Skip to main content
Resources

ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 12 November 2010

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

The Proposed Final New gTLD Applicant Guidebook is Available for Public Comment

12 November 2010 | ICANN is pleased to publish the Proposed Final New gTLD Applicant Guidebook that describes the process of applying for new generic top-level domains. The Guidebook was released along with explanatory memoranda and detailed analysis of comments received on version 4 of the Applicant Guidebook.

Interim Report of Geographic Regions Review Working Group Published For Public Comment

12 November 2010 | The Interim Report of the community-wide working group reviewing ICANN's Geographic Regions is now available for public comment. All members of the ICANN community are invited to review that document and share comments and observations with the community through 30 January 2011.

Public Comment: Developing Economies and the New gTLD Program

11 November 2010 | The Milestone Report and accompanying Addenda published for public comment today deals with a very important issue: how can ICANN assist applicants from developing economies to increase their participation in the new generic Top-Level Domain (New gTLD) Program?

Public Comment: Proposed Bylaws Amendment to Create a Non-Voting Chair-Elect to the Nominating Committee

10 November 2010 | On 28 October 2010, the Board approved in principle the recommendation of the Board's NomCom Review Finalization Working Group that the Board identify a non-voting Chair-Elect to the Nominating Committee, to serve for a year in the Nominating Committee prior to be appointed as Chair. The subject of this public comment forum is limited to the proposed Bylaws revisions necessary to elect the Chair one year in advance and the ensuing change of the Committee composition.

ICANN Board Votes to Enhance New gTLDs Competition

9 November 2010 | ICANN's Board of Directors voted to allow new gTLD registries to own registrars, opting not to create new rules prohibiting registrars from applying for or operating new gTLD registries.

Public Comment: Proposed Bylaws Amendments on Board Member Term Transitions

8 November 2010 | The Board Review Working Group (BRWG), in its final report, recommended that the current timing of appointments to the Board be altered so that all incoming Board members are sat at an ICANN Public Meeting. The BRWG recommendation would facilitate the seating of Board members selected by the ICANN Supporting Organizations and the At-Large Community occur at a mid-year Public Meeting to facilitate Board member transition.


Upcoming Events

5 - 10 December 2010: 39th International ICANN Meeting - Cartagena, Colombia

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, 2010 - 2013

Adopted FY11 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."