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OCTO Publications

OCTO Publications are authored by and represent the position of the ICANN Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO).

If you're looking for Commissioned Documents, click here.

Number Name Date
OCTO-038 Methodology to Classify Unsolicited Email Threats January 2024
OCTO-037 RBL Evaluation Methodology December 2023
OCTO-036 Round-Trip Times Between Resolvers and IMRS June 2023
OCTO-035 Observing DNSSEC Key Lifecycles July 2022
OCTO-034 Challenges with Alternative Name Systems April 2022
OCTO-033 DNSSEC Algorithm Use in 2022 April 2022
OCTO-032 DNS Resolvers Used in the EU March 2022
OCTO-031 Quantum Computing and the DNS
Also available in: Arabic | Chinese | French | Russian | Spanish 		February 2022
OCTO-030 IETF Year in Review for 2021 January 2022
OCTO-029 DNSSEC Deployment Guidebook for ccTLDs
Also available in: Arabic | Chinese | French | Russian | Spanish 		November 2021
OCTO-028 Registrations Related to COVID-19: 18 Months of Data November 2021
OCTO-027 Hyperlocal Root Zone Technical Analysis August 2021
OCTO-026 Non-IP Networking (NIN) July 2021
OCTO-025 Identifier Technologies Heath Indicators (ITHI) Retrospective and Proposal July 2021
OCTO-024 A Primer in Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) Performance Updated December 2022
OCTO-023 Collecting "Typical" Domain Names for Web Servers February 2021
OCTO-022 IETF Year in Review for 2020 January 2021
OCTO-021 DNS Root Service Operations Updated March 2021
OCTO-020 Patterns in Queries Sent to Root Servers December 2020
OCTO-019 The DNS Core Census November 2020
OCTO-018 IMRS Instance Placement Study November 2020
OCTO-017 New IP
Also available in: Arabic | Chinese | French | Russian | Spanish 		October 2020
OCTO-016 ICANN's Root Name Service Strategy and Implementation Updated June 2022
OCTO-015 Recommendations for Early Warning for Root Zone Scaling Updated February 2021
OCTO-014 Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) Technical Analysis
Also available in: Arabic | Chinese | French | Russian | Spanish 		September 2020
OCTO-013 DNS Purchasing Guide for Government Procurement Officers
Also available in: Arabic | Chinese | French | Russian | Spanish 		July 2020
OCTO-012 Review of the 2018 DNSSEC KSK Rollover Published July 2020
OCTO-011 The Public Suffix List: A Guide for TLD Administrators May 2020
OCTO-010 Brief Overview of the Root Server System
Also available in: Arabic | Chinese | French | Russian | Spanish
 May 2020
OCTO-009 Technical Analysis of the EDPB Letter to BEREC April 2020
OCTO-008 Analysis of the Effects of COVID-19-Related Lockdowns on IMRS Traffic
Also available in: Arabic | Chinese | French | Russian | Spanish 		April 2020
OCTO-007 Study of the Prevalence of DNS Queries for CORP, HOME, and MAIL April 2020
OCTO-006 DNSSEC: Securing the DNS
Also available in: Arabic | Chinese | French | Russian | Spanish 		Updated July 2020
OCTO-005 IETF Year in Review for 2019 January 2020
OCTO-004 5G Technology
Also available in: Arabic | Chinese | French | Russian | Spanish
 January 2020
OCTO-003 Local and Internet Policy Implications of Encrypted DNS Updated April 2020
OCTO-002 Digital Object Architecture and the Handle System October 2019
OCTO-001 Security in the Spotlight: A Recap of IDS 2019 June 2019

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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."