The recent Internet Governance Forum in Athens featured lots of talk about the way that the 'Net is run, but nothing generated more discussion than internationalized domain names (IDNs). In many parts of the world, frustration has built up for years over the need to use Latin characters to access most top-level domains (TLDs), even when they reference sites that are in languages like Tamil, Farsi, or Mandarin. Change is coming, but it's slower than many would like.
ICANN has been urging patience, arguing that if certain countries introduce proprietary systems of their own, the interoperable nature of the Internet could be broken permanently. Systems that are not well-implemented could also cause general confusion and security concerns—is arstëchnica.com safe to visit, or is it a phishing site designed to trap the unwary geek?
At a recent event in Sydney, ICANN CEO Paul Twomey said that the "political pressure" his organization faces will not make ICANN move any faster. "The Internet is like a fifteen story building, and with international domain names what we're trying to do is change the bricks in the basement," he said, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. "If we change the bricks there's all these layers of code above the DNS... we have to make sure that if we change the system, the rest is all going to work."
ICANN's roadmap for IDNs shows that a workable system should be ready by the end of 2007, with live root zone tests to be conducted in December 2006. The group has already contracted with a Swedish firm named Autonomica to do lab testing of the new system, which is currently underway. ICANN has actually been developing the IDN system for three years, leading us to believe that their timetable has a good chance of being met. If you've been holding out on that new domain registration until you could have it in Hindi, you've only got a year left to wait.
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