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ICANN65 Policy Forum Marrakech

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15 Apr 2019

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ICANN Publishes Updated Domain Name Marketplace Indicators

15 Apr 2019

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Next Steps for the Technical Study Group & EPDP

15 Apr 2019

ICANN 66 Annual General

NextGen@ICANN Application Round for ICANN66 Is Now Open

15 Apr 2019

Announcements

ICANN Publishes Updated Domain Name Marketplace Indicators

LOS ANGELES – 17 April 2019 – The Internet Corporation for Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced publication of the first wave of the Domain Name Marketplace Indicators report, which presents statistics related to generic top-level domains...

17 Apr 2019  |  DNS Marketplace, Announcement

Invitation: Name Collision Analysis Project (NCAP) Discussion Group

LOS ANGELES – 17 April 2019 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is seeking participants for the Name Collision Analysis Project (NCAP) discussion group. The NCAP discussion group, as defined by the Security and...

17 Apr 2019  |  Technology, Announcement

Updated Request for Proposal: ICANN's Technical Compliance Monitoring System

LOS ANGELES – 10 April 2019 –The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is seeking to identify a provider to develop and maintain a Technical Compliance Monitoring system. The Technical Compliance Monitoring system is intended...

10 Apr 2019  |  Technology, Announcement

ICANN Publishes ICANN64 By the Numbers Report

LOS ANGELES – 9 April 2019 – Today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) published the ICANN64 By the Numbers Report, which includes technical, demographic, and attendance statistics for the most recent ICANN Public...

09 Apr 2019

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Universal Acceptance (UA) Ambassadors Share Their Experiences

Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) Secretary General Don Hollander interviews UA Ambassador Mark W. Datysgeld, UA Ambassador Ashish Modi, Chair UASG Ajay Data, Vice-Chair – UASG Dušan...

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Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) Update

ICANN's Brad White, North America Communications Director sits down with GNSO Chair Keith Drazek and GNSO Council Liaison to the EPDP Team Rafik Dammak to discuss Expedited Policy Development...

Artworks 000504172647 y1l4r1 t500x500

Universal Acceptance (UA) Ambassadors Share Their

Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) Secretary General Don Hollander interviews UA Ambassador Mark W. Datysgeld, UA Ambassador Ashish Modi, Chair UASG Ajay Data, Vice-Chair – UASG Dušan...

Artworks 000503488644 5nsx58 t500x500

Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) Update

ICANN's Brad White, North America Communications Director sits down with GNSO Chair Keith Drazek and GNSO Council Liaison to the EPDP Team Rafik Dammak to discuss Expedited Policy Development...

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Blog Posts

Next Steps for the Technical Study Group & EPDP

Transitioning ICANN's Remote Participation Platform to Zoom

Take Part in ICANN's Age Diversity and Participation Survey

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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."