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Using All the Tools in the Toolbox for Meaningful Engagement

08 Jul 2020

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ICANN68 GAC Communiqué Now Available

08 Jul 2020

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First ICANN Managed Root Server Instance Installed in Palau

08 Jul 2020

ICANN69 Virtual Annual General

ICANN Announces NextGen@ICANN69 Participants

08 Jul 2020

Announcements

The Eighth Africa Domain Name System (DNS) Forum 2020 Goes Virtual

ISTANBUL – 6 JULY 2020 – The eighth Africa Domain Name System (DNS) Forum, which was to be held in Dakar Senegal under the auspices of Senegal Network Information Centre with the support of the government of Senegal, will now be held virtually....

06 Jul 2020  |  Technology, Announcement

First ICANN Managed Root Server Instance Installed in Palau

SINGAPORE – 2 July 2020 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced the successful installation of an ICANN Managed Root Server (IMRS) instance in the Republic of Palau (Palau). The installation of the first...

02 Jul 2020

Label Generation Rules for the Root Zone Version 4 (RZ-LGR-4)

Open Date: 29 June 2020 Close Date: 11 August 2020 Originating Organization: Global Domains Division Categories/Tags: Top-Level Domains Brief Overview: The Integration Panel (IP) has successfully...

29 Jun 2020  |  Technology, Announcement

Webinar Invitation: Third Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT3) Final Report

LOS ANGELES – 29 June 2020 – The third Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT3) invites the community to participate in a webinar on its Final Report [PDF, 3.92 MB]. There are two opportunities to participate: 15 July 2020 at...

29 Jun 2020  |  DNS Marketplace, Announcement

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ICANN President & CEO Göran Marby welcomes participants to the ICANN68 Virtual Policy Forum.

Join ICANN's 68th Public Meeting. Register and check out the Virtual Policy Forum's schedule of sessions, available at https://68.schedule.icann.org/.

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ICANN Community Excellence Award Selection Panelist Margarita Valdés

ICANN Community Excellence Award Selection Panelist Margarita Valdés discusses the process for choosing the 2020 recipient, Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond.

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ICANN President & CEO Göran Marby Welcomes Participants To The ICANN68 Virtual Policy Forum.

ICANN President & CEO Göran Marby welcomes participants to the ICANN68 Virtual Policy Forum, ICANN's second virtual meeting.

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ICANN Board Chair Maarten Botterman Welcomes Participants To ICANN68

Maarten Botterman, ICANN Board Chair, welcomes participants to the ICANN68 Virtual Policy Forum.

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Blog Posts

Using All the Tools in the Toolbox for Meaningful Engagement

Status of ICANN org’s Human Rights Impact Assessment Recommendations Implementation

Domain Name System Security Facilitation Initiative Technical Study Group Begins Its Work

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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."