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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 11 May 2007

A weekly electronic newsletter from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Draft IDN Guidelines, v.2.2 for Public Comments

11 May 2007 | This is the first version of the IDN Guidelines to make specific reference to IDN in top-level labels. Comments are encouraged and welcomed and can be viewed at http://forum.icann.org/lists/idn-guidelines/ and submitted to idn-guidelines@icann.org.

ICANN Opens Comment Period on Telnic Proposal

11 May 2007 | A copy of the proposed amendment is available at http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/tel/tel-amendment-30may07.pdf [PDF, 25 KB]. Comments on the proposal may be submitted to registryservice@icann.org until 11 June 2007 23:59 UTC and may be viewed at http://forum.icann.org/lists/registryservice/.

Partnership to Grow Internet in Pacific Island Nations

10 May 2007 | ICANN, Pacific Islands Telecommunications Association sign agreement to work together.

Have Your Say on New Top-Level Domains

10 May 2007 | ICANN seeks public participation in process for evaluating and approving new domains.

ICANN Formalizes Relationship with ccTLD Manager for Senegal

9 May 2007 | ICANN announces that it has signed an exchange of letters with the country code top level domain (ccTLD) manager for .sn -- Senegal, NIC Senegal.

ICANN Posts FAQ on New gTLD Process

8 May 2007 | ICANN has compiled answers to frequently-asked questions to aid the community in understanding recent developments and expected future steps in the area of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs).

Fellowship Program to Enhance Global Participation in ICANN

8 May 2007 | Trial program will help people from developing world take part in 29th public meeting.

Request for Public Comments and Dialogue on ICANN's Performance

8 May 2007 | As part of an ongoing interest in continuous improvement, ICANN is seeking community feedback about its performance.

Vint Cerf Says: ICANN Needs You!

7 May 2007 | Vint Cerf, Internet founder, talks candidly about future of Internet corporation as chairmanship draws to a close; asks for people with a "passion for the Internet" to apply.


ICANN in the News

Please note that these links lead to external news stories. ICANN is not responsible for the content of these pages.

New Top-Level Domains Could Arrive by Mid-2008, ICANN Says (CNet News)

11 May 2007 | New top-level domains are once again on the horizon. ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, said on Thursday that it would begin accepting applications for new suffixes early next year.

Cerf Seeks Acolytes to Carry the ICANN Torch (The Register)

8 May 2007 | Internet legend and ICANN Chairman Vint Cerf is finally hanging up his spurs, according to ICANN's website. ICANN posted a video interview with Cerf ... a paean to his tenure as chairman, and a plea for others to take up the mantle of internet evangelist.


ICANN At Work

  • ICANN's Senior Policy Counselor Dr Liz Williams is attending the Amsterdam DomainFest on 16 May 2007. She is giving the keynote address to the conference where she will be talking about the policy development process for the introduction of new top-level domains. Further information about the policy development process and ICANN's new top level domain strategy can be found at http://gnso.icann.org/ issues/new-gtlds/.
  • Anne-Rachel Inne participated to AfNOG, AfREN, AfTLD and AfriNIC meetings in Abuja, Nigeria. With more than 200 people from 47 countries, participants went through technical workshops, debates on the way forwrad, signature of MOUs between some of the regional organisations and policy debates on about a half dozen proposals on address space management. Discussions took place on legacy IPv4 address space, IPv6 transition and the diminishing pool of unallocated address space. Further details are available at http://www.afrinic.net/meeting/afrinic-6/weekagenda.htm and http://www.afrinic.net/policy.htm.
  • ICANN staff members Leo Vegoda, Bart Boswinkel and Olof Nordling attended the RIPE 54 meeting in Tallinn, Estonia, from 7-11 May 2007. More than 300 attendees discussed a wide range of Internet operational and policy issues, including IPv4 depletion, IPv6 deployment, global policy on allocating AS Numbers to the RIRs, DNS and ENUM. The meeting details, including presentations, archived webcasts, agendas and minutes, are available at http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-54/

ICANN Featured Individual: Carole Cornell, Director, Project Office

Carole Cornell joined ICANN in November 2006 as the Director, Project Office. Her role is to create and maintain a uniform approach to project management; provide oversight for all projects, and serve as a change agent for continuous improvement through improved/enhanced methodologies. Carole brings over 25 years of diversified, multi-national and global experience in project management. Most recently Carole served as Vice President, Operations and in Business Development at WET Design. Prior to that, Carole was with Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) as Executive Director, Project Technical Services and Integrated Business Applications.


Upcoming Events

21 - 25 May, LACNIC X, Isla Margarita, Venezuela

15 - 25 May, IGF Consultations, Geneva, Switzerland

28 - 30 May, AfTLD ccTLD Workshop, Cairo, Egypt

3 - 6 June, APTLD Meeting, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

8 - 9 June, CENTR 33th General Assembly, Helsinki, Finland

25 - 29 June 2007 -- ICANN Meeting, San Juan, Puerto Rico


About ICANN

ICANN Bylaws

Our bylaws are very important to us. They capture our mission of security, stability and accessibility, and compel the organization to be open and transparent. Learn more at www.ICANN.org.

Strategic Plan, July 2007 - June 2010

Operating Plan (Draft) Fiscal Year 2007 - 2008

Adopted Budget Fiscal Year 2006 - 2007 [PDF, 172 KB]


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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."