Skip to main content
Resources

ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 16 January 2015

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Webinars Scheduled to Explain Public Comment Enhancements

16 January 2015 | In addressing recommendations from the recent efforts of the second Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT2), the ICANN staff has developed enhancements to the organization's public comment proceeding processes.

Public Comment Sought on Potential Change to Registrar Accreditation Insurance Requirement

15 January 2015 | As part of its Underserved Regions initiative, ICANN has been exploring potential changes to the insurance requirements for registrar accreditation. ICANN seeks your input to determine how best to address potential changes to or elimination of these requirements.

IDN TLDs - LGR‬ Procedure Implementation - Guidelines for Designing Script-Specific Label Generation Rules (LGR) - Now Open for Public Comment

15 January 2015 | ICANN is releasing for public comments a set of documents that present an overview of the tasks of a Generation Panel.

Annual IDN ‭ccTLD‬ Fast Track Process Review

15 January 2015 | ICANN is opening a public comment forum for the annual review of the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process.

Pre-ICANN 52 Policy Update Webinar

14 January 2015 | The ICANN Policy Development Support Team will provide a Policy Update Webinar on Thursday 29 January 2015 at 10:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC, summarizing policy activities across the ICANN policy development community and the ongoing Transition of Stewardship of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Functions and the ICANN Accountability efforts.

ICANN Quarterly Stakeholder Report - Register for the Q2 Call on 29 January 2015

13 January 2015 | ICANN has announced that the FY15 Q2 Stakeholder Report will take place on 29 January at 14:00 UTC.

ICG Concludes Selection of Secretariat Contractor

12 January 2015 | The IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) has concluded the process of selecting a suitable contractor to perform its secretariat function (see https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2-2014-09-09-en).

CWG-Stewardship Chairs' Statement - Weekend Sessions 10-11 January 2015

12 January 2015 | The Cross Community Working Group (CWG) on Naming Related Functions held an intensive work weekend on 10-11 January 2015.

Upcoming ICG Conference Calls

12 January 2015 | The IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) has scheduled its tenth, eleventh and twelfth conference calls.


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

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."