ICANN participation

What it is | This workshop will provide detailed information about the IDNA protocol. The IDNA protocol is a mechanism to handle non-ASCII characters in domain names in a standard fashion, and it is currently under revision. The protocol is allowing Internet applications, such as browsers, to use domain names with non-ASCII characters by converting them to ASCII labels that the DNS will understand and process. As such the protocol provides the foundation of what characters are considered valid and can be used in IDNs. On top of the protocol restrictions, registry operators will supply additional registration policies to eliminate for example confusion between two visually identical domain names, as much as possible.
The protocol revision is done by the IETF, and as speakers in this session we have the main authors of the proposed revised protocol. They will provide you with important information about what changes are proposed compared to the current version of the protocol, and why these changes are necessary.

Why it's Important | The protocol revision is intended to be finalized within a short timeframe and it brings the need to change the way IDNs are implemented today. This session will provide you with all the information necessary in order to make these adjustments. The changes will also affect the end-users, and hence understanding these changes will be important knowledge if you are in the business of selling IDN registrations.

Who Should Attend? | Anybody interested in the continued development of IDNs, in particular, registries, registrars, registrants and application developers. Government representatives are also encouraged to participate as the new protocol is anticipated to be used in the introduction of IDN TLDs.