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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 5 June 2009

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Call for Expressions of Interest for 2010 Nominating Committee Chair

5 June 2009 | ICANN is immediately seeking expressions of interest for the 2010 Nominating Committee (NomCom) Chair.

Whois Accuracy Study Launches

5 June 2009 | ICANN in coordination with the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago ("NORC") has undertaken a study of domain name Whois contact data accuracy.

Public Comment: Proposed City Top-Level Domain (CTLD) Constituency

5 June 2009 | The ICANN Board has now received a fourth formal petition from the prospective City Top-Level Domain (CTLD) Constituency.

ICANN to Work with United States Government and VeriSign on Interim Solution to Core Internet Security Issue

3 June 2009 | ICANN will work with the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and VeriSign on the goal of an operationally Signed Root Zone as soon as feasible in 2009.

Public Comment: Travel Support Guidelines for Community Members

3 June 2009 | In order to ensure that the resources are prioritized and administered appropriately, the Travel Support Guidelines have been updated for FY10, as reflected in this Community Travel Support Guidelines for public comment paper.

Improving Institutional Confidence: The Way Forward

1 June 2009 | "Improving Institutional Confidence: The Way Forward," was published for community review and follows from the work of the President's Strategy Committee (PSC).

Tajikistan Becomes 50th Accountability Framework Signatory

1 June 2009 | ICANN and TJ TLD Registry, the manager for the Tajikistan country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) signed the 50th arrangement under the AF programme.

Applicant Guidebook: Public Comments Analysis and Revised Excerpts

31 May 2009 | The second version of the Applicant Guidebook for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) generated continued public interest, as expressed by over 200 comments received.

Update: Fast Track Implementation (3rd Revision)

31 May 2009 | One more paper is being included in the Fast Track Implementation package, Cost Analysis of IDN ccTLDs: Focus on Program Development and Processing Costs. This paper provides cost analyses of the IDN ccTLDs including the costs to process a request for a new IDN ccTLD as well as the development costs associated with IDN policy and the Fast Track process.


Upcoming Events

21 - 26 June 2009: 35th International Public ICANN Meeting - Sydney, Australia


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."