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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 13 September 2013

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

NGPC Takes Action on GAC Durban Advice on New gTLDs

12 September 2013 | The ICANN Board New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) met on 10 September 2013 and, among other things, reached a decision regarding the GAC's further advice on new gTLDs.

Consultation on gTLD Delegation and Redelegation User Instructions and Source of Policy and Procedures

10 September 2013 | A consultation on User Instructions and Source of Policy for Delegation and Redelegation of a Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD).

Implementing a Two-Panel String Similarity Review Process in the IDN ccTLD Fast Track

9 September 2013 | On 27 June 2013, the ICANN Board approved the proposed amendments of the Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) Fast Track Process Final Implementation Plan (FIP).

Consultation on ccTLD Delegation and Redelegation User Instructions and Source of Policy and Procedures

9 September 2013 | A consultation on User Instructions and Source of Policy for Delegation and Redelegation of a Country-Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD).

Upcoming Events

17-21 November 2013: 48th International Public ICANN Meeting - Buenos Aires

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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."