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Empowered Community

Empowered Community Has Opportunity to Trigger Three Powers

24 Jun 2017

Pre-ICANN59 Policy Report

Pre-ICANN59 Policy Report Now Available

24 Jun 2017

GNSO Policy Briefing ICANN59 Edition

Read the Policy Briefing ICANN59 Edition

24 Jun 2017

Gender Diversity and Participation Survey

Support Diverse and Meaningful Engagement at ICANN

24 Jun 2017

Announcements

ICANN Releases its Final Report on Africa DNS Market Study

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is pleased to announce the release of its Final Report on Africa Domain Name System (DNS) Market Study. This study serves as part of ICANN's outreach efforts to support and improve...

24 Jun 2017  |  Civil Society, Announcement

Empowered Community Powers Triggered: FY18 Operating Plan and Budget, and Updates to Five-Year Operating Plan

On 24 June 2017, the ICANN Board adopted ICANN's FY18 Operating Plan and Budget, the FY18 IANA Budget, and updates to the Five-Year Operating Plan. Under ICANN's post-IANA Stewardship Transition Bylaws, the Empowered Community has the power to...

24 Jun 2017  |  Financials, Technology

GNSO Operating Procedures and ICANN Bylaws

Open Date: 19 June 2017 Close Date: 10 August 2017 Originating Organization: Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Categories/Tags: Operating Procedures, Bylaws Brief Overview: On 1...

19 Jun 2017  |  DNS Marketplace, Technology, Announcement

ICANN Holds Its Second African Law Enforcement Capacity Building Workshop in South Africa

Building on the success of the first workshop held in Nairobi, Kenya in January 2017, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) Under Served Regions and Public Safety Working Groups...

19 Jun 2017  |  GAC

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Multimedia

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ICANN59 Pierre Dandjinou's Welcome Video

Watch Pierre Dandjinou, ICANN's VP Stakeholder Engagement for Africa, welcome ICANN59 participants to Johannesburg.

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Prepare Your Systems for the Root KSK Rollover (Korean)

Description: If your software does not support automated updates of DNSSEC trust anchors (RFC 5011) or is not configured to use it, you must manually update the software’s trust anchor. The new...

Soundcloud

Becky Burr | ICANN History Project Interview

Soundcloud

Fadi Chehadé | ICANN History Project Interview

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Blog Posts

Publishing Submissions to the Complaints Office

Welcome to Africa and to ICANN59!

Business Engagement at ICANN59: Helpful Advice for Business Newcomers

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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."