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ICANN63 By the Numbers Report

ICANN63 By the Numbers Report Now Available

28 Nov 2018

Part V Renewing Your Domain Name

New Registrant Content and Blog Added

28 Nov 2018

Five Years of the LAC Strategy

ICANN’s Report on the Five Years of the LAC Strategy Published

28 Nov 2018

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Latest Opportunities to Participate in ICANN Reviews

28 Nov 2018

Announcements

NextGen@ICANN Application Round for ICANN65 Is Now Open

LOS ANGELES – 10 December 2018 – Today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) launched the application round for those interested in participating at the ICANN65 Meeting in Marrakech through the NextGen Program....

10 Dec 2018  |  Technology, Announcement

IANA Functions Customer Survey Results Available

Los Angeles – 6 December 2018 – Today, the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) published the results of its annual survey which measures customer satisfaction of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions....

06 Dec 2018  |  Technology, Announcement

Work Track 5 on Geographic Names at the Top Level - Supplemental Initial Report of the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process

Open Date: 5 December 2018 Close Date: 22 January 2019 Originating Organization: GNSO Categories/Tags: Policy Development Brief Overview: This public comment proceeding is being opened in order...

05 Dec 2018  |  DNS Marketplace, Announcement, gTLD, New gTLDs

ICANN’s Report on the Five Years of the LAC Strategy Highlight Increased Regional Engagement

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay – 4 December 2018 – Today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) published "Five Years of the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) Strategy," [PDF, 6.91 MB] highlighting the milestones achieved by the...

04 Dec 2018  |  Civil Society, Announcement

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SSAC Chair Rod Rasmussen on IDN Homographic Attacks

In an interview with ICANN’s Andrew McConachie, Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) Chair Rod Rasmussen discusses the use of Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) homographic attacks....

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Interview with the NomCom

ICANN’s James Cole sits down with members of the 2019 Nominating Committee (NomCom) - Damon Ashcroft, Zahid Jamil, and Cheryl Miller - to talk about the role of the NomCom, the Board positions that...

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EPDP Update

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GNSO Review Implementation: Community Experience

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Blog Posts

Hero1 renewing domain 1563x866 name 07dec18 en

Do You Have a Domain Name? Here's What You Need to Know

Update on Next Steps on Reviews

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Rajasthan State's New Email Project Brings Millions of Hindi Speakers Online

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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."