Tag Archives: IDN

ICANN and Governance

ICANN: IDN Variant TLD Program – Revised Program Plan

ICANN logoPurpose (Brief): The purpose of this project is to resolve many of the issues necessary to delegate variant TLDs. The first IDN Variant Issues Project explored the issues associated with the potential inclusion of IDN variant TLDs in the DNS root zone, at the request of the ICANN Board and the community.

The first two phases of the project have been completed with the publication of the final Integrated Issues Report on 20 February 2012 and the project is now entering its next phase. ICANN created a program plan for next steps, posted it for public comment, and presented it in a session at the ICANN meeting in Costa Rica in March 2012. Based on the comments received to date, the project plan has been updated, and the team is seeking input on the revised plan during this public comment period.

Public Comment Box Link: www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/idn-variant-tld-revised-program-plan-04may12-en.htm

This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-2-04may12-en.htm

Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registrars, Domain Name Registry

Russian .РФ Rockets Past 800,000

RU Coordination Center logoThe .РФ internationalised top level domain, the Russian Cyrillic IDN, rocketed past 800,000 active registrations on 4 April 2011, less than five months after it became available for general registration.

At the time registration became open to all, there were 18,391 domains registered, and then in its first month, starting 11 November 2010, there were another 596,294 domain names registered. Since then monthly registration figures have dropped dramatically with 85,742 domains registered in month two, then 35,872, 31,824 and 28,686 registrations in subsequent months.

The .РФ IDN appears to have been easily the most successful IDN launch since ICANN began approving the IDN ccTLDs. It has also become the 15th largest European TLD, recently passing the Czech ccTLD .CZ.

What makes .РФ even more impressive is that it is only available for Russian individuals and businesses for the first 12 months.

It has also been much more successful than the widely publicised .CO that hit 500,000 active registrations in September 2010, the last time the registry made statistics publicly available.

The .РФ registry also announced the share of already delegated domains, the domains in operation, hit almost 57 per cent, or 453, 395, domains. Thus, each day the number of Russian companies, which use IDN TLD .РФ for their websites, has been growing.

Europe Registry logoTo register your .РФ domain name, check out Europe Registry here.

Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registrars, Domain Name Registry, ICANN and Governance

Domain Names Now Available in Non-Latin Characters

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:

  • Egypt: مصر (Egypt)
  • Saudi Arabia: السعودية (AlSaudiah)
  • United Arab Emirates: امارات (Emarat).

“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.

Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registrars, Domain Name Registry, ICANN and Governance

ICANN Says More IDNs Are Go

ICANN this week gave preliminary approval to four countries and two territories in five language scripts for additional internationalised domain names (IDNs) as part of its IDN Fast Track Process.The announcement sees Hong Kong receiving preliminary approval for ‘Hong Kong’ in Chinese. Others to gain preliminary approval were the Palestinian Territories for ‘Palestine’ in Arabic, Qatar for ‘Qatar’ in Arabic, Sri Lanka for ‘Lanka’ in Sinhalese and Tamil, Thailand for ‘Thai’ in Thai and Tunisia for ‘Tunis’ in Arabic.In January ICANN gave preliminary approval to four other IDNs. Those successful were Egypt for ‘Egypt’ in Arabic, the Russian Federation for ‘RF’ in Cyrillic, Saudi Arabia for ‘AlSaudiah’ in Arabic and United Arab Emirates for ‘Emirates’ in Arabic.In addition, two proposals were sent for a further review this week. These were to China for ‘China’ in simplified and traditional Chinese and to Taiwan for ‘Taiwan’ in simplified and traditional Chinese.”The delay is not over political disputes says” the AP, “but rather because the Chinese language can be written in two ways – using simplified and traditional scripts.”So while only preliminary approval has been given, it is to be expected registrations for these domains will commence later in 2010. Most likely there will be sunrise and landrush periods, although each registry will no doubt have their own rules.

Domain Name Aftermarket, Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registry

IDN's FOR SALE

At its recent meeting in Paris, ICANN – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names, the organization that controls the assignment of domain names – made a number of announcements. The one that received the most press was the revelation that there would be new generic top level domains (gTLDs) available in 2009. A gTLD is the letters that come after the dot in a URL string – such as .com, .biz or .org. Any and all new gTLDs will be considered starting next year.
Continue reading IDN's FOR SALE →

Domain Name Aftermarket, Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registry

IDN’s FOR SALE

At its recent meeting in Paris, ICANN – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names, the organization that controls the assignment of domain names – made a number of announcements. The one that received the most press was the revelation that there would be new generic top level domains (gTLDs) available in 2009. A gTLD is the letters that come after the dot in a URL string – such as .com, .biz or .org. Any and all new gTLDs will be considered starting next year.

This news overshadowed the other announcement that was made at the meeting. Specifically, that international domain names (IDNs) will soon be able to include non-Roman characters.

This was by far the more important announcement.

Currently, all domain names use exclusively Roman characters. This means that although countries may have their own Country Code (ccTLD), such as .cn (China), .in (India) or .ru (Russia), the domain names are rendered in Roman characters – not in the language that is native to that country.

Original article : http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/07/08/chinese-arabic-and-hindi-domain-names-go-sale-finally

Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registrars, Domain Name Registry, ICANN and Governance

IDN meeting

UNESCO encourages Governments to participate in the next meeting of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), to be held in Paris from 22 to 26 June 2008, in Le Meridien Montparnasse (19, rue du Commandant Mouchotte, 75014 Paris).

The GAC plays a key role in guiding public policy issues discussed within ICANN, particularly with regard to the development of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). IDNs are the Internet domain names that could contain letters with diacritics, such as accent marks, or characters from non-Latin scripts.

Currently the Internet domain names, for example “unesco.org” or “louvre.fr”, can contain only Latin scripts. UNESCO is committed to actively participating in the development of IDNs as part of its broader commitment to promote universal access to information, and cultural and linguistic diversity in cyberspace.

Membership of the GAC is open to all representatives of Governments, public authorities as well as intergovernmental organizations.

Article : http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/19269