Domain names may soon have non-Roman characters
As a left-over from its origins, top-level domains on the Internet have been restricted to ASCII characters. This situation is likely to be coming to an end; ICANN is testing the use of new languages. Computerworld reports:
The organization that oversees the Internet address system is launching an evaluation of International Domain Names (IDN) that will allow Internet users to test top-level domains in 11 languages.
Currently, only the ASCII characters A through Z are available for use in the portions of the domain before the top-level domains, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said in a statement.
A site with content that’s entirely in Japanese, for example, can have the initial portion of its URL in Japanese, but the URL still needs to end in a .com or .net spelled out in ASCII characters, according to the statement.
However, the test, which begins Monday, is the first step toward eliminating that requirement and allowing Internet users in other countries to browse the Web in their native languages, without having to use any English or the Roman alphabet when they type in a URL, ICANN said.
ICANN made the evaluation possible by the insertion into the root of the 11 versions of .test, which means they are alongside other top-level domains such as .net, .com, .info, .uk and .de at the core of the Internet, according to the statement.
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