Just a few short weeks after ICANN approved the first IDN top-level domain name delegations at its Meeting of the Board on April 22nd, the first strings, Egypt, UAE, and Saudi Arabia have been entered into the DNS root zone. The three strings were added to the root today (May 5th PST / May 6th JST), making the IDN strings officially operational.
The strings entered into the DNS root zone are:
| Country | IDN String | Latin Script Equivolent |
|---|---|---|
| Egypt | مصر. | .misr |
| United Arab Emirates | امارات. | .emarat |
| Saudi Arabia | السعودية. | .al-saudia |
The delegated strings, all Arabic, are written from right to left and will allow local users to make use of the internet in a more natural way. According to a blog entry posted by Kim Davies on the ICANN Blog, the website for Egypt’s Ministry of Communication, وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر, is already live and even accessible on mobile devices. (Some browsers still do not fully support IDN URLs and my ony show the puny code http://xn—-rmckbbajlc6dj7bxne2c.xn–wgbh1c/).
IDN Compatible Browser:
IDN Incompatible Browser:
ICANN is currently finishing up the remaining routine tasks associated with the delegation, and we can expect to hear of an official launch from the IDN ccTLD operators soon.
This is a big step in the history of the internet as idn.idn names will be fully available for use and will facilitate the use of the internet by a broader population.
