"IDN" is the acronym for: "Internationalized Domain Names". IDNs are domain/host names that are represented by native language, non-ASCII characters. The native language domain name is followed by the Top Level Domain (TLD), such as .info, .com, or .org. An example is: müller.info.
Typically, when a browser sees a host name, it sends a request to the DNS resolver service which then sends a request to a domain name server to return an IP address corresponding to that host name. When the IP address is returned, a connection is made to the appropriate Web server.
When a compliant browser receives input for an IDN, it converts the IDN into Punycode – the official standard that has been approved for converting IDN domains into resolvable ASCII domains. This process converts the name into an ASCII string with the prefix "xn--" that can be looked up at the TLD nameserver to determine the location of the Web site. Other encodings use different prefixes, e.g., "bq--" is used in Row-based ASCII-Compatible Encoding (RACE).
Punycode uses only restricted ASCII characters and numbers (A-z, 0-9) and the hyphen (-). The Punycode schema and the standardization which specifies IDN wire-format to remain in the restricted ASCII repertoire was based on the following advantages:
- Language independent
- Superior in compression
- Compact in code size
- Round-trip safe
- Superior for encoding Chinese/Japanese/Korean characters. (over other ACE schemes evaluated at that time)
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.
To register a .INFO IDN, the IDN must come from an Afilias-authorized and ICANN-accredited registrar. The unique IDN is then placed into the Afilias registry IDN database. Before this can be accomplished, however, the names to be registered in the IDN database must be converted into the alphanumeric representation based on the Punycode IDN standard. The conversion of the IDN local language characters into the equivalent Punycode is performed by the registrar.
In a compliant browser (e.g. IE 7, Netscape 7.1, Mozilla 1.4, Opera 7, Safari 3.2, Chrome), you type the IDN in the address bar or click an active link. The IDN is then resolved, and the Web site you wish to access will be displayed.
With a fully IDN-aware environment, you should be able to setup and use IDN for emails just as you would for ASCII only domains, using the Punycode form of the IDN. However, support for full IDN email addresses (user@domain) requires an upgrade to email software that conforms to the pending IETF standard for Email Address Internationalization (EAI).
It is up to the registrar to determine the retail pricing of the name, although we expect it to be consistent with existing prices for .INFO domains.
