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Listen to a Recording of the ICANN's Board Open Session

25 Jan 2021

Open Data

Changes Coming to Registry Reports on ICANN’s Open Data Platform

25 Jan 2021

Government Engagement Publication

Government Engagement Publishes "Russian Federation Internet-Related Laws & UN Deliberations" Report

25 Jan 2021

Additional Second-Level Reference Label Generation Rules (LGRs) Published

Additional Second-Level Reference Label Generation Rules (LGRs) Published

25 Jan 2021

Announcements

Apply Now for ICANN Leadership Positions

LOS ANGELES – 25 January 2021 – Today, the Nominating Committee (NomCom) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) invites interested individuals to submit applications for key leadership positions within ICANN. Selected...

25 Jan 2021  |  Civil Society, Announcement

ICANN Org Launches Audit of Registrar Compliance with DNS Security Threat Obligations

LOS ANGELES – 15 January 2021 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced the launch of an audit program aimed at reviewing how registrars are fulfilling their contractual obligations related to addressing...

15 Jan 2021  |  DNS Marketplace, Announcement

ICANN70 Will Be Held as Virtual Community Forum

LOS ANGELES – 14 January 2021 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced that the ICANN Board of Directors has made the decision to convene ICANN70 as a Virtual Public Meeting due to the continuing impact of...

14 Jan 2021  |  Technology, Announcement

ICANN Continues the Pandemic Internet Access Reimbursement Program

LOS ANGELES – 13 January 2021 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced the continuation of the Pandemic Internet Access Program for ICANN70. This program was first piloted for ICANN69 with the support of...

13 Jan 2021  |  Technology, Announcement

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Multimedia

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Happy Holidays from the ICANN Board

As we take a moment to reflect on this past year, we can be proud of the work we accomplished and the goals we met. We are confident that ICANN is starting 2021 not only equipped with the tools for...

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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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(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

DAAR Activity Project: Now Providing Personalized Monthly Reports for ccTLDs

Chair’s Blog: The Year Ahead and a Preview of the January Workshop

Continuing Focus on Human Rights

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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."