Internationalized Domain Names and the usability of them is a key aspect of the ongoing introduction of IDN ccTLDs. ICANN is actively taking part in conferences and events, with a focus on applications and usability of new technology on the Internet. This is to spread information about IDNs and how they work in order to [...]

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This is a very brief blog post with quite the big content. Last week was a special week at ICANN, with several IDN milestones meet. Many were included in the 22 April 2010 ICANN Board meeting. The ICANN Board approved the first IDN ccTLD delegation requests for four countries. These countries are: Egypt, the Russian [...]

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Just about a month ago, I blogged about the launch of ICANN Start, the audio podcast that helps newcomers to our community start understanding key issues. As of this week, ICANN Start episodes have been downloaded one thousand times! All of us involved with producing the podcast are grateful for that robust welcome (which, candidly, [...]

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Since the launch of the Fast Track Process, ICANN has received many questions about how the DNS Stability Panel will determine a confusingly similar string; that is, a requested string that is confusing similar with an existing ccTLD, gTLD or applied-for TLDs. The overall rules seem clear: 1) If you apply for an IDN ccTLD [...]

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The first four IDN ccTLD requests has just been announced as having completed the String Evaulation portion of the Fast Track Process. These are associated with: Egypt, the Russian Federation, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. See the full announcement here: http://icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-21jan10-en.htm So what does that mean? It means that these may now initiate the [...]

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It’s not every day that ICANN comes to town. As an employee of Tucows, the third largest ICANN accredited registrar, I’m a little more tuned in to what’s going on with ICANN than the average person. But in my nearly three years at the company, I’ve never attended an ICANN meeting in the flesh. Instead, [...]

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Over the past two months the Internet has faced yet another threat to its security and one that directly involves the Domain Name System.

The Conflicker/Downadup worm infects computers running Windows operating systems variants. The infected computers can be remotely controlled (i.e. forming a botnet) and the infection propagates through a number of different routes. The worm has been estimated as infecting as many as 10 million hosts and data from the security community indicates the number is at least 1.5 million. One mechanism the worm’s code uses to enable control is to download commands by accessing specific date-based domain names.

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This Briefing Note for the Cairo meeting was first published on the Cairo meeting site on 13 November (see: http://cai.icann.org/en/briefing-note). It was reprinted the following day in the November edition of the ICANN magazine (see: http://www.icann.org/en/magazine/archive/magazine-200811-en.html).

What was it?

ICANN’s 33nd international public meeting was the third held this year to conduct policy development and outreach. It was hosted by ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and the Government of Egypt.

The meeting was opened by Dr. Tarek Mohamed Kamel, Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology. There were 1,702 attendees from 144 different countries. The participants engaged in a wide range of discussions about the Internet’s domain name system and related issues.

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This is a Response and Summary to the Cairo public forum that took place on 6 November 2008.

A PDF version of this document is available at: http://www.icann.org/en/participate/cairo-public-forum-response.pdf

Note from the Chairman:

One of the most significant features of ICANN meetings is the Public Forum, where members of the ICANN community are able to present their views on issues of concern to them to the ICANN Board, in public session. The fact that we rotate meetings through each of the geographic sectors of the world enhances the opportunity that people from every region to present their views to the ICANN Board, in the presence of Staff and the whole ICANN community.

As a long-time participant from the floor presenting views, in my case from the ccTLD community, I am well aware of the time, effort and expense that goes into the preparation of such statements. As a board member, I have valued hearing those submissions, from individuals, governments and constituencies. I am determined as Chair to continue this tradition, and to maximise the opportunities for information sharing it represents.

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