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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 6 February 2009

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Mexico City Meeting Schedule Published

6 February 2009 | The schedule for the upcoming meeting in Mexico City on 1-6 March is now published.

Proposed Global Policy for Remaining IPv4 Address Space - Final Call for Comments and Background Report

5 February 2009 | On 4 February 2009, the Chair of the Address Supporting Organization Address Council forwarded a Proposed Global Policy for Remaining IPv4 Address Space, for ratification by the ICANN Board. A final call for public comments is now open until 26 February 2009.

Applicant Guidebook Video Update

5 February 2009 | A video update on the Applicant Guidebook and the overall new gTLD process has been posted.

Community Comment Invited on GNSO Constituency Confirmation Documents

4 February 2009 | At the direction of the ICANN Board, the six existing constituencies of the GNSO have submitted documents that are intended to demonstrate their compliance with the principles of representativeness, openness, transparency and fairness set forth in the ICANN Bylaws. All members of the ICANN community are now invited to review those submissions and share comments and observations with the Board through 25 February 2009.

Rome Presentations Published

2 February 2009 | On 22-23 January 2009, ICANN hosted its European registry/registrar regional gathering in Rome, Italy. In the interest of transparency, the presentations are being made public.

Public Comment: More Detailed Expense Reporting

2 February 2009 | This month's 'dashboard' includes new reporting on ICANN's expenses.

Upcoming Events

23 - 24 February 2009: APTLD - Manila, The Philippines

1 - 6 March 2009: 34rd International Public ICANN Meeting - Mexico City, Mexico

19 March 2009: CENTR General Assembly - Barcelona, Spain

13 - 17 April 2009: AfTLD Meeting - Arusha, Tanzania

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

Adopted FY09 Operating Plan and Budget [PDF, 489 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."