Attendees at the Cop27 climate meeting have found that the conference internet connection blocks access to the global rights organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) as well as other key news websites needed for information during the talks.
[news release] ICANN is pleased to announce the commencement of its Domain Name System (DNS) Roadshow, a series of workshops aimed to advance the DNS-Entrepreneurship Center’s (DNS–EC) objectives, now in its second year of operations.
The DNS–EC, a partnership between ICANN and Egypt’s National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA), aims to contribute to the evolution of the domain name sector in Africa and the Middle East through a series of workshops. Titled “SWOT Workshop for National DNS Markets,” these seminars aim to develop expertise in the DNS business related areas, and provide resources to support the implementation of initiatives and projects in this field.
The Domain Name System (DNS) helps users find their way around the Internet. The DNS matches domain names, which we use to access the Internet, with numeric addresses (IP addresses), which digital devices use to communicate with each other. It’s very much like how a phone book matches names to phone numbers.
Four workshops are planned from now until the end of the year, with the first two scheduled to start this month. One in Tunis, Tunisia, with the collaboration of our partners the Tunisie Internet (ATI), is taking place between 8-9 October 2015, followed by a second workshop, which will be hosted by the Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA), in Doha, Qatar between 11-12 October 2015. The objective of the workshops is to construct a Strategic Plan for ccTLD Registry based on a SWOT (Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats) analysis of the country’s DNS market. Potential attendees include ccTLD managers, IDN ccTLD manager, and the Registrars/Resellers in the respective countries. The two workshops will be conducted in partnership with EnCirca Domain Name Registrar and Startingdot Registry.
“We are very excited about this road show. It comes at just the right time, as the DNS–EC enters its second year and becomes more proactive in addressing the needs of the DNS community by expanding its outreach and building the necessary infrastructure across Africa and the Middle East.”
The DNS Entrepreneurship Center (DNS–EC) announced in June of last year, during ICANN50 in London, is an important milestone, materializing the plans set out by the Middle East Strategy for ICANN, to serve communities in Africa and the Middle East. The project is a partnership with Egypt’s NTRA, and is being implemented in three phases â Foundation (1 July 2014-30 June 2015), Launch (1 July 2015-30 June 2017) and Operation (On-going).
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To learn more about the Domain Name System (DNS), please go to https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/faqs-2014-01-21-en
ICANN‘s mission is to ensure a stable, secure and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer – a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn’t have one global Internet. ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers. ICANN doesn’t control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn’t deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet’s naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet. For more information please visit: www.icann.org.
This ICANN news release was sourced from:
https://www.icann.org/resources/press-material/release-2015-10-06-en
The recent events in Egypt that led to Egyptian websites becoming unavailable to the world at large have seen the ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom to suggest “that a policy to encourage the establishment of secondary servers to promote continuity of service as well as DNS stability could be useful and in the global public interest.”Writing on the ICANN Blog, Beckstrom says that “ICANN will ask the ccNSO to consider proposing a policy to address this type of situation.”This proposal follows most internet connectivity to Egypt being shut down on 27 January, “apparently on the instruction of the national government. This has led to the inaccessibility of the main domain name system (DNS) server of the Egyptian ccTLD (.eg).””The primary servers they operate have been inaccessible to those outside of Egypt since January 27. Secondary DNS servers for .eg, located in Austria and the United States, have continued to function with data provided before the shutdown.”The .مصر DNS servers are exclusively in Egypt and there do not appear to be any secondary DNS servers outside the country. This means that service to sites served by this top-level domain are unreachable by the rest of the world.”For more information and to read the post by Rod Beckstrom in full, see:
blog.icann.org/2011/01/status-report-on-the-dns-in-egypt/
Complete domain names can be registered in non-Latin characters for the first time as of May 5 with three Arab nations the first to have internationalised domain names (IDNs) placed in the DNS root zone, ICANN announced.The three new top level domains (TLDs) are:
“All three are Arabic script domains, and will enable domain names written fully right-to-left,” said Kim Davies, Root Zone Services Manager of ICANN.One of the first websites operational as a result of the introduction of IDNs was for the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology whose domain name is وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر“If your software does not have full IDN support, this might not work exactly as expected,” Davies wrote on the ICANN blog. “You may see a mangled string of letters and numbers, and perhaps some percent signs or a couple of “xn--“s mixed into the address bar. Or it may not work at all.”These are the first IDN ccTLDs to appear online as a result of the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process which was approved by the ICANN Board at its annual meeting in Seoul, South Korea on 30 October 2009.To date ICANN has received a total of 21 requests for IDN ccTLD(s) representing 11 languages including Chinese, Russian, Tamil and Thai. A total of 13 requests have successfully passed through the “String Evaluation” (the second stage of the process) and are hence ready for the requesting country or territory to initiate the request for TLD Delegation (the final stage of the application process). As of today, the first three of these have been delegated into the DNS root zone, which means they are available for use.More than 20 countries have applied for an IDN ccTLD. For a list of those IDN ccTLDs to have passed the fast track string evaluation, see icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/string-evaluation-completion-en.htm.Arabic has now become the first non-Latin script to be used as an IDN ccTLD. Arabic is among the most highly used languages on the Internet today. The Middle-East has an average Internet penetration of just over 20%, and shows a big potential for growth. Users in the region will now have easier access to the Internet, with the ability to use their primary language for the entire domain name.
The ICANN Board of Directors has approved the last application step for four countries to use their national language scripts in the last portion of Internet address names.
Egypt, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates received approval to use their non-Latin language scripts in the top-level domain (TLD) part of an Internet address name. The top-level domain follows the dot, such as dot-com or dot-org.
“This decision means that, for the first time, we will see non-Latin characters, specifically Arabic and Cyrillic, in an entire Internet address name,” said Rod Beckstrom, President and Chief Executive Officer of ICANN. “This will open the door to the Internet to Arabic and Russian speakers who may have never been online.”
The Board’s action is part of ICANN’s move to internationalize the Internet by facilitating the use of non-Latin characters in the top-level domain. Until recently, technical constraints meant that all domain names had to end in letters from the Latin alphabet (A through Z). After years of work by ICANN, a global system for the use of other scripts has been designed and tested. It was approved in October.
“Today is a milestone in the development of the Internet,” said Tina Dam, Senior Director of the IDN program. “The Board’s approval means these addresses should be available to users in the four countries very soon.”
The internationalized domain name program is being rolled out in stages. IDNs will initially be allowed on a limited basis for individual country domain names (known as country code top-level domains or ccTLDs). These four countries can now use non-Latin scripts for dot-eg (Egypt), dot-ru (Russia), dot-sa (Saudi Arabia) or dot-ae (U.A.E.). Eventually, IDNs will be allowed in the TLD portion of all Internet address names.
This is the first time any country has completed the entire application process under ICANN’s Fast Track IDN ccTLD program.
The Board also passed a measure that is expected to expedite the appearance of Chinese characters in top-level domains as part of the IDN ccTLD Fast Track. To read more about that, go here: icann.org/en/minutes/resolutions-22apr10-en.htm#synchronized.
To read today’s Board resolution on IDN top-level domains for Egypt, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, go here: icann.org/en/minutes/resolutions-22apr10-en.htm#idn-cctlds.
To read more about the IDN ccTLD Fast Track, go here: icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track.
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About ICANN:
To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer – a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn’t have one global Internet. ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers. ICANN doesn’t control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn’t deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet’s naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet. For more information please visit: icann.org.
Egypt, host of the United Nations sponsored Internet Governance Forum being held this week, Russia and China were among the first countries to submit applications to ICANN for internationalised domain names (IDNs) in non-Latin characters.In total six countries applied for IDNs in three languages. Saudi Arabia was another country known to have applied, also applying for an IDN in Arabic, along with Ukraine.ICANN, the organisation charged with overseeing the Internet’s naming and numbering systems, has invited applications for IDNs, receiving the first applications on Monday this week, as part of its IDN country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) Fast Track Process.IDNs are domain names that include characters other than the currently available set of the English alphabet (the 26 letters “a-z”, numbers 0 to 9, and hyphens). ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush noted, “The IDN program will encompass close to one hundred thousand characters, opening up the Internet to billions of potential users around the globe.”Egypt’s application is for .MISR, which is the equivalent in ASCII characters as the Arabic language term for “Egypt”. Egypt’s Communications Minister Tarek Kamel said the process of implementing IDNs would require “strong investment in the coming phase.””There will also be issues to deal with: linguistic, technical, legal, related to intellectual property and many other big challenges,” Kamel told reporters at the IGF.China’s application is for .中国 domain name suffix while Russia has applied for .РФ and Ukraine applied for .УКР.It is anticipated the first ccTLD IDNs will come online in 2010.
Egypt and China have both said they will be applying for country code internationalised top level domain names as part of ICANN’s fast track process. ICANN will begin accepting requests for the new TLDs today (16 November) at 00:00UTC.
Egypt is planning to launch “the world’s first Arabic language internet domain” with Egypt’s communications minister, Tarek Kamel, saying the new domain name would be “.masr” written in the Arabic alphabet. It translates as “.Egypt”, reports the BBC.
“The effort is part of a broader push to expand both access and content in developing nations, where the internet remains out of reach for wide swaths of the population,” reports the AP.
The report continues saying that “registering of the domain ‘will offer new avenues for innovation, investment and growth, and hence we can truly and gladly say … the internet now speaks Arabic,’ Kamel said at the start of the internet Governance Forum – a U.N.-sponsored gathering that drew Net legends like Yahoo’s Jerry Yang and Tim Berners-Lee, known as one of the internet’s founding fathers.”
China’s application is reported by the China Daily who says that the China Network Information Centre (CNNIC) will also apply for a Chinese TLD today (Monday). The report says CNNIC will apply for the top-level Chinese domain name “Zhongguo”(written in pinyin).
“China has a huge number of netizens – 388 million as of the end of June this year. Their surfing on the Net will be facilitated under the Chinese domains but they can continue to use English domains as well,” said Qilin, assistant director of CNNIC in China Daily.
ICANN President Rod Beckstrom described the importance of this change to the global Internet community, by saying “over half the Internet users around the world don’t use a Latin-based script as their native language. IDNs are about making the Internet more global and accessible for everyone.”
Once the requests are evaluated and approved, new ccTLD IDNs are expected to come online in many countries during 2010.
“This is the biggest technical change to the Internet’s addressing system – the Domain Name System – in many years,” said Tina Dam, ICANN’s Senior Director of Internationalized Domain Names. “Right now, it’s not possible to get a domain name entirely in for example Chinese characters or Arabic characters. This is about to change.”
