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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 17 August 2007

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Paris Chosen as Site of ICANN's 32nd Public Meeting

17 August 2007 | Paris, France will host the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' 32nd International Public Meeting from 22-27 June 2008.

ICANN in the News

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

ICANN Calls For Feedback On Domain Tasting (InformationWeek)

13 August 2007 | ICANN asked the Internet community for input about domain tasting, raising the possibility that domain speculation might someday be curtailed.

PacINET 2007 To Tackle Key ICT Issues (Scoop.co.nz)

13 August 2007 | Delegates at PacINET 2007 are expected to tackle a wide range of Information and Communications Technology development issues affecting the Pacific when they meet in Honiara, Solomon Islands, this week.

ICANN Featured Individual: Kieren McCarthy, General Manager of Public Participation

Kieren is responsible for increasing participation in ICANN by the global Internet community. He has a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from Nottingham University, UK, and worked as a journalist for publications including The Guardian, The Times, The Register and Techworld for 10 years prior to joining ICANN in January 2007.

Upcoming Events

29 August - 7 September 2007 - APNIC 24 - New Delhi, India

29 August - 7 September 2007 - SANOG 10 - New Delhi, India

23 - 28 September 2007 - AfriNIC 7 - Durban, South Africa

17-19 October 2007 - ARIN XX - Albuquerque, NM, USA

22-26 October 2007 - RIPE 55 - Amsterdam, Netherlands

29 October - 2 November 2007: 30th International Public ICANN Meeting - Los Angeles, CA USA

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 2007 - 2008 [PDF, 426 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."