Skip to main content

Featured News

Get Updates
Image of Board icon

The Board Leadership Slate

13 Sep 2019

ITI logo

Keeping You Informed: An Update on the Information Transparency Initiative (ITI)

13 Sep 2019

Icons

Are You Interested in DNS Abuse Measurements?

13 Sep 2019

Image of people

Next steps in Evolving ICANN’s Multistakeholder Model: Developing a Work Plan for 2021-2025

13 Sep 2019

Announcements

ICANN Publishes Registry Operator Audit for Addressing DNS Security Threats

Los Angeles – 17 September 2019 – Today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Contractual Compliance published the Report on the Registry Operator (RO) Audit for Addressing DNS Security Threats [PDF, 277 KB]. This report...

17 Sep 2019  |  Technology, Announcement

Register for ICANN66 Prep Week Webinars

LOS ANGELES – 16 September 2019 – Today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) released the schedule for ICANN66 Prep Week, which features a series of seven webinars to prepare the community ahead of its Annual General...

16 Sep 2019  |  Civil Society, Developing World, DNS Marketplace, Government, Technology, Announcement

Competition, Consumer Trust, and Consumer Choice Review Team (CCT-RT) Accepted Recommendations – Plan for Implementation and Next Steps

Open Date: 11 September 2019 Close Date: 21 October 2019 Originating Organization: Multistakeholder Strategy and Strategic Initiatives Categories/Tags: Specific Review, competition, consumer trust, consumer...

11 Sep 2019

Join the Webinar on ICANN’s FY21 Annual Operating Plan and Budget and 5-Year Operating and Financial Plan

LOS ANGELES – 9 September 2019 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) invites the ICANN community to participate in a webinar on the planning process for the FY21 Operating Plan and Budget and FY21-FY25 Operating and...

09 Sep 2019  |  Planning

BROWSE ALL ANNOUNCEMENTS

Multimedia

0

Celebrating Five Years of NextGen@ICANN!

Meet 6 of the impressive young people from around the world who took part in NextGen@ICANN program as we celebrate the fifth anniversary of the program.

0

ICANN 2019 Nominating Committee Update

Damon Ashcraft, Chair of the 2019 ICANN Nominating Committee (NomCom), and Jay Sudowski, the 2019 NomCom Chair-Elect give ICANN's James Cole an update on the Committee's progress.

Artworks 000557965560 vyy6vo t500x500

Celebrating Five Years Of NextGen@ICANN!

Meet 6 of the impressive young people from around the world who took part in NextGen@ICANN program as we celebrate the fifth anniversary of the program.

Artworks 000557855151 k42hye t500x500

Janis Karklins Talks EPDP Team Phase 2

Janis Karklins, Chair of EPDP Team Phase 2, discusses priorities for Phase 2 of the Expedited Policy Development Process on the Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data.

BROWSE ALL MULTIMEDIA

Blog Posts

Open Call for Community Members to Join the new Middle East Strategy Working Group

The Board Leadership Slate

Keeping You Informed: An Update on the Information Transparency Initiative

BROWSE ALL BLOG POSTS

Sign Up to Get News Updates

Tell us which topics you care about and we'll send updates to your homepage and email.

Already have an Account? Sign In

A note about our privacy policies and terms of service:

We have updated our privacy policies and certain website terms of service to provide greater transparency, promote simplification, and align with recent changes in privacy 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."