By November, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will begin testing out domain names that utilize non-Latin characters. However, determining guidelines and regulations for these foreign language domain names could take up to two years.
During the week-long ICANN meeting last week in Puerto Rico, the organization agreed to look into supporting domain names made up of Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, and other characters.
ICANN considered similar measures in 2003, but could not find sufficient rules that would eliminate confusion among Web users, particularly with words from one language appearing very similar to words from another language. The group will look to find rules that would prevent such confusions.
The live testing later this year will determine if foreign language characters in Web addresses will work smoothly with Web browsers, e-mail programs, and other applications.
Indicating that ICANN has already tested these kinds of domains in laboratories, chairman of ICANN, Vince Cerf, said "We're confident that none of the infrastructure is likely to encounter a problem but you really don't know until you are in the live environment."
Cerf also said that he did not expect anything to materialize before the first quarter or half of 2008.
Discussions concerning IPV6 and digital signatures for domain names and Internet addresses also made progress at the discussions.
Sources:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070702/ap_on_hi_te/
internet_names;_ylt=AhxF1IAySX26bGTu4mukmLL6VbIF
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,133627-c,
internetlegalissues/article.html
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