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

Read the ICANN FY20 Annual Report

26 Oct 2020

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ICANN and PTI Release Audited Financial Statements for FY20

26 Oct 2020

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ICANN69 GAC Communiqué Now Available

26 Oct 2020

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Ramanou Biaou Honored with 2020 Dr. Tarek Kamel Award for Capacity Building

26 Oct 2020

Announcements

Recommendations for ICANN’s Root Name Service Strategy and Implementation

Open Date: 27 October 2020 Close Date: 08 December 2020 Originating Organization: Office of the CTO Categories/Tags: Engagement/Participation and Security/Stability  Brief Overview: ICANN's...

27 Oct 2020  |  Technology, Announcement, Public Comment

The Fifth Eastern European DNS Forum Goes Virtual

Brussels – 27 October 2020 – The fifth Eastern European Domain Name System Forum (EEDNSF) will take place online from 18-19 November 2020. The event is organized by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in partnership...

27 Oct 2020  |  Civil Society, DNS Marketplace, Government, Technology, Announcement

ICANN and PTI Publish Audited Financial Statements for FY20

LOS ANGELES – 26 October 2020 – Today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) published its audited consolidated financial statements and Public Technical Identifiers (PTI) published its audited financial statements for...

26 Oct 2020

Call for Expressions of Interest: Chair of the Intergovernmental Organization (IGO) Work Track

LOS ANGELES – 26 October 2020 – The Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) is seeking expressions of interest for a chair of the Intergovernmental Organization (IGO) Work Track, a subteam within an ongoing Policy Development Process (PDP) to...

26 Oct 2020  |  Technology, Announcement

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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.

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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

ICANN at the 15th Internet Governance Forum

Thank You for a Successful ICANN69

Recognizing ICANN Community Contributions in 2020

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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."