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ICANN Blog Cherine Chalaby Chair, ICANN Board of Directors

Chair’s Blog: Wrapping up the Istanbul Workshop

17 May 2019

APIGA 2019

Application for APIGA 2019 Is Now Open

17 May 2019

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Update on ICANN's Move to Zoom

17 May 2019

2021 Meetings

Additional 2021 ICANN Public Meeting Locations Announced

17 May 2019

Announcements

ICANN gTLD Registries and Registrars Required to Implement New Interim Registration Data Policy by 20 May 2019

LOS ANGELES – 17 May 2019 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced the implementation of the Interim Registration Data Policy for gTLDs which generic top-level domain (gTLD) registries and registrars...

17 May 2019

ICANN Organization Publishes First Human Rights Impact Assessment

LOS ANGELES – 15 May 2019 – Today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) published its first internal Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA). The report, which was developed by Löning – Human Rights and Responsible...

15 May 2019  |  Technology, Announcement

Study on Technical Use of Root Zone Label Generation Rules

Open Date: 15 May 2019 Close Date: 30 June 2019 Originating Organization: ICANN: Global Domains Division Categories/Tags: Top-Level Domains Brief Overview: Third version of the Root Zone Label...

15 May 2019  |  Technology, Announcement

Apply Now: The Asia Pacific Internet Governance Academy 2019

SINGAPORE – 14 May 2019 – Applications for the 4th Asia Pacific Internet Governance Academy (APIGA) 2019 are now open until 7 June 2019. APIGA is a 5-day capacity development workshop targeted at, but not limited to, undergraduate and graduate...

14 May 2019  |  Civil Society, Government, Technology, 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

Chair’s Blog: Wrapping up the Istanbul Workshop

Hero1 africa internet summit 1347x630 14may19 en

ICANN to Participate in the Upcoming Africa Internet Summit

ICANN's Move to Zoom: Follow-up Status Update and Response to Feedback

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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."