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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 6 November 2009

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

ICANN Fellowship Program Reached Successful Conclusion in Seoul

5 November 2009 | The participants in the eighth round of the Fellowship Program were well received at the 36th ICANN International Public Meeting held in Seoul, South Korea this past October.

Public Comments Requested on Draft Topic Paper for Policy on Introduction of Internationalised ccTLDs

4 November 2009 | The ccNSO's Internationalised Domain Name Country Code Policy Development Process Working Group (IDN ccPDP WG) for the selection and delegation of IDN ccTLDs is pleased to announce the publication of its draft Topic Paper for public discussion and comment.

ICANN Formalizes Relationship with ccTLD Manager for Singapore (.SG)

3 November 2009 | ICANN has announced that it has signed an exchange of letters with the country code top level domain (ccTLD) manager for .SG, the Singapore Network Information Centre (SGNIC) Pte Ltd on 28 October 2009.

.POST Sponsorship Agreement Posted for Public Comment

2 November 2009 | ICANN has posted the .POST Sponsorship Agreement for public comment. The Agreement represents a significant accomplishment for ICANN, the the Universal Postal Union (UPU), and the global Internet community, as it is the first gTLD Registry Agreement between ICANN and an Intergovernmental Organization (IGO).


Upcoming Events

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

20 - 25 June 2010: 38th International Public ICANN Meeting - Brussels, Belgium

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."