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Watch Fadi Chehadé's Tribute Video

07 Mar 2016

Fadi Chehadé Screenshot

ICANN CEO & President Fadi Chehadé’s ICANN55 Welcome Message

07 Mar 2016

Final Report on the Domain Name System for the MEAC now Published

Final Report on “Middle East DNS Study” Released

07 Mar 2016

CCWG-Accountability Delivers Final Report to Its Chartering Organizations

CCWG-Accountability Delivers Final Report

07 Mar 2016

Announcements

ICANN Temporarily Stopped from Delegating .AFRICA Pending Federal Court Hearing on 4 April 2016

The Court in the DotConnectAfrica Trust (DCA) v. ICANN matter granted DCA's request for an emergency order (aka Temporary Restraining Order or TRO). The order issued by a United States Federal District Court located in Los Angeles directed ICANN...

05 Mar 2016  |  DNS Marketplace, Technology

Draft ICANN FY17 Operating Plan & Budget and Five-Year Operating Plan Update

Open Date: 5 March 2016 Close Date: 30 April 2016 Originating Organization: ICANN Categories/Tags: Operations/Finance Brief Overview: Focusing on ICANN's commitment to the...

05 Mar 2016  |  Financials, DNS Marketplace

Launch of Registration Authentication Platform for .MOI TLD

Open Date: 2 March 2016 Close Date: 14 April 2016 Originating Organization: Global Domains Division Categories/Tags: Top-Level Domains Second-Level Domains Contracted Party...

02 Mar 2016  |  gTLD, New gTLDs, DNS Marketplace, Technology

First Version of Label Generation Rules for the Root Zone Released

ICANN is pleased to announce that the first version of Label Generation Rules for the Root Zone (LGR-1) has been released. LGR-1 is designed to be the first installment of a conservative set of rules to determine the validity and variants of...

02 Mar 2016  |  ccTLD, gTLD, IDN, New gTLDs, DNS Marketplace, Technology

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Multimedia

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Göran Marby - Opening Ceremony ICANN55

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Fadi Chehadé - Opening Ceremony ICANN55

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ICANN's Theresa Swinehart Provides An Update On The IANA Stewardship Transition

Check out the IANA Stewardship Session at ICANN55 here http://bit.ly/1OLhAD8

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Interview With Thomas Rickert Co - Chair CCWG Enhancing ICANN Accountability

ICANN's Brad White sits down with Thomas Rickert, one of the co-Chairs of the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) to discuss their recent work and...

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Blog Posts

Hero1 blog canada internet needs you 07mar16 en

Dear Canada, The Internet NEEDS You

  |   By Christopher Mondini, VP, Stakeholder Engagement, Global Business and North America Region

Expectations of Service Level Expectations

  |   By David Conrad

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Welcome to ICANN55 in Africa!

  |   By Pierre Dandjinou, VP of Stakeholder Engagement for Africa

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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."