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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 5 September 2014

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Public Comment Invited: Enhancing ICANN Accountability Process

5 September 2014 | Due to both the critical crossroad ICANN is at now and the considerable work that needs to be done to achieve the anticipated IANA Functions Stewardship Transition, ICANN has launched a 21-day Public Comment period starting 6 September 2014, to consider the Enhancing ICANN Accountability and Governance Process posted on 14 August, in conjunction with the stewardship transition.

Revised: Request for Proposals (RFP) for IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal Issued by the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group

5 September 2014 | This announcement is to correct the omission from the 3 September communication of the draft nature of the Request for Proposals (RFP) for the IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal Issued by the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group.

Request for Proposals (RFP) for IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal Issued by the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group

3 September 2014 | The IANA Stewardship Coordination Group (ICG) today issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) seeking complete formal responses from the "operational communities" of IANA (i.e. those with direct operational or service relationships with the IANA functions operator, in connection with names, numbers, or protocol parameters). The target deadline for all complete formal responses to this RFP is 31 December 2014.

Extended: GNSO Review 360 Assessment - Participate and Make Your Voice Heard!

3 September 2014 | The GNSO Review 360 Assessment has been extended until 23-September-2014 23:59 UTC to give everyone an opportunity to provide feedback.

Markus Kummer Appointed to ICANN Board of Directors

3 September 2014 | The Non-Contracted Parties House (NCPH) of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) has appointed Markus Kummer, Senior Vice President of the Internet Society (ISOC), to the ICANN Board of Directors. Kummer will fill the seat currently held by Bill Graham.

IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group Calls for Expression of Interest (EoI) to Fulfill Secretariat Function

2 September 2014 | The IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) will issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) to select a suitable contractor through ICANN process to perform its secretariat function.

Upcoming Events

12-16 October 2014: 51st International Public ICANN Meeting – Los Angeles

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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."