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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 18 September 2009

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Release of Interisle and TNO reports on Root Scaling

18 September 2009 | The ICANN Board requested the Root Server System Advisory Committee (RSSAC), the Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC), and the ICANN staff, including the IANA team, to study the potential issues regarding the addition of IDNs, IPv6 addresses, DNSSEC and substantial numbers of new TLDs to the root zone. Interisle was selected to perform this study. In the course of their study, they recommended that a modeling effort be undertaken with the assistance of TNO.

Advance Notice: Board Committee Public Session

18 September 2009 | The ICANN Board Public Participation Committee will be holding a special public session on Monday 5 October at 15:00 UTC to discuss the Committee's work, focusing in particular on the Document Publication Operational Policy currently out for public comment.

"L" Root Server Scaling Report Released

17 September 2009 | As part ICANN's ongoing efforts to ensure the stability of the DNS, ICANN staff contracted with the DNS Operations, Analysis and Research Center as independent and well-respected experts to provide an analysis of the impact of adding IPv6, DNSSEC, and additional top-level domains to the ICANN-operated L root server.

ICANN Formalizes Relationship with ccTLD Manager for Ukraine (.UA)

16 September 2009 | ICANN has announced today that it has signed an exchange of letters with the country code top level domain (ccTLD) manager for .UA, Communications System Ltd.

Expressions of Interest Sought for Bulk Transfer of Registrations

16 September 2009 | As the result of the recent de-accreditation of registrar Red Register, Inc. (IANA ID 962), ICANN is seeking expressions of interest from ICANN-accredited registrars that might wish to assume sponsorship of the gTLD names that were previously managed by this registrar.

Red Register Loses ICANN Accreditation

15 September 2009 | ICANN has terminated its accreditation agreement with registrar Red Register.

Public Comment: Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy Part B Policy Development Process

14 September 2009 | The GNSO is asking for public comments on issues relating to procedures for modifying registration information and transferring domain names between registers to inform the deliberations of the Working Group created to address these issues.


Upcoming Events

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]


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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."