Internationalized domain name

Type of internet domain name

"IDNA" redirects here. For the city, see Idna.

Example of Greek IDN with domain name in non-Latin alphabet: ουτοπία.δπθ.gr (Punycode is xn--kxae4bafwg.xn--pxaix.gr)

An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that contains at least one label displayed in software applications, in whole or in part, in non-Latin script or alphabet[a] or in the Latin alphabet-based characters with diacritics or ligatures.[b] These writing systems are encoded by computers in multibyte Unicode. Internationalized domain names are stored in the Domain Name System (DNS) as ASCII strings using Punycode transcription.

The DNS, which performs a lookup service to translate mostly user-friendly names into network addresses for locating Internet resources, is restricted in practice[c] to the use of ASCII characters, a practical limitation that initially set the standard for acceptable domain names. The internationalization of domain names is a technical solution to translate names written in language-native scripts into an ASCII text representation that is compatible with the DNS. Internationalized domain names can only be used with applications that are specifically designed for such use; they require no changes in the infrastructure of the Internet.

IDN was originally proposed in December 1987 by Martin Dürst[1][2] and implemented in 1990 by Tan Juay Kwang and Leong Kok Yong under the guidance of Tan Tin Wee.[citation needed] After much debate and many competing proposals, a system called Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)[3] was adopted as a standard, and has been implemented in several top-level domains.

In IDNA, the term internationalized domain name means specifically any domain name consisting only of labels to which the IDNA ToASCII algorithm (see below) can be successfully applied. In March 2008, the IETF formed a new IDN working group to update[4] the current IDNA protocol. In April 2008, UN-ESCWA together with the Public Interest Registry (PIR) and Afilias launched the Arabic Script in IDNs Working Group (ASIWG), which comprised experts in DNS, ccTLD operators, business, academia, as well as members of regional and international organizations. Operated by Afilias's Ram Mohan, ASIWG aims to develop a unified IDN table for the Arabic script, and is an example of community collaboration that helps local and regional experts engage in global policy development, as well as technical standardization.[5]

In October 2009, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved the creation of internationalized country code top-level domains (IDN ccTLDs) in the Internet that use the IDNA standard for native language scripts.[6][7] In May 2010, the first IDN ccTLDs were installed in the DNS root zone.[8]

## Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications

[edit]

Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) is a mechanism defined in 2003 for handling internationalized domain names containing non-ASCII characters.

Although the Domain Name System supports non-ASCII characters, applications such as e-mail and web browsers restrict the characters that can be used as domain names for purposes such as a hostname. Strictly speaking, it is the network protocols these applications use that have restrictions on the characters that can be used in domain names, not the applications that have these limitations or the DNS itself.[citation needed] To retain backward compatibility with the installed base, the IETF IDNA Working Group decided that internationalized domain names should be converted to a suitable ASCII-based form that could be handled by web browsers and other user applications.[citation needed] IDNA specifies how this conversion between names written in non-ASCII characters and their ASCII-based representation is performed. [citation needed]

An IDNA-enabled application can convert between the internationalized and ASCII representations of a domain name. It uses the ASCII form for DNS lookups but can present the internationalized form to users who presumably prefer to read and write domain names in non-ASCII scripts such as Arabic or Hiragana. Applications that do not support IDNA will not be able to handle domain names with non-ASCII characters, but will still be able to access such domains if given the (usually rather cryptic) ASCII equivalent.

ICANN issued guidelines for the use of IDNA in June 2003, and it was already possible to register .jp domains using this system in July 2003 and .info[9] domains in March 2004. Several other top-level domain registries started accepting registrations in 2004 and 2005. IDN Guidelines were first created[10] in June 2003, and have been updated[11] to respond to phishing concerns in November 2005. An ICANN working group focused on country-code domain names at the top level was formed in November 2007[12] and promoted jointly by the country code supporting organization and the Governmental Advisory Committee. Additionally, ICANN supports the community-led Universal Acceptance Steering Group, which seeks to promote the usability of IDNs and other new gTLDS in all applications, devices, and systems.[13]

Mozilla 1.4, Netscape 7.1, and Opera 7.11 were among the first applications to support IDNA. A browser plugin is available for Internet Explorer 6 to provide IDN support. Internet Explorer 7.0[14] and Windows Vista's URL APIs provide native support for IDN.[15]

### ToASCII and ToUnicode

[edit]

The conversions between ASCII and non-ASCII forms of a domain name are accomplished by a pair of algorithms called ToASCII and ToUnicode. These algorithms are not applied to the domain name as a whole, but rather to individual labels. For example, if the domain name is www.example.com, then the labels are www, example, and com. ToASCII or ToUnicode is applied to each of these three separately.

The details of these two algorithms are complex. They are specified in RFC 3490. Following is an overview of their workings.

ToASCII leaves ASCII labels unchanged. It fails if the label is unsuitable for the Domain Name System. For labels containing at least one non-ASCII character, ToASCII applies the Nameprep algorithm. This converts the label to lowercase and performs other normalization. ToASCII then translates the result to ASCII, using Punycode.[16] Finally, it prepends the four-character string "`xn--`".[17] This four-character string is called the ASCII Compatible Encoding (ACE) prefix. It is used to distinguish labels encoded in Punycode from ordinary ASCII labels. The ToASCII algorithm can fail in several ways. For example, the final string could exceed the 63-character limit of a DNS label. A label for which ToASCII fails cannot be used in an internationalized domain name.

The function ToUnicode reverses the action of ToASCII, stripping off the ACE prefix and applying the Punycode decode algorithm. It does not reverse the Nameprep processing, since that is merely a normalization and is by nature irreversible. Unlike ToASCII, ToUnicode always succeeds, because it simply returns the original string if decoding fails. In particular, this means that ToUnicode does not affect a string that does not begin with the ACE prefix.

### Example of IDNA encoding

[edit]

IDNA encoding may be illustrated using the example domain `Bücher.example`. (German: Bücher, lit. 'books'.) This domain name has two labels, Bücher and example. The second label is pure ASCII and is left unchanged. The first label is processed by Nameprep to give `bücher`, and then converted to Punycode to result in `bcher-kva`. It is then prefixed with `xn--` to produce `xn--bcher-kva`. The resulting name suitable for use in DNS records and queries is therefore `xn--bcher-kva.example`.

## Arabic Script IDN Working Group (ASIWG)

[edit]

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While the Arab region represents 5 percent of the world's population, it accounts for a mere 2.6 percent of global Internet usage. Moreover, the percentage of Internet users among the population in the Arab world is a low of 11 percent, compared to the global rate of 21.9 percent. However, Internet usage in the region has grown by 1,426 percent between the years 2000 and 2008, which represents a large increase, particularly compared to the average world growth rate of 305.5 percent over the same period. It is reasonable to infer, therefore, that the usage growth could have been even more significant if DNS was available in Arabic characters. The introduction of IDNs offers many potential new opportunities and benefits for Arab Internet users by allowing them to establish domains in their native languages and alphabets, and to create a whole range of services and localized applications on top of those domains.[18]

## Top-level domain implementation

[edit]

In 2009, ICANN decided to implement a new class of top-level domains, assignable to countries and independent regions, similar to the rules for country code top-level domains. However, the domain names may be any desirable string of characters, symbols, or glyphs in the language-specific, non-Latin alphabet or script of the applicant's language, within certain guidelines to assure sufficient visual uniqueness.

The process of installing IDN country code domains began with a long period of testing in a set of subdomains in the `test` top-level domain. Eleven domains used language-native scripts or alphabets, such as "δοκιμή",[19] meaning test in Greek.

These efforts culminated in the creation of the first internationalized country code top-level domains (IDN ccTLDs) for production use in 2010.

In the Domain Name System, these domains use an ASCII representation consisting of the prefix "`xn--`" followed by the Punycode translation of the Unicode representation of the language-specific alphabet or script glyphs. For example, the Cyrillic name of Russia's IDN ccTLD is "рф". In Punycode representation, this is "`p1ai`", and its DNS name is "`xn--p1ai`".

## Non-IDNA or non-ICANN registries that support non-ASCII domain names

[edit]

Other registries support non-ASCII domain names. The company ThaiURL.com in Thailand supports ".com" registrations via its own IDN encoding, ThaiURL. However, since most modern browsers only recognize IDNA/Punycode IDNs, ThaiURL-encoded domains must be typed in or linked to in their encoded form, and they will be displayed thus in the address bar. This limits their usefulness; however, they are still valid and universally accessible domains.

Several registries support Punycode emoji characters as emoji domains.

## ASCII spoofing concerns

[edit]

Main article: IDN homograph attack

The use of Unicode in domain names makes it potentially easier to spoof websites as the visual representation of an IDN string in a web browser may make a spoof site appear indistinguishable from the legitimate site being spoofed, depending on the font used. For example, the Unicode character U+0430 – Cyrillic small letter a – can look identical to the Unicode character U+0061 (Latin small letter a), used in English. As a concrete example, using Cyrillic letters а, е, і, р (a; then "Ie"/"Ye" U+0435, looking essentially identical to Latin letter e; then U+0456, essentially identical to Latin letter i; and "Er" U+0440, essentially identical to Latin letter p), the URL wіkіреdіа.org is formed, which is virtually indistinguishable from the visual representation of the legitimate wikipedia.org (possibly depending on typefaces).

## Top-level domains accepting IDN registration

[edit]

Many top-level domains have started to accept internationalized domain name registrations at the second or lower levels. Afilias (.INFO) offered the first gTLD IDN second-level registrations in 2004 in the German language.[20]

DotAsia, the registrar for the TLD Asia, conducted a 70-day sunrise period starting May 11, 2011 for second-level domain registrations in the Chinese, Japanese and Korean scripts.[21]

## Timeline

[edit]

This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (January 2022)

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* December 1996: Martin Dürst's original Internet Draft proposing  UTF-5 (the first example of what is known today as an ASCII-compatible encoding (ACE)) – UTF-5 was first defined at the University of Zürich[22][23][24]
* March 1998: Early research on IDN at National University of Singapore (NUS), Center for Internet Research (formerly Internet Research and Development Unit – IRDU) led by Tan Tin Wee (T. W. Tan)[25] (IDN Project team – Tan Juay Kwang and Leong Kok Yong) and subsequently continued under a team at Bioinformatrix Pte. Ltd. (BIX Pte. Ltd.) – an NUS spin-off company led by S. Subbiah.
* June 1998: Korean Language Domain Name System is developed by Kang, Hee-Seung at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)[26]
* July 1998:
* Geneva INET'98 conference with a BoF[clarification needed] discussion on iDNS and APNG General Meeting and Working Group meeting.
* Asia Pacific Networking Group (APNG, now still in existence[27] and distinct from a gathering known as APSTAR)[28] iDNS Working Group formed.[29]
* October 1998:
* James Seng, a former student of Tan Tin Wee at Sheares Hall, NUS, and student researcher at Technet and IRDU, Computer Center, NUS, was recruited by CEO S. Subbiah to lead further IDN development at BIX Pte. Ltd.
* iDNS Testbed launched by BIX Pte. Ltd. under the auspices of APNG with participation from CNNIC, JPNIC, KRNIC, TWNIC, THNIC, HKNIC, and SGNIC led by James Seng[30]
* Presentation of Report on IDN at Joint APNG-APTLD meeting, at APRICOT'99
* March 1999: Endorsement of the IDN Report at APNG General Meeting 1 March 1999.
* June 1999: Grant application by APNG jointly with the Centre for Internet Research (CIR), the National University of Singapore, to the International Development Research Center (IDRC), a Canadian Government funded international organization to work on IDN for IPv6. This APNG Project was funded under the Pan Asia R&D Grant administered on behalf of IDRC by the Canadian Committee on Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS). Principal Investigator: Tan Tin Wee of National University of Singapore.[31]
* July 1999:
* Walid R. Tout (WALID Inc.) filed IDNA patent application number US1999000358043 "Method and system for internationalizing domain names". Published 30 January 2001.[32]
* Internet Draft on UTF5 by James Seng, Martin Dürst and Tan Tin Wee.[33] Renewed 2000.[34]
* August 1999: APTLD and APNG forms a working group to look into IDN issues chaired by Kilnam Chon.[35]
* October 1999: BIX Pte. Ltd. and National University of Singapore together with New York Venture Capital investors, General Atlantic Partners, spun off the IDN effort into 2 new Singapore companies – i-DNS.net International Inc. and i-Email.net Pte. Ltd. that created the first commercial implementation of an IDN solution for both domain names and IDN email addresses respectively.
* November 1999: IETF IDN Birds-of-Feather[clarification needed] in Washington was initiated by i-DNS.net at the request of IETF officials.
* December 1999: i-DNS.net International Pte. Ltd. launched the first commercial IDN. It was in Taiwan and in Chinese characters under the top-level IDN TLD ".gongsi" (meaning loosely ".com") with endorsement by the Minister of Communications of Taiwan and some major Taiwanese ISPs with reports of over 200 000 names sold in a week in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Australia and USA.
* Late 1999: Kilnam Chon initiated Task Force on IDNS which led to the formation of MINC, the Multilingual Internet Names Consortium.[36]
* January 2000:
* IETF IDN Working Group formed chaired by James Seng and Marc Blanchet.
* The second-ever commercial IDN launch was IDN TLDs in the Tamil Language, corresponding to .com, .net, .org, and .edu. These were launched in India with IT Ministry support by i-DNS.net International.
* February 2000: Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC) Proposal BoF[clarification needed] at IETF Adelaide.[37]
* March 2000: APRICOT 2000 Multilingual DNS session.[38]
* April 2000: WALID Inc. (with IDNA patent-pending application 6182148) started Registration & Resolving Multilingual Domain Names.
* May 2000: Interoperability Testing WG, MINC meeting. San Francisco, chaired by Bill Manning and Y. Yoneya, 12 May 2000.[citation needed]
* June 2000: Inaugural Launch of the Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC) in Seoul[39] to drive the collaborative roll-out of IDN starting from the Asia Pacific.[40]
* July 2000:
* Joint Engineering TaskForce (JET) was initiated in Yokohama to study technical issues led by JPNIC (K.Konishi)and TWNIC (Kenny Huang).
* Official formation of CDNC (Chinese Domain Name Consortium) to resolve issues related to and to deploy Han Character domain names, founded by CNNIC, TWNIC, HKNIC and MONIC in May 2000.[41][42]
* March 2001: ICANN Board IDN Working Group formed.
* July 2001:
* Japanese Domain Name Association: JDNA Launch Ceremony (July 13, 2001) in Tokyo, Japan.
* Urdu Internet Names System (July 28, 2001) in Islamabad, Pakistan, Organised Jointly by SDNP and MINC.[43]
* Presentation on IDN to the Committee Meeting of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Academies USA (JULY 11–13, 2001) at University of California School of Information Management and Systems, Berkeley, California.[44]
* August 2001: MINC presentation and outreach at the Asia Pacific Advanced Network annual conference, Penang, Malaysia, 20 August 2001
* October 2001: Joint MINC-CDNC Meeting in Beijing 18–20 October 2001.
* November 2001: ICANN IDN Committee formed,[45] Ram Mohan (Afilias) appointed as Charter Member.
* December 2001: Joint ITU-WIPO Symposium on Multilingual Domain Names organized in association with MINC, 6–7 December 2001, International Conference Center, Geneva.
* January 2003:
* ICANN IDN Guidelines Working Group formed with membership from leading gTLD and ccTLD registries.
* Free implementation of stringprep, Punycode, and IDNA are released in GNU Libidn.
* March 2003: Publication of RFC 3454, RFC 3490, RFC 3491 and RFC 3492.
* June 2003: Publication of ICANN IDN guidelines for registries.[46] Adopted by .cn, .info, .jp, .org, and .tw registries.
* May 2004: Publication of RFC 3743, Joint Engineering Team (JET) Guidelines for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) Registration and Administration for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
* March 2005: First Study Group 17 of ITU-T meeting on Internationalized Domain Names.[47]
* May 2005: .IN ccTLD (India) creates an expert IDN Working Group to create solutions for 22 official languages. Ram Mohan was appointed lead for technical implementation. C-DAC appointed a linguistic expert.
* April 2006: ITU Study Group 17 meeting in Korea gave final approval to the Question on Internationalized Domain Names.[48]
* June 2006: Workshop on IDN at ICANN meeting at Marrakech, Morocco.
* November 2006: ICANN GNSO IDN Working Group created to discuss policy implications of IDN TLDs. Ram Mohan elected Chair of the IDN Working Group.[49]
* December 2006: ICANN meeting in São Paulo discusses status of lab tests of IDNs within the root.[clarify]
* January 2007: Tamil and Malayalam variant table work completed by India's C-DAC and Afilias.
* March 2007: ICANN GNSO IDN Working Group completes work, Ram Mohan presents a report at ICANN Lisboa meeting.[50]
* October 2007: Eleven IDNA top-level domains were added to the root nameservers in order to evaluate the use of IDNA at the top level of the DNS.[51][52]
* January 2008: ICANN: Successful Evaluations of .test IDN TLDs.[53]
* February 2008: IDN Workshop: IDNs in Indian Languages and Scripts,[54] ICANN, DIT, Afilias, C-DAC, NIXI lead.
* April 2008:
* IETF IDNAbis WG chaired by Vint Cerf continues the work to update IDNA.[55]
* Arabic Script IDN Working Group (ASIWG)[56] founded by Ram Mohan (Afilias) and Alexa Raad (PIR) in Dubai.
* June 2008:
* ICANN board votes to develop final fast-track implementation proposal for a limited number of IDN ccTLDS.[57]
* Arabic Script IDN Working Group (ASIWG) membership[58] expands to Egypt, Iran, Kuwait, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE, Malaysia, UN ESCWA, APTLD, ISOC Africa, and invited experts Michael Everson and John Klensin.
* October 2008: ICANN seeks interest in IDN ccTLD fast-track process.[59]
* September 2009: ICANN puts IDN ccTLD proposal on agenda for Seoul meeting in October 2009.[60]
* October 2009: ICANN approves the registration of IDN names in the root of the DNS through the IDN ccTLD Fast-Track process at its meeting in Seoul, 26–30 October 2009.[61]
* January 2010: ICANN announces that Egypt, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates were the first countries to have passed the Fast-Track String Evaluation within the IDN ccTLD domain application process.[62]
* May 2010: The first implementations[clarification needed] go live. They are the ccTLDs in the Arabic alphabet for Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.[8]
* August 2010-: The IETF publishes the updated "IDNA2008" specifications as RFC 5890–5894.
* December 2010: ICANN Board IDN Variants Working Group formed[63] to oversee and track the IDN Variant Issues Project. Members of the working group are Ram Mohan (Chair), Jonne Soininen, Suzanne Woolf, and Kuo-Wei Wu.
* February 2012: International email was standardized, utilizing IDN.[64]

## See also

[edit]

* Internationalized Resource Identifier
* Percent-encoding

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Such as Arabic, Bengali, Chinese (Mandarin, simplified or traditional), Cyrillic (including Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian and Ukrainian), Devanagari, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Tamil or Thai.
2. ^ Such as French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese or Spanish.
3. ^ RFC 2181, Clarifications to the DNS Specification: section 11 explicitly allows any binary string. Non-ASCII encodings such as UTF-8 have indeed been (privately) used over DNS per RFC 6055. The system of internet domain name registration is, however, totally incapable of handling non-ASCII encodings, hence the restriction; see also RFC 5890 §§ 2.2, 2.3 on the format of names.

1. ^ Dürst, Martin J. (December 10, 1996). "Internet Draft: Internationalization of Domain Names". Ietf Datatracker. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Society (ISOC). Retrieved 2009-10-31.
2. ^ Dürst, Martin J. (December 20, 1996). "URLs and internationalization". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 2009-10-30.
3. ^ Faltstrom, P.; Hoffman, P.; Costello, A. (March 2003). Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA). doi:10.17487/RFC3490. RFC 3490.
4. ^ John Klensin (January 6, 2010). "Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA): Protocol (RFC 5891 Draft)". Ietf Datatracker. Internet Engineering Task Force. Retrieved 2016-08-12.
5. ^ Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), United Nations (15 June 2009). "Internet Governance: Challenges and Opportunities for the ESCWA Member Countries" (PDF). United Nations. Retrieved 7 Dec 2019.
6. ^ "ICANN Bringing the Languages of the World to the Global Internet" (Press release). Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). October 30, 2009. Retrieved 2009-10-30.
7. ^ "Internet addresses set for change". BBC News. October 30, 2009. Retrieved 2009-10-30.
8. ^ a b "First IDN ccTLDs now available" (Press release). Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). May 5, 2010. Retrieved 2010-05-06.
9. ^ Mohan, Ram, German IDN, German Language Table Archived 2006-12-18 at the Wayback Machine, March 2003
10. ^ Dam, Mohan, Karp, Kane & Hotta, IDN Guidelines 1.0, ICANN, June 2003
11. ^ Karp, Mohan, Dam, Kane, Hotta, El Bashir, IDN Guidelines 2.0, ICANN, November 2005
12. ^ Jesdanun, Anick (Associated Press) (2 November 2007). "Group on Non-English Domains Formed". Archived from the original on December 20, 2008. Retrieved 2 November 2007.
13. ^ "ICANN – Universal Acceptance". ICANN. February 25, 2012.
14. ^ "Internet Explorer for Developers". learn.microsoft.com. October 22, 2021.
15. ^ "Handling Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) - Win32 apps". learn.microsoft.com. January 7, 2021.
16. ^ RFC 3492, Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA), A. Costello, The Internet Society (March 2003)
17. ^ Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (2003-02-14). "Completion of IANA Selection of IDNA Prefix". www.atm.tut.fi. Archived from the original on 2010-04-27. Retrieved 2017-09-22.
18. ^ "Internationalized Domain Names - ICANN". www.icann.org. Retrieved 2019-12-08.
19. ^ IANA Report on Delegation of Eleven Evaluative Internationalised Top-Level Domains[permanent dead link‍]
20. ^ ".INFO German Character Table". www.iana.org. Retrieved 2017-04-11.
21. ^ Dot-Asia releases IDN dates, Managing Internet IP, April 14, 2011.
22. ^ Dürst, Martin J. (17 March 1998). "draft-duerst-dns-i18n-00 – Internationalization of Domain Names". Ietf Datatracker. Tools.ietf.org. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
23. ^ "minc.org". Archive.minc.org. 2019-12-12. Retrieved 2022-10-07.
24. ^ "the leading Telecom magazine, ICT magazine, Telecom magazine, ICT and Telecom". Connect-World. Archived from the original on 2008-07-23. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
25. ^ "Tan Tin Wee". Internet Hall of Fame.
26. ^ "APAN-KR" (PDF). IITA.
27. ^ "APNG". APNG. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
28. ^ "The community of Asia Pacific Internet Organization". Apstar.Org. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
29. ^ "Asia Pacific Networking Group Chairman's Commission on Internationalization of DNS". www.apng.org. Archived from the original on April 22, 2006.
30. ^ "iDOMAIN - TestBed of iDNS implementations in the Asia Pacific". www.minc.org. Archived from the original on 2003-08-23.
31. ^ "iDNS for IPv6". www.apng.org. Archived from the original on August 11, 2006.
32. ^ "Method and system for internationalizing domain names (US6182148)". Delphion.com. Archived from the original on 2010-07-15. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
33. ^ "draft-jseng-utf5-00 – UTF-5, a transformation format of Unicode and ISO 10646". Ietf Datatracker. Tools.ietf.org. 1999-07-27. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
34. ^ "draft-jseng-utf5-01 – UTF-5, a transformation format of Unicode and ISO 10646". Ietf Datatracker. Tools.ietf.org. 2000-01-28. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
35. ^ "iNAME project of APTLD and APNG". www.minc.org. Archived from the original on 2003-08-23. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
36. ^ "Internationalisation of the Domain Name System: The Next Big Step in a Multilingual Internet". NEWS. i-DNS.net. 24 July 2000. Retrieved 2016-08-13.
37. ^ "Proposal BoF - Meeting Summary". www.minc.org. Archived from the original on 2004-11-10. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
38. ^ "APRICOT 2000 in Seoul". Apricot.net. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
39. ^ "Multilingual Internet Names Consortium". MINC. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
40. ^ "History of MINC". www.minc.org. Archived from the original on 2004-01-26. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
41. ^ "Chinese Domain Name Consortium". CDNC. 2000-05-19. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
42. ^ "Chinese Domain Name Consortium". CDNC. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
43. ^ "urduworkshop.sdnpk.org". Archived from the original on 2016-01-06. Retrieved 2022-07-10.
44. ^ "Signposts in Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation". National Academies Press. 2001-11-07. Archived from the original on 2008-07-06. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
45. ^ "ICANN | Archives | Committees | Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) Committee". archive.icann.org. Retrieved 2017-04-11.
46. ^ "Guidelines for the Implementation of Internationalized Domain Names – Version 1.0". ICANN.
47. ^ "ITU-T SG17 Meeting Documents". Itu.int. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
48. ^ "ITU-T Newslog – Multilingual Internet Work Progresses". Itu.int. 2006-05-04. Archived from the original on 2010-05-29. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
49. ^ "GNSO IDN WG". icann.org. 2007-03-22. Retrieved 2010-08-30.
50. ^ Mohan, Ram, GNSO IDN Working Group, Outcomes Report (PDF), ICANN
51. ^ "On Its Way: One of the Biggest Changes to the Internet | Internet users have key role in testing the operation of example.test in 11 languages". www.icann.org.
52. ^ "My Name, My Language, My Internet: IDN Test Goes Live | ICANN launches global test of Internationalized Domain Names". www.icann.org.
53. ^ "Successful Evaluations of .test IDN TLDs". www.icann.org.
54. ^ "IDN Workshop: IDNs in Indian Languages and Scripts | New Delhi 2008". archive.icann.org. Retrieved 2017-04-11.
55. ^ IDNAbis overview (2008)
56. ^ "ICANN | Archives | Internationalized Domain Names Meetings". archive.icann.org. Retrieved 2017-04-11.
57. ^ "ICANN - Paris/IDN CCTLD discussion - Wiki". isoc-ny.org.
58. ^ "ASIWIG Meeting | Paris 2008". archive.icann.org. Retrieved 2017-04-11.
59. ^ "ICANN Seeks Interest in IDN ccTLD Fast-Track Process". ICANN.
60. ^ Proposed Final Implementation Plan: IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process, 30 September 2009
61. ^ Regulator approves multi-lingual web addresses, Silicon Republic, 30.10.2009
62. ^ "First IDN ccTLDs Requests Successfully Pass String Evaluation". ICANN. 2010-01-21.
63. ^ "Board IDN Variants Working Group – ICANN". www.icann.org. Retrieved 2017-04-11.
64. ^ J. Klensin (February 2012). Overview and Framework for Internationalized Email. IETF. doi:10.17487/RFC6530. RFC 6530. Retrieved January 14, 2017.

## External links

[edit]

* RFC 3454 "Preparation of Internationalized Strings ('stringprep')"
* RFC 5890 "Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA): Definitions and Document Framework"
* RFC 5891 "Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA): Protocol"
* RFC 5892 "The Unicode Code Points and Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA)"
* RFC 5893 "Right-to-Left Scripts for Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA)"
* ICANN Internationalized Domain Names.
* IDN Language Table Registry
* Unicode Technical Report #36 – Security Considerations for the Implementation of Unicode and Related Technology

* v
* t
* e

Country code top-level domains

ISO 3166-1

A .ac .ad .ae .af .ag .ai .al .am .ao .aq .ar .as .at .au .aw .ax .az B .ba .bb .bd .be .bf .bg .bh .bi .bj .bm .bn .bo .br .bs .bt .bw .by .bz C .ca .cc .cd .cf .cg .ch .ci .ck .cl .cm .cn .co .cr .cu .cv .cw .cx .cy .cz D .de .dj .dk .dm .do .dz E .ec .ee .eg .er .es .et .eu F .fi .fj .fk .fm .fo .fr G .ga .gd .ge .gf .gg .gh .gi .gl .gm .gn .gp .gq .gr .gs .gt .gu .gw .gy H .hk .hm .hn .hr .ht .hu I .id .ie .il .im .in .io .iq .ir .is .it J .je .jm .jo .jp K .ke .kg .kh .ki .km .kn .kp .kr .kw .ky .kz L .la .lb .lc .li .lk .lr .ls .lt .lu .lv .ly M .ma .mc .md .me .mg .mh .mk .ml .mm .mn .mo .mp .mq .mr .ms .mt .mu .mv .mw .mx .my .mz N .na .nc .ne .nf .ng .ni .nl .no .np .nr .nu .nz O .om P .pa .pe .pf .pg .ph .pk .pl .pm .pn .pr .ps .pt .pw .py Q .qa R .re .ro .rs .ru .rw S .sa .sb .sc .sd .se .sg .sh .si .sk .sl .sm .sn .so .sr .ss .st .su .sv .sx .sy .sz T .tc .td .tf .tg .th .tj .tk .tl .tm .tn .to .tr .tt .tv .tw .tz U .ua .ug .uk .us .uy .uz V .va .vc .ve .vg .vi .vn .vu W .wf .ws Y .ye .yt Z .za .zm .zw

Internationalized (IDN) ccTLD

| Cyrillic script| Arabic script| Brahmic scripts| Chinese characters| Other scripts

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* .бг (bg, Bulgaria)
* .бел (bieł, Belarus)
* .ею (eyu, European Union)
* .қаз (qaz, Kazakhstan)
* .мон (mon, Mongolia)
* .мкд (mkd, North Macedonia)
* .рф (rf, Russia)
* .срб (srb, Serbia)
* .укр (ukr, Ukraine)

* الجزائر. (al-Jazā’ir, Algeria)
* مصر. (Miṣr, Egypt)
* بھارت. (Bhārat, India)
* ایران. (Irân, Iran)
* الاردن. (al-Urdun, Jordan)
* فلسطين. (Filasṭin, Palestine)
* پاکستان. (Pākistān, Pakistan)
* قطر. (Qaṭar)
* السعودية. (al-Saudiah, Saudi Arabia)
* سوريا. (Sūryā, Syria)
* تونس. (Tunis, Tunisia)
* امارات. (Emarat, UAE)
* عمان. (ʻUmān, Oman)
* مليسيا. (Maleesya, Malaysia)
* المغرب. (al-Maġrib, Morocco)
* سودان. (Sūdān, Sudan)
* اليمن. (al-Yaman, Yemen)

* .বাংলা (Bāṅla, Bangladesh)
* .ভাৰত (Bhārat, India)
* .ভারত (Bhārat, India)
* .भारत (Bhārat, India)
* .భారత్ (Bhārat, India)
* .ભારત (Bhārat, India)
* .ਭਾਰਤ (Bhārat, India)
* .ଭାରତ (Bhārata, India)
* .இந்தியா (Indiyā, India)
* .ລາວ (Lao, Laos)
* .சிங்கப்பூர் (Cinkappūr, Singapore)
* .ලංකා (Laṅkā, Sri Lanka)
* .இலங்கை (Ilaṅkai, Sri Lanka)
* .ไทย (Thai, Thailand)

* .中国 (Zhōngguó/Zung1gwok3/Tiong-kok/Chûng-koet, China)
* .中國 (Zhōngguó/Zung1gwok3/Tiong-kok/Chûng-koet, China)
* .香港 (Xiānggǎng/Hoeng1gong2, Hong Kong)
* .澳門 (Àomén/Ou3mun4, Macau)
* .澳门 (Àomén/Ou3mun4, Macau)
* .新加坡 (Xīnjiāpō/Sin-ka-pho, Singapore)
* .台灣 (Táiwān/Tâi-uân/Thòi-vàn, Taiwan)
* .台湾 (Táiwān/Tâi-uân/Thòi-vàn, Taiwan)

* .հայ (hay, Armenia)
* .ευ (ey, European Union)
* .გე (ge, Georgia)
* .ελ (el, Greece)
* .한국 (Han-guk, South Korea)
* ישראל. (Yisrael, Israel)

Proposed ccTLDs

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.κπ (kp, Cyprus) - .日本 (Nippon, Japan)

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Others

| Reserved / unassigned| Allocated / unused| Phased out / deleted

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.bl .bq .eh .mf .su .xk

.bv .gb .sj

.an .bu .cs .dd .tp .um .yu .zr

See also: Generic top-level domains

* v
* t
* e

Unicode

Unicode|

* Unicode Consortium
* ISO/IEC 10646 (Universal Character Set)
* Versions

Code points|

* Block
* List
* Universal Character Set
* Character charts
* Character property
* Plane
* Private Use Area

Characters|

| Special purpose|

* BOM
* Combining grapheme joiner
* Left-to-right mark / Right-to-left mark
* Soft hyphen
* Variant form
* Word joiner
* Zero-width joiner
* Zero-width non-joiner
* Zero-width space

|

Lists|

* Characters
* CJK Unified Ideographs
* Combining character
* Duplicate characters
* Numerals
* Scripts
* Spaces
* Symbols
* Halfwidth and fullwidth
* Alias names and abbreviations
* Whitespace characters

Processing|

| Algorithms|

* Bidirectional text
* Collation
* ISO/IEC 14651
* Equivalence
* Variation sequences
* International Ideographs Core

|

Comparison of encodings|

* BOCU-1
* CESU-8
* Punycode
* SCSU
* UTF-1
* UTF-7
* UTF-8
* UTF-16/UCS-2
* UTF-32/UCS-4
* UTF-EBCDIC

On pairs of
code points|

* Combining character
* Compatibility characters
* Duplicate characters
* Equivalence
* Homoglyph
* Precomposed character
* list
* Z-variant
* Variation sequences
* Regional indicator symbol
* Emoji skin color

Usage|

* Domain names (IDN)
* Email
* Fonts
* HTML
* entity references
* numeric references
* Input
* International Ideographs Core

Related standards|

* Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR)
* GB 18030
* ISO/IEC 8859
* DIN 91379
* ISO 15924

Related topics|

* Anomalies
* ConScript Unicode Registry
* Ideographic Research Group
* International Components for Unicode
* People involved with Unicode
* Han unification

Scripts and symbols in Unicode

Common and
inherited scripts|

* Combining marks
* Diacritics
* Punctuation marks
* Spaces
* Numbers

Modern scripts|

* Adlam
* Arabic
* Armenian
* Balinese
* Bamum
* Batak
* Bengali
* Bopomofo
* Braille
* Buhid
* Burmese
* Canadian Aboriginal
* Chakma
* Cham
* Cherokee
* CJK Unified Ideographs (Han)
* Cyrillic
* Deseret
* Devanagari
* Garay
* Geʽez
* Georgian
* Greek
* Gujarati
* Gunjala Gondi
* Gurmukhi
* Gurung Khema
* Hangul
* Hanifi Rohingya
* Hanja
* Hanunuoo
* Hebrew
* Hiragana
* Javanese
* Kanji
* Kannada
* Katakana
* Kayah Li
* Khmer
* Kirat Rai
* Lao
* Latin
* Lepcha
* Limbu
* Lisu (Fraser)
* Lontara
* Malayalam
* Masaram Gondi
* Mende Kikakui
* Medefaidrin
* Miao (Pollard)
* Mongolian
* Mru
* N'Ko
* Nag Mundari
* New Tai Lue
* Nüshu
* Nyiakeng Puachue Hmong
* Odia
* Ol Chiki
* Ol Onal
* Osage
* Osmanya
* Pahawh Hmong
* Pau Cin Hau
* Pracalit (Newa)
* Ranjana
* Rejang
* Samaritan
* Saurashtra
* Shavian
* Sinhala
* Sorang Sompeng
* Sundanese
* Sunuwar
* Syriac
* Tagbanwa
* Tai Le
* Tai Tham
* Tai Viet
* Tamil
* Tangsa
* Telugu
* Thaana
* Thai
* Tibetan
* Tifinagh
* Tirhuta
* Toto
* Vai
* Wancho
* Warang Citi
* Yi

Ancient and
historic scripts|

* Ahom
* Anatolian hieroglyphs
* Ancient North Arabian
* Avestan
* Bassa Vah
* Bhaiksuki
* Brāhmī
* Carian
* Caucasian Albanian
* Coptic
* Cuneiform
* Cypriot
* Cypro-Minoan
* Dives Akuru
* Dogra
* Egyptian hieroglyphs
* Elbasan
* Elymaic
* Glagolitic
* Gothic
* Grantha
* Hatran
* Imperial Aramaic
* Inscriptional Pahlavi
* Inscriptional Parthian
* Kaithi
* Kawi
* Kharosthi
* Khitan small script
* Khojki
* Khudawadi
* Khwarezmian (Chorasmian)
* Linear A
* Linear B
* Lycian
* Lydian
* Mahajani
* Makasar
* Mandaic
* Manichaean
* Marchen
* Meetei Mayek
* Meroitic
* Modi
* Multani
* Nabataean
* Nandinagari
* Ogham
* Old Hungarian
* Old Italic
* Old Permic
* Old Persian cuneiform
* Old Sogdian
* Old Turkic
* Old Uyghur
* Palmyrene
* ʼPhags-pa
* Phoenician
* Psalter Pahlavi
* Runic
* Sharada
* Siddham
* Sogdian
* South Arabian
* Soyombo
* Sylheti Nagri
* Tagalog (Baybayin)
* Takri
* Tangut
* Todhri
* Tulu Tigalari
* Ugaritic
* Vithkuqi
* Yezidi
* Zanabazar Square

Notational scripts|

* Duployan
* SignWriting

Symbols, emojis|

* Cultural, political, and religious symbols
* Currency
* Control Pictures
* Mathematical operators and symbols
* Glossary
* Phonetic symbols (including IPA)
* Emoji

* Category: Unicode
* Category: Unicode blocks

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