| Fast Track for Global Net Names |
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Critical tests of non-English domain names will start in December following a promise by ICANN to have an internationalised domain name system up and running by the end of next year.
ICANN president Paul Twomey told a global internet governance forum in Athens last week that the organisation would not be railroaded into introducing double-byte domains before they were ready. ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned names and Numbers, a US-backed body that governs the operation of domain names. "Making changes to the root-zone file is ICANN's responsibility," Dr Twomey says. "This is no simple task. If we get this wrong we could very easily and permanently break the internet." ICANN has been under huge pressure from the United Nations and countries such as China to have double-byte domains operational in languages such as Chinese, Korean and Arabic. China has an informal local language system that uses a software plug-in. But ICANN is calling for patience as it enters the home straight of a process that started in 2003. |
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