[dnsext] Case studies in IDN variant TLDs

[Kim Davies <[e-mail]>]

Dear colleagues,

A quick update on the working ongoing within ICANN on variant TLDs. ICANN is currently formulating a set of teams to each tackle a specific script, and try to identify the variant requirements for that specific community. The case studies will be for the following six groups: Arabic, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Cyrillic, Devanagari, Greek, and Latin. After those teams each agree their own list of requirements, an analysis will be done to try and identify how approaches can be developed that cater for these different requirements.

It is anticipated teams will be comprised of community representatives, linguistic experts, DNS and IDNA experts, security & scalability experts, policy experts, and registry/registrar operations experts.

ICANN is currently looking for volunteers to work on these teams. If you are interested please take a look at http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-20apr11-en.htm

It is hoped that ICANN's work will ultimately result in a clearer set of requirements, that in turn may help guide possible future protocol work in the IETF.

kim