Internationalized Domain Names – Successful Testing
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced that it has successfully completed laboratory testing of internationalized domain names (IDNs).
Currently, domain names use numbers and letters (and the hyphen) from the Latin alphabet. The languages in many countries in Europe, the Middle East and Asia use non-Latin characters, such as Chinese and Arabic, and there has been growing demand for IDNs which utilize such characters.
The test replicated the root server environment and didn’t include the “end-user perspective” or a live root test. More testing will likely need to be done. The testing dealt with technical issues but there are also policy issues that will need to be worked out. According to ICANN’s Roadmap for IDNs “The policy issues are currently being discussed in a variety of areas within ICANN’s structure that includes end users, technicians, registries and registrars, intellectual property experts, linguistics experts and Governments.”
This entry was posted by Karen Monteith on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Domain Name Disputes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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