Guidelines for Internationalized Domain Names Registration Administration

Handling protocols and applications

In terms of technical registration and administration, the internationalized domain names system deals with a variety of Internet protocols and applications. Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) is a standard or mechanism that was introduced to handle all aspects of internationalized domain names.

Internationalized domain names can contain non-ASCII characters. These types of domain names contain typeset with diacritics or letters from non-Latin scripts such as Chinese or Arabic. IDNA standards normalize and convert the IDN to an ASCII-based form which is compatible with the actual Domain Name System.

There are certain guidelines for internationalized domain name registration and administration procedures. These guidelines have been developed jointly by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and other major IDN (Internationalized Domain Names) registries such as .cn, .jp, .info, .tw and .org registries.

The top-level domain registries that provide internationalized domain name registration services must strictly follow all the technical requirements described in the IDN standards. Some code points are not permissible for all registries, so each registry should be aware of these points.

Permissible code points cannot contain:

• Line symbol-drawing letters
• Icons and symbols that are neither ideographic nor alphanumeric characters
• Spacing and punctuation characters

Top-level domain registries that have contractual agreements with ICANN should follow all the format requirements for registered names. These registries should work collaboratively with all the local language authorities to establish proper registration policies. In IDN registration, the registries should associate each registered IDN with a particular language or a group of languages. In addition, the registries should allow registrations in a specific language only when an appropriate character variants table is available. And finally, top-level domain registrars should provide informational services and resources in all languages for which they provide IDN registrations.

The guidelines for internationalized domain names registration and administration are periodically reviewed and revised by both ICANN and IDN registries.