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Fellowship & NextGen Applications Now Open

04 Sep 2015

Getting to Know Contactual Compliance

Watch Contractual Compliance’s New Video

04 Sep 2015

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Learn more about The Three Layers of Internet Governance

04 Sep 2015

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Explore the New IDN Infographic

04 Sep 2015

Announcements

Fellowship and NextGen Application Rounds Open for ICANN55

ICANN launches the application rounds for both the NextGen and Fellowship Programs to participate in ICANN55 in Marrakech, Morocco in March 2016. This round remains open until 16 October 2015 and successful candidates will be announced on the...

04 Sep 2015  |  Civil Society, Developing World, DNS Marketplace, Technology

Release of Country and Territory Names within the .BROTHER, .GEA, .ACO, .SECURITY, .PROTECTION, .THEATRE and .RENT TLDs

Forum Announcement: Public Comment Period opens on Date: 1 September 2015 Categories/Tags: Top-Level Domains Second-Level Domains Contracted Party Agreements Security/Stability Purpose...

01 Sep 2015  |  gTLD, New gTLDs, Public Comment, Registries, DNS Marketplace, Technology

Meet The NextGen@ICANN54 Dublin Members

ICANN's Development and Public Responsibility Department (DPRD) is pleased to announce the newest group of admitted members to the popular NextGen@ICANN program. Started just one year ago, this program has quickly grown and become one of the most...

01 Sep 2015

Preliminary Issue Report on New gTLD Subsequent Procedures

Forum Announcement: Public Comment Period opens on Date: 31 August 2015 Categories/Tags: Policy Processes Purpose (Brief): This public comment proceeding is being opened to obtain community input on the...

31 Aug 2015  |  gTLD, New gTLDs, Civil Society, DNS Marketplace, Technology

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Getting to know Contractual Compliance | Korean

Are you a domain name holder interested in learning more about how ICANN’s Contractual Compliance can help you with domain name registration issues? Click the title and take a moment to view a new...

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Getting to Know Contractual Compliance | Japanese

Are you a domain name holder interested in learning more about how ICANN’s Contractual Compliance can help you with domain name registration issues? Click the title and take a moment to view a new...

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Transition Program Facilitation Meeting - 9 July 2015

Coordination call for the IANA Stewardship Transition and Enhancing ICANN Accountability Processes.

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CCWG-Accountability Co-Chair Mathieu Weill at ICANN53

Mathieu Weill, Co-Chair of the CCWG-Accountability reports on the chairs' briefings to various stakeholder groups today at ICANN53 in Buenos Aires.

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Blog Posts

Asia Pacific Community speaks up on the IANA Stewardship Transition

  |   By Low Jia-Rong

Working Together Through The Last Mile

  |   By Steve Crocker

Hero1 vol 2 propelling dns industry africa 750x563 02sep15 en

Vol-2 Propelling the DNS industry in Africa: A reflection

  |   By Pierre Dandjinou

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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."