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ASO1 Progress and Milestones

The graphic below illustrates phases and status of each review - a Checkmark indicates that all activities within a given phase have been completed. The chart that follows the graphic provides further details of key activities and milestones within each phase. The table also contains links to relevant documents.

ASO1 Phase

ASO1

Phase Activity Description Start Date Documents
Plan Review RFP for independent consultant Request for Proposals for consulting services 12 Dec 2010
Conduct Review Final Report of External Consultant Review of the ICANN Address Supporting Organization (ASO) 1 Dec 2011
Public Comment on External Consultant's Final Report Public comment announcement on ITEMS International Final Report 16 Mar 2012
Report of Public Comments on External Consultant's Final Report Summary of public comments on ITEMS International Final Report 3 May 2012
Call for Survey Participation Call for Survey Participation: Review of ICANN Address Supporting Organization 20 Sep 2011
Plan Implementation Board receipt and action Board action and resolution 3 May 2012
Implement Improvements Details of implementation and periodic updates Information available on the ICANN website 17 Nov 2014
Status of Implementation Status of implementation of independent review recommendations 1 Jun 2014
Review Finalization Letter announcing the finalization of the ASO Review 27 Nov 2013

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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."