The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20141018182148/https://www.icann.org/resources/compliance-programs

Skip to main content

Programs

Approach & Process

ICANN, in collaboration with ICANN stakeholders, implemented the Informal and Formal Resolution process. The process ensures consistency for all parties involved, including ICANN's global staff, contracted parties and complainants.

gTLD Registries

The gTLD registry and sponsorship agreements share a common basic structure although the specific requirement may vary. The gTLD Compliance Program was developed by...

ICANN Accredited Registrars

ICANN currently has over 900 accredited registrars, each with a Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) in effelooct. The form of the RAA is identical regardless of the characteristics of the registrar, so that...

Audit

ICANN's Contractual Compliance Audit objective is to ensure that contracted parties, registrars and registries comply with their agreements and the consensus policies...

General Questions

The general questions provide answers related to Registering a Domain Name, Registrar Suspension, Contractual Compliance Approach and Process.

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."