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NTIA IANA Functions’ Stewardship Transition

Please visit the new pages for the NTIA IANA Function's Stewardship Transition.

These pages will no longer be updated.


Shortly after the NTIA announcement of 14 March 2014, ICANN launched a multistakeholder process and discussion to gather community views and input on the principles and mechanisms for the IANA functions stewardship transition process.

Following a month-long call for input on the community-driven draft proposal, on June 6, ICANN posted the Process to Develop the Proposal and Next Steps (see announcement). An overview of community input, the composition of the Coordination Group, a call for names, as well as other process-related topics can be found here.

Each community represented in the Coordination Group is invited to fill in a submission form by 2 July – 23:59 UTC to announce its representatives in the Coordination Group. The form should be completed to reflect the number of seats allocated to each community.

  1. NTIA Announcement

    https://www.ntia.doc.gov/press-release/2014/ntia-announces-intent-transition-key-internet-domain-name-functions

  2. ICANN Announcement (14 March 2014)

    https://www.icann.org/en/news/press/releases/release-14mar14-en

  3. Internet Technical Organizations News Release

    https://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-2-14mar14-en.htm

  4. ICANN Leadership Reacts

  5. Frequently Asked Questions about the Transition

    https://www.icann.org/en/about/agreements/iana/functions-transfer-faqs-14mar14-en.pdf

  6. Reactions from Around the World

    https://www.icann.org/en/about/agreements/iana/globalization-endorsements-1015-15apr14-en.pdf

  7. Laying the Groundwork for the IANA Transition (Blog)

    https://blog.icann.org/2014/03/laying-the-groundwork-for-the-iana-transition/

  8. Public Consultation Process (14 March 2014)

    https://www.icann.org/en/about/agreements/iana/functions-transfer-process-14mar14-en

  9. Call for Public Input: Draft Proposal, Based on Initial Community Feedback, of the Principles and Mechanisms and the Process to Develop a Proposal to Transition NTIA's Stewardship of the Functions (8 April 2014)

    https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/draft-proposal-2014-04-08-en

  10. Transition of NTIA's Stewardship of the IANA Functions – Process to Develop the Proposal and Next Steps (6 June 2014)

    https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/process-next-steps-2014-06-06-en

    See announcement: https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2014-06-06-en

  11. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority Functions Fact Sheet

    https://www.icann.org/en/about/agreements/iana/transition/iana-factsheet-24mar14-en.pdf

  12. Getting Involved and Frequently Asked Questions – A Transition Infographic

    https://www.icann.org/sites/default/files/assets/iana-infographic-24mar14-en.pdf

  13. The IANA In 180 Seconds: A Video Explanation with Elise Gerich

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D__mAX-2sXo

  14. Myths and Facts about the NTIA Announcement

    https://tinyurl.com/mg63rxz

  15. The IANA Functions Explained – New ICANN Infographic

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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."