the ICANN68 Virtual Policy Forum Schedule at: https://68.schedule.icann.org/

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ICANN President & CEO Göran Marby Welcomes Participants To The ICANN68 Virtual Policy Forum.

ICANN President & CEO Göran Marby welcomes participants to the ICANN68 Virtual Policy Forum, ICANN's second virtual meeting.

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ICANN Board Chair Maarten Botterman Welcomes Participants To ICANN68

Maarten Botterman, ICANN Board Chair, welcomes participants to the ICANN68 Virtual Policy Forum.

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Blog Posts

Country Code Top-Level Domain Participation in ICANN’s Domain Abuse Activity Reporting System

The Asia Pacific Regional Plan for FY21-25 is Ready

ICANN President & CEO Goals for Fiscal Year 2021

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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."