Skip to main content
Resources

ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 14 November 2014

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Public Comment Invited: New gTLD Auction Rules for Indirect Contention

14 November 2014 | ICANN is seeking community input on the detailed rules (i.e. methodology and processes) for Auctions involving Contention Sets containing Indirect Contention relationships.

ICANN to Hold Its First Turkey Domain Name System Forum in Istanbul on November 18th, 2014

13 November 2014 | Istanbul, Turkey – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced today that, for the first time, it will host a Turkey Domain Name System (DNS) forum in Istanbul on the 18th November 2014. This Turkey DNS Forum is the first edition of what will be an annual event.

U.S. Court Quashes Attempts to Attach ccTLDs: Federal Judge Agrees with ICANN

12 November 2014 | A U.S. federal court has agreed with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that the country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) are not property subject to attachment.

Update from Public Experts Group

12 November 2014 | The Public Experts Group (PEG) continues its deliberations on Advisors for the Enhancing ICANN Accountability Cross Community Working Group (CCWG). The PEG expects to deliver the names of up to seven Advisors by the end of November.

.MADRID - Introduction of Two Approved Launch Programs

11 November 2014 | The Comunidad de Madrid's applications for two Approved Launch Programs pursuant to Section 4.5.2 of the Trademark Clearinghouse Rights Protection Mechanism Requirements (the "TMCH Requirements") for its .MADRID TLD are being posted for comment to give the community an opportunity to review and provide feedback.

ICANN Draft Five-Year Operating Plan

11 November 2014 | ICANN is introducing the addition of Five-Year Operating Plan to its planning process, and is seeking public comment on the ICANN Draft Five-Year Operating Plan Version 1 (FY2016-FY2020). The public comment period begins today, Monday, 11 November 2014 for a total of 55 days to complete on Monday, 5 January 2015.

Upcoming Events

8-12 February 2015: 52nd International Public ICANN Meeting – Singapore

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, 2012 - 2015

Adopted FY15 Operating Plan and Budget

A note about our terms of service:

We have updated our electronic terms of service to provide greater transparency and align with laws applicable to us. Learn more.

This site uses cookies to deliver an efficient user experience and to help us see how the site is used. Learn more.OK

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."