An Historic Day: First IDN Top Level Domain Names Go Live

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

First IDN top level domains hit the web.

Today was an historic day for domain names and internationalized domain names, as the first three non-Latin script top level domain names went live. All three are country code top level domains under the IDN ccTLD fast track program.

ICANN has provided an example of an already functioning site using an IDN ccTLD: وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر

If you’re like me, when going to that web address you’re browser will display this:

http://xn—-rmckbbajlc6dj7bxne2c.xn--wgbh1c/

But hurdles still remain to view these new TLDs. As explained on the ICANN blog:

If your software does not have full IDN support, this might not work exactly as expected. You may see a mangled string of letters and numbers, and perhaps some percent signs or a couple of “xn--”s mixed into the address bar. Or it may not work at all.

Making things more interesting, the first three live ccTLDs are all in Arabic scripts: e السعودية. (“Al-Saudiah”), امارات. ( “Emarat”) and مصر. (“Misr”). These scripts are read right-to-left, which must be confusing given the multi-level structure of top level domain names.

Expect to see more IDN top level domain names soon. First there will be more IDN ccTLDs, followed by generic top level IDNs in a couple years.

Further Reading:

  1. China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan Get IDN Country Code Top Level Domain Names
  2. Will IDN Top Level Domains Kill Existing IDN Domain Names?
  3. Yes, Multiple Top Level Domain Names Add to Confusion

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9 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by

Comments

  1. J
    May 5th, 2010 | 9:46 pm

    Verisign is too busy deciding how much to charge users for the .idn version..
    $$ greedy

  2. TXDomainguy
    May 5th, 2010 | 10:53 pm

    Andrew,

    You’re a Texas guy, and should know well that’s a hard ‘H’. A historic day…

    Or maybe that’s a giveaway you’re not really from ’round hyar…? :) JK

  3. MS
    May 6th, 2010 | 2:30 am

    Expect idn.idn gTLDs in the root anytime during the next 12 months ;)

  4. lee
    May 6th, 2010 | 5:26 am

    where can I buy these domain names from? do I have to go to a special registrar?

  5. iulian
    May 6th, 2010 | 6:05 am

    But what is this IDN thing??

  6. lee
    May 6th, 2010 | 6:26 am

    @iulian

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalized_domain_name

  7. lee
    May 6th, 2010 | 6:31 am

    to partially answer my own question. three registrars have been given rights to register the egyption tld

    details
    http://www.tra.gov.eg/english/News_NewsDetails.asp?PID=36&ID=166

  8. Andrew Allemann
    May 6th, 2010 | 8:42 am

    @ MS – I don’t think you’ve been following the new gTLD process very closely :)

  9. Andrew Allemann
    May 6th, 2010 | 8:47 am

    @ TXDomainguy – Consider it a shout out to our friends on the other side of the pond.

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