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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 4 December 2009

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Global Policy Proposal for Autonomous System Numbers - Background Report

4 December 2009 | At its meeting on 27 August 2009, the Board resolved to request tracking of the development of a Global Policy Proposal for "IANA Policy for Allocation of ASN Blocks to Regional Internet Registries", under discussion in the addressing community. The status overview presented is compiled in response to this request and will be further updated as developments proceed, for information to ICANN entities and the wider community. This is the second issue of the tracking of this policy.

Global Policy Proposal for the Allocation of IPv4 Blocks to Regional Internet Registries - Background Report

4 December 2009 | At its meeting on 23 April 2009, the Board resolved to request tracking of the development of a Global Policy Proposal for the Allocation of IPv4 Blocks to Regional Internet Registries, under discussion in the addressing community. The status overview presented is compiled in response to this request and will be further updated as developments proceed, for information to ICANN entities and the wider community. This is the fourth issue of the tracking of this policy.

Nominating Committee Convenes in Seoul

4 December 2009 | The 2010 ICANN Nominating Committee has been convened and met for the first time on 30-31 October 2009, immediately following the 36th International ICANN Public Meeting in Seoul, South Korea.

IDNs: Final Report on Three-Character Requirement and Variant Management Now Available for Public Comment

3 December 2009 | The IDN-Implementation Working Team has published the Final Report on three-character requirement and variant management for public comment. The public comment period ends on 8 January 2010.

Temporary Expert Advisory Groups Formed on New gTLD Malicious Conduct Initiatives

3 December 2009 | As part of ICANN's effort to advance work on the implementation plan and Applicant Guidebook for new gTLDs and in response to the Board's direction to resolve the potential for malicious conduct over-arching issue, ICANN Staff is soliciting knowledgeable volunteers to serve on two temporary, expert advisory groups to study and develop proposed solutions for enhancing access to zone file information; and establishing a high security TLD verification program.

Public Comment Requested on Draft 2010-2013 Strategic Plan

1 December 2009 | As the next element of consultation on the Strategic Plan, ICANN invites comments from the community on a first draft of the plan based on material presented to the community at the Seoul meeting.

Three Registrars Lose ICANN Accreditation

30 November 2009 | On Wednesday, 25 November 2009, ICANN terminated its accreditation agreement with three registrars — Hosting365 Inc., OOO "Russian Registrar" and R.B. Data Net LTD for failure to comply with the requirements of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement.

Expressions of Interest Sought for Bulk Transfer of Registrations

30 November 2009 | As the result of the Notices of Termination issued on November 25, 2009 to registrars OOO Russia (IANA ID 1238) and Hosting365 Inc. (IANA ID 956), 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 these registrars.


Upcoming Events

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

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

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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."