Skip to main content

Blog

  • Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Morocco

    One of the unique aspects of the ICANN community is its truly global nature and the opportunity to meet and work with people from across the world. We’re getting that chance again here in Morocco – a country with a rich history, diverse culture, and a growing Internet...

  • Automated Transcripts from Zoom at ICANN65

    As you know, ICANN moved to Zoom as its web conferencing solution and we are pleased with the positive feedback we have received aboutthisnew system. One of the most welcome developments about Zoom has been the introduction of its automatic transcriptionfeature. You may...

  • Marhaba, Bienvenue, and Welcome to Marrakech!

    We are honored to welcome the global ICANN community to Marrakech, Morocco, for ICANN65. The ambitious Policy Forum agenda, featuring outreach and cross-community sessions, was developed by ICANN’s Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees. A few important policy...

  • Welcome to ICANN65

    It’s my pleasure to welcome you back to Marrakech, Morocco, for ICANN65. I am pleased to return to the site of my first ICANN Public Meeting (ICANN55), especially considering how much has changed since that time. This will be an opportunity to reflect on the progress we’...

  • Looking Ahead to ICANN65

    In a few days, the ICANN community will gather in Marrakech, Morocco for ICANN65. This will be the fourth Policy Forum and the second to be held in the African region. The Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees have taken the lead in organizing the program for...

  • Chair’s Blog: A Preview of the Marrakech Board Workshop

    From 21-23 June, the ICANN Board will hold its fourth Board workshop of the calendar year, just ahead of ICANN65 in Marrakech, Morocco. ICANN65 will be a policy forum, dedicated primarily to interaction between the ICANN community’s constituency groups, as well as key...

  • ICANN to Launch a Pilot Childcare Grants Program for its Community

    ICANN is making it easier for community members with children (up to 12 years old) to attend ICANN meetings in person by launching the Community Childcare Grants Pilot Program. Starting with ICANN66, the Annual General Meeting in Montréal, Canada, eligible community...

  • ICANN's New Meeting Registration Platform

    ICANN has launched a new registration platform for ICANN Meetings and events. If you have registered in the past 15 months, you may receive an email to confirm or edit your existing profile, as well as past attendance details. Otherwise, you may create a new profile when...

  • Evolving the Governance of the Root Server System

    Today, ICANN org is launching a Public Comment proceeding on evolving the governance of the Root Server System (RSS). We invite the ICANN community to participate in this important work. Following the IANA stewardship transition, the Root Server System Advisory Committee...

  • Chair’s Blog: Wrapping up the Istanbul Workshop

    In this blog, I share some of the more significant discussions from the ICANN Board workshop, which was held earlier this month in Istanbul, Turkey, as well as a summary of the key resolutions passed during the public Board meeting in Istanbul. I will also update you on...

  • ICANN to Participate in the Upcoming Africa Internet Summit

    Hero1 africa internet summit 1347x630 14may19 en
    This year, members of the ICANN community and organization will participate in the Africa Internet Summit (AIS) taking place in Kampala, Uganda, from 9 to 21 June, which is a multistakeholder conference on information and communication technologies. The Summit will bring...

  • Registration Directory Service (RDS) Roadmap Update

    The ICANN organization (org) wants to keep the community informed as the policy and management of registration data is evaluated. New information about ongoing projects related to Registration Directory Service (RDS) has just been published. Updates to this roadmap,...

  • Coming Soon: Operational Improvements to the RSEP Process

    For the last several months, the ICANN organization has collaborated with the gTLD Registries Stakeholder Group (RySG) to improve the efficiency and predictability of the process for reviewing registry operator requests under the Registry Services Evaluation Policy...

  • Raising Awareness About Registrant Issues and Challenges

    Today, the ICANN organization Registrant Program published the second edition of a report on Issues and Challenges Impacting Domain Name Registrants [PDF, 263 KB] containing updated data from the ICANN Global Support Center (GSC), the Contractual Compliance department and...

  • Chair’s Blog: A Preview of the Istanbul Board Workshop

    From 1-3 May, the ICANN Board will convene in Istanbul, Turkey, for its third Board workshop of calendar year 2019. We’ll use this time to discuss and deliberate on some important topics, such as Internationalized Domain Names, the subsequent round of new generic...

  • ATRT3 Review Team Makes Progress at First Face-to-Face Meeting

    The third Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT3) had its first face-to-face meeting in Los Angeles on 3 – 5 April 2019. The main objectives of the meeting were to: Develop and prioritize scope items for our review, as guided by ICANN's Bylaws (see Article 4,...

  • Capacity Development Community Survey Results

    Capacity development has become an increasingly important part of regional engagement for the ICANN organization. Preliminary qualitative data collected from the regional engagement teams indicate requests for technical and leadership training are increasing. This...

  • Next Steps for the Technical Study Group & EPDP

    During ICANN64, the Technical Study Group on Access to Non-Public Registration Data (TSG) presented a Draft Technical Model. The team took feedback from the community of a range of topics and is currently working to revise the Model to reflect the relevant comments. You...

  • Transitioning ICANN's Remote Participation Platform to Zoom

    After careful consideration, ICANN org has decided to transition our official remote participation platform from Adobe Connect to Zoom. In January 2019, we entered into a contract with Zoom to license its product for widespread deployment. Plans are being executed now so...

Recent Announcements

Recent Multimedia

A note about our privacy policies and terms of service:

We have updated our privacy policies and certain website terms of service to provide greater transparency, promote simplification, and align with recent changes in privacy laws applicable to us. Learn more.

This site uses cookies to deliver an efficient user experience and to help us see how the site is used. Learn more.OK

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."