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ICANN Publishes a Revised Draft Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2021-2025

23 May 2019

ICANN Blog Cherine Chalaby Chair, ICANN Board of Directors

Chair’s Blog: Wrapping up the Istanbul Workshop

23 May 2019

APIGA 2019

Application for APIGA 2019 Is Now Open

23 May 2019

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Update on ICANN's Move to Zoom

23 May 2019

Announcements

Call for Expressions of Interest for 2020 | Nominating Committee Chair and Chair-Elect

Los Angeles – 24 May 2019 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) organization is seeking expressions of interest for leadership roles in the 2020 Nominating Committee (NomCom) - that of the 2020 NomCom Chair and...

24 May 2019  |  Technology, Announcement

Evolving the Governance of the Root Server System

Open Date: 23 May 2019 Close Date: 9 August 2019 Originating Organization: ICANN Board Categories/Tags: Security/Stability Brief Overview: This Public Comment proceeding seeks feedback for...

23 May 2019  |  Technology, Public Comment

ICANN Publishes a Revised Draft Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2021-2025

LOS ANGELES – 23 May 2019 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today published the Revised Draft Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2021–2025. View the Revised Draft Plan [PDF, 199 KB]. This Revised Draft Strategic Plan...

23 May 2019  |  DNS Marketplace, Announcement

Get Ready for ICANN65 Prep Week

LOS ANGELES –23 May 2019– Today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) released the schedule for ICANN65's Prep Week. The Prep week will feature eight webinars, including updates on several community-led projects. This...

23 May 2019  |  DNS Marketplace, Announcement

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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...

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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...

BROWSE ALL MULTIMEDIA

Blog Posts

Evolving the Governance of the Root Server System

Chair’s Blog: Wrapping up the Istanbul Workshop

Hero1 africa internet summit 1347x630 14may19 en

ICANN to Participate in the Upcoming Africa Internet Summit

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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."