IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process (original) (raw)
The approval of the IDN country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) Fast Track Process by the ICANN Board at its annual meeting in Seoul, South Korea in October 2009, enabled countries and territories to submit requests to ICANN for IDN ccTLDs representing their respective country or territory names in scripts other than Latin. A country or territory represented on the ISO3166-1 list is eligible to participate in the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process and to request an IDN ccTLD string that fulfils the additional requirements defined in the Final Implementation Plan for IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process (FIP) [PDF, 989 KB].
IDN ccTLD Strings Successfully Evaluated
For more information, visit the following links:
- Successfully evaluated IDN ccTLD strings
- Extended Process String Review Panel Reports and Risk Treatment Appraisal Reports
Overview of the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process
Please contact [email protected] for any inquiries about the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process.
FIP has been revised multiple times since its initial approval. The various versions (in reverse chronological order) are given below:
- Current version of FIP, revised on 28 March 2019, available at:
https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/idn-cctld-implementation-plan-28mar19-en.pdf [PDF, 989 KB] - FIP version revised on 5 November 2013, available at:
https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/idn-cctld-implementation-plan-05nov13-en.pdf [PDF, 851 KB] - FIP version revised on 4 June 2012 available at:
http://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/fast-track/idn-cctld-implementation-plan-04jun12-en.pdf [PDF, 886 KB] - FIP version revised on 15 December 2011 available at:
http://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/fast-track/idn-cctld-implementation-plan-15dec11-en.pdf [PDF, 804 KB] - Original FIP version, published on 16 November 2009, available at:
http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/idn-cctld-implementation-plan-16nov09-en.pdf [PDF, 497 KB]
Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."