International Domain Name

2007-04-17 10:41:55

( Web Hosting-SEO-Web Design )



International domain names (IDN) are domain names on the internet that contains non-ASCII characters, including diacritics, or Arabic or Chinese characters. Since domain names typically do not allow these kinds of characters, a technique, called Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA), is being adopted to respond to the need of the international web community.

IDNA converts international domain names with non-ASCII characters into standard ASCII form. Two algorithms, namely ToASCII and ToUnicode, are used in the said conversion. The algorithms convert the individual labels in a domain name. ToASCII has a higher failure rate in conversion than the ToUnicode algorithm. IDNA only considers those international domain names which ToASCII is able to convert.

IDNA has a backward compatibility with the standard ASCII-based system. If your browser application is IDNA-enabled, you will be able to view the domain with both ASCII and the converted non-ASCII characters. However, if your browser is IDNA-disabled, you will be able to view the domain with the unconverted non-ASCII characters, making the domain seem cryptic.

Since certain characters in different languages can look alike, one of the major disadvantages of having an international domain name is being spoofed. This means that a website that looks like your site can pretend to be your site, leading you to lose private data and important information, and eventually, phishing attacks.

There are a number of ways that have been devised to deal with spoofing. Anticipating this problem, guidelines were sent to domain registries advising them to accept only certain alphabets; however, not all registries followed these guidelines. Since then, anti-spoofing techniques have emerged, including mixed-script detection, highlighting characters of different scripts, and anti-phishing filters, among others. Options now exist so that you can choose which languages can be displayed on your browser. Some IDN-enabled browsers also allow you to completely disable IDN.

Registering international domain names is similar to registering standard ones. You simply go to an official registrar that offers international domain name registrations, choose a domain name that is available and then follow the instructions to register. Payment varies on the registrar you have chosen.


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