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Join Us for an ITI Webinar on 1 December

24 Nov 2020

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Improving Our Public Meetings: Timelines and Milestones

24 Nov 2020

Important Tips to Help Keep Your Domain Name Secure

New Publication: Learn How to Limit Your Risk of Online Fraud

24 Nov 2020

Annual Report 1 July 2019-30 June 2020 One World, One Internet

Read the ICANN FY20 Annual Report

24 Nov 2020

Announcements

Call for Expressions of Interest: Community Representatives Group to Select Independent Review Process Standing Panel

LOS ANGELES – 18 November 2020 – Today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), in consultation with ICANN's Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees, is seeking Expressions of Interest for appointment to a new...

18 Nov 2020  |  Technology, Announcement

Registration Now Open for the 2020 LAC Domain Names Week

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay – 17 November 2020 – Registration is now open for the 2020 LAC Domain Names Week, which will be held virtually. The theme of this year's event is "Understanding the Ecosystem and Learning New Opportunities." The week of...

17 Nov 2020  |  Technology, Announcement

Call for SOs/ACs to Nominate Fellowship Program Mentors and Selection Committee Members

LOS ANGELES – 16 November 2020 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) invites its Supporting Organizations (SOs) and Advisory Committees (ACs) to nominate volunteers to serve as mentors in its Fellowship Program and to...

16 Nov 2020  |  Technology, Announcement

Deadline Extended – Call for Expressions of Interest: Chair of Phase 2A GNSO EPDP on the Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data

This is an update to the announcement published on 4 November 2020. LOS ANGELES – 13 November 2020 – The Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is seeking a neutral...

13 Nov 2020  |  Technology, Announcement

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Multimedia

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(English Subtitles) 2020 Dr. Tarek Kamel Award for Capacity Building

ICANN's Alexandra Dans interviews the first recipient of the 2020 Dr. Tarek Kamel Award for Capacity Building, Ramanou Biaou.

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(French) 2020 Dr. Tarek Kamel Award for Capacity Building

ICANN's Alexandra Dans interviews the first recipient of the 2020 Dr. Tarek Kamel Award for Capacity Building, Ramanou Biaou.

Artworks wydd138mzyqglby6 fiizgq t500x500

(English Subtitles) 2020 Dr. Tarek Kamel Award For Capacity Building

ICANN's Alexandra Dans interviews the first recipient of the 2020 Dr. Tarek Kamel Award for Capacity Building, Ramanou Biaou.

Artworks wydd138mzyqglby6 fiizgq t500x500

(French) 2020 Dr. Tarek Kamel Award For Capacity Building

ICANN's Alexandra Dans interviews the first recipient of the 2020 Dr. Tarek Kamel Award for Capacity Building, Ramanou Biaou.

BROWSE ALL MULTIMEDIA

Blog Posts

Improving Our Public Meetings: Timelines and Milestones

Join An ITI Webinar and Get a Preview of the Changes Coming to icann.org

New Resources Available to Domain Name Holders (Registrants)

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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."