Skip to main content
Resources

ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 31 July 2009

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

New gTLD Program: Update on Independent Evaluators Search

31 July 2009 | ICANN is reopening the Expressions of Interest (EOI) period for independent evaluators to perform key roles in reviewing applications for new generic top-level domains, scheduled to launch in 2010.

Initial Report of Geographic Regions Review Working Group Published For Public Comment

31 July 2009 | The Initial Report of the community-wide working group reviewing ICANN's Geographic Regions is now available for public comment.

Expressions of Interest for NomCom Chair - Deadline for Submission Extended to 15 August 2009

27 July 2009 | The Board Governance Committee has moved its August committee meeting to the third week of August during which it will consider the expressions of interest received for Nominating Committee Chair. Accordingly, the committee has asked that the deadline for submitting expressions of interest to become the Nominating Committee Chair for 2010 be extended to 15 August 2009.

Public Comment: Proposed Bylaw Changes to Improve Accountability

27 July 2009 | Two proposed accountability measures have been posted by direction of the Board for 60 days of public comments, from 27 July 2009 through 25 September 2009. This is the latest step in the Improving Institutional Confidence process.

Upcoming Events

4 August 2009: New gTLD Outreach Event - Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

25 - 30 October 2009: 36th International Public ICANN Meeting - Seoul, South Korea

7 - 12 March 2010: 37th International Public ICANN Meeting - Nairobi, Kenya

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 FY10 Operating Plan and Budget [PDF, 1.47 MB]

Sign up for ICANN's Monthly Magazine

A note about our terms of service:

We have updated our electronic terms of service to provide greater transparency and align with laws applicable to us. Learn more.

This site uses cookies to deliver an efficient user experience and to help us see how the site is used. Learn more.OK

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."