Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) continue to roll out, making it easier for everyone to use the Internet. In its meeting August 5th, ICANN’s Board of Directors approved five more countries/territories to use their national scripts in the last portion of Internet address names. Country ccTLD Script IDN ccTLD Sri Lanka .LK Sinhalese Tamil ලංකා இலங்கை [...]

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has turned down Bulgaria’s proposal for a domain name in Cyrillic with a “бг” suffix. Bulgaria’s Ministry of Transport, Information Technologies and Communications said it has been informed about the decision late on Tuesday with a letter, which cites the similarity with Brazil’s domain name with [...]

Internationalized Domain Names and the usability of them is a key aspect of the ongoing introduction of IDN ccTLDs. ICANN is actively taking part in conferences and events, with a focus on applications and usability of new technology on the Internet. This is to spread information about IDNs and how they work in order to [...]

Today the first three production non-Latin top-level domains were placed in the DNS root zone. This means they are live! Here is one newly enabled domain with a functional website that works right now: وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر If your software does not have full IDN support, this might not work exactly as expected. You may see a [...]

This is a very brief blog post with quite the big content. Last week was a special week at ICANN, with several IDN milestones meet. Many were included in the 22 April 2010 ICANN Board meeting. The ICANN Board approved the first IDN ccTLD delegation requests for four countries. These countries are: Egypt, the Russian [...]

Since the launch of the Fast Track Process, ICANN has received many questions about how the DNS Stability Panel will determine a confusingly similar string; that is, a requested string that is confusing similar with an existing ccTLD, gTLD or applied-for TLDs. The overall rules seem clear: 1) If you apply for an IDN ccTLD [...]

ICANN is pleased to announce the successful completion of String Evaluation on proposed IDN ccTLDs. Announcements for the completion of each request are provided here: http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/announcements-en.htm. The requesters may now initiate delegation of the IDN ccTLDs by following ICANN’s standard processes for TLD delegation, through the IANA function. Also, included are two sets of synchronized [...]

ICANN is pleased to announce the public comment period for the proposed Implementation Plan for Synchronized IDN ccTLDs [PDF, 440K]. Synchronized IDN ccTLDs are described by situations in the Fast Track Process where: IDN ccTLDs are requested in more than one official language or script in a country/territory, the requests for corresponding multiple strings are [...]

China requested two Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) country code top-level domain (ccTLD) strings through ICANN’s IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process. China xn--fiqs8S , 中国 xn--fiqz9S , 中國 Hong Kong xn--j6w193g 香港 Palestinian Territory xn--ygbi2ammx فلسطين Qatar xn--wgbl6a قطر Sri Lanka xn--fzc2c9e2c ලංකා xn--xkc2al3hye2a இலங்கை Taiwan xn--kpry57d 台灣 xn--kprw13d 台湾 xn--nnx388a 臺灣 Thailand xn--o3cw4h ไทย Tunisia [...]

NAIROBI, Mar 13, 2010 (Xinhua via COMTEX) — The wrap-up meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board passed a resolution to China’s IDN ccTLD applications, the Chinese delegation to the meeting has told Xinhua. According to this resolution, ICANN president and CEO has been assigned to draft an Implementation Plan [...]