In October 2006, ICANN
engaged Autonomica AB of Stockholm, Sweden, to develop, conduct, and report
on the results of laboratory testing of internationalized top-level domains
in a setting corresponding to the public root. On 7
March 2007 the
result of the laboratory tests were reported successfully. The laboratory technical
test was one of the prerequisites to eventual insert internationalized top
level labels in the root zone, which subsequently
were done and
the associated test facility
was launched.

Following the project plan, Autonomica then conducted a replication of the
laboratory test, live in the DNS. Quoting from their report:

"Autonomica AB has, under a contract with ICANN, investigated whether
the addition of top level domains containing encoded internationalized characters
(so called IDNs) to the public root zone for testing purposes has any impact
on the iterative mode resolvers used to look up the information. No
impact at all could be detected. All involved systems behaved exactly as expected."

Therefore, the Automomica test raised no issue regarding the ability of root-severs
and iterative mode resolvers to handle IDN TLD queries.

Details of the test result can be found here [PDF,
129K].

For any questions or request for additional details of the test design and result please contact Tina Dam at [email protected].

For further information around ICANN’s IDN Program please visit http://www.icann.org/topics/idn

http://icann.org/announcements/announcement-31jan08.htm