Universal Acceptance

Last updated

Universal Acceptance (UA) is a term coined by Ram Mohan to represent the principle that every top-level domain (TLD) should function within all applications regardless of script, number of characters, or how new it is. [1]

Contents

Historically, there were a limited number of TLDs available in strings of two or three Latin-script characters. This began to change in 2000, when ICANN introduced new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) that were longer than three characters, such as .info and .museum. ICANN began to address these issues through initiatives such as creating a Universal Acceptance Toolkit [2] in 2006, which provided reference code to software developers on how to cater for all TLDs correctly.

In 2010, the first internationalised domain names (IDNs), or domain names using non-Latin characters, were introduced. In 2013, ICANN's New gTLD Program introduced over 1,000 new gTLDs to its root. [3] This expansion of the Domain Name System’s Root Zone further exacerbated challenges associated with universal acceptance of these domain names. For the principles of Universal Acceptance to be realized, all valid domain names and email addresses must be accepted, validated, stored, processed and displayed correctly and consistently by all Internet-enabled applications, devices and systems. [4]

Universal Acceptance Steering Group

In February 2015, Ram Mohan founded the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) at the ICANN52 [5] meeting in Singapore, following efforts at organizing the IDN community at the ICANN IDN symposium in Dubai. The first face to face meeting of the UASG was held at the ICANN53 [6] meeting in Buenos Aires. The UASG has grown into a community-led program, supported by ICANN, aimed at facilitating the adoption of Universal Acceptance principles by the industry. [7]

Mohan's Laws of Universal Acceptance

In 2002[ citation needed ], Ram Mohan, then CTO of the .INFO TLD, experienced the first instances of Universal Acceptance problems, [8] and crafted three laws that appeared valid in the domain name space:

  1. An old TLD will be accepted more often than a new TLD.
  2. An ASCII-only TLD will be accepted more than an IDN TLD.
  3. A two or three letter TLD will be accepted more often than a longer ccTLD or gTLD.

As of 2024, these laws appear to still hold true. [9] The success of Universal Acceptance would result in these laws becoming obsolete.

One of the primary ways of interfacing with the Internet is through web browsers. For this reason, the UASG commissioned a report on the performance of major browsers in the treatment and acceptance of 17 different domain names registered for the purpose of providing test cases for UA readiness. [10] [11]

The study found that desktop browsers generally performed well, but only Internet Explorer performed as expected. Common problems among the other browsers included the failure to properly render the URLs in the tab title bar and failing to treat an ideographic full stop as a delimiter. On mobile platforms, the results of the tests were much more varied, with the same browsers performing differently based on the operating system, with one of the most common problems being the proper display of Unicode URLs.

The study concluded that developers are making progress in making browsers UA Ready, but there is more work to do on every browser except Internet Explorer, a browser that has been discontinued.

Email address internalization

Internationalized email address is also part of Universal Acceptance Steering Group, where Email Service providers are motivated to start providing email address for IDNs and also engage them to solve issues related to interoperability with legacy systems. Downgrading is not recommended using punycode however providing ASCII Alias email address with EAI is the recommended practice. Aliasing as downgrading technique is being practiced by BSNL, [12] which used XgenPlus [13] email solution.

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) are linked to Universal Acceptance, because TLDs in local languages are always more than 3 letters long, and often do not work well in browsers, emails and other internet applications. One of the earliest groups recognizing the importance of IDNs and problems with Universal Acceptance was the Arabic Script IDN Working Group (ASIWG). Operated by Afilias' Ram Mohan, ASIWG aims to develop a unified IDN table for the Arabic script, and is an example of community collaboration that helps local and regional experts engage in global policy development, as well as technical standardization [14] [15] .It is reasonable to infer, therefore, that the usage growth could have been even more significant if DNS was available in Arabic characters.

Leadership at Universal Acceptance Steering Group

Leaders for UASG are chosen every two years by vote. In February 2015, Ram Mohan was elected chair, and Edmon Chung, Richard Merdinger and Mark Svancarek were elected vice chairs. In February 2017, Ram Mohan was reelected Chair, with the same slate as 2015. In March 2019, Ajay Data was elected [16] Chair and Dusan Stojicevic, Mark Svancarek and Dennis Tan Tanaka were elected vice chairs. In 2021 Ajay Data was reelected Chair of along with Dr. U.B. Pavanaja and Abdalmonem Galila as vice chairs. [17]

Working groups

In 2019, UASG created working groups [18] with community leaders and volunteers to better manage the groups works.

UA Day

In 2022, ICANN and the UASG announced their intention to celebrate the UA Day, starting with the first one on 28 March 2023.

Related Research Articles

A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the last non empty label of a fully qualified domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level domain is .com. Responsibility for management of most top-level domains is delegated to specific organizations by the ICANN, an Internet multi-stakeholder community, which operates the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and is in charge of maintaining the DNS root zone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Domain name</span> Identification string in the Internet

In the Internet, a domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As of December 2023, 359.8 million domain names had been registered. Domain names are used in various networking contexts and for application-specific naming and addressing purposes. In general, a domain name identifies a network domain or an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, such as a personal computer used to access the Internet, or a server computer.

An email address identifies an email box to which messages are delivered. While early messaging systems used a variety of formats for addressing, today, email addresses follow a set of specific rules originally standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in the 1980s, and updated by RFC 5322 and 6854. The term email address in this article refers to just the addr-spec in Section 3.4 of RFC 5322. The RFC defines address more broadly as either a mailbox or group. A mailbox value can be either a name-addr, which contains a display-name and addr-spec, or the more common addr-spec alone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.info</span> Generic top-level domain

.info is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. The name is derived from information, although registration requirements do not prescribe any particular purpose.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internationalized domain name</span> Type of Internet domain name

An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that contains at least one label displayed in software applications, in whole or in part, in non-Latin script or alphabet or in the Latin alphabet-based characters with diacritics or ligatures. These writing systems are encoded by computers in multibyte Unicode. Internationalized domain names are stored in the Domain Name System (DNS) as ASCII strings using Punycode transcription.

The domain name is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. It is intended for use by individuals for representation of their personal name, nicknames, screen names, pseudonyms, or other types of identification labels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.nu</span> Internet country code top-level domain for the island state of Niue

.nu is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) assigned to the island state of Niue. It was one of the first ccTLDs to be marketed to the Internet at large as an alternative to the gTLDs .com, .net, and .org. Playing on the phonetic similarity between nu and new in English, and the fact that nu means "now" in several northern European languages, it was promoted as a new TLD with an abundance of good domain names available. The .nu domain is now controlled by the Internet Foundation in Sweden amid opposition from the government of Niue.

A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all two-letter top-level domains are ccTLDs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.ae</span> Country code top-level domain for the United Arab Emirates

.ae is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet for the United Arab Emirates. It is administered by .aeDA which is part of the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority of UAE (TDRA).

.sa is the Latin alphabet Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of Saudi Arabia. Domains of this type can be registered through SaudiNIC, a department of the Communications and Information Technology Commission. The Arabic alphabet ccTLD of Saudi Arabia is السعودية.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.ir</span> Internet country code top-level domain for Iran

.ir is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Iran. It is managed by the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences.

The internationalized domain name (IDN) homograph attack is a way a malicious party may deceive computer users about what remote system they are communicating with, by exploiting the fact that many different characters look alike

IDN.IDN is an abbreviation for an Internationalized domain name whose Top level domain (TLD) is also internationalized, which could be transliterated .com, .net, .org, etc. or be groupings relevant to the language at hand.

International email arises from the combined provision of internationalized domain names (IDN) and email address internationalization (EAI). The result is email that contains international characters, encoded as UTF-8, in the email header and in supporting mail transfer protocols. The most significant aspect of this is the allowance of email addresses in most of the world's writing systems, at both interface and transport levels.

The Arabic name امارات, romanized as emarat, is the internationalized country code top-level domain for the United Arab Emirates. The ASCII name of this domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet is xn--mgbaam7a8h, using the Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) procedure in the translation of the Unicode representation of the script version. The domain was installed in the Domain Name System on 5 May 2010.

مصر is the internationalized country code top-level domain in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet for Egypt. Its ASCII DNS name is xn--wgbh1c, obtained by the Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) transcription method.

An internationalized country code top-level domain is a top-level domain in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. IDN ccTLDs are specially encoded domain names that are displayed in an end user application, such as a web browser, in their language-native script or alphabet, such as the Arabic alphabet, or a non-alphabetic writing system, such as Chinese characters. IDN ccTLDs are an application of the internationalized domain name system to top-level Internet domains assigned to countries, or independent geographic regions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.top</span> Generic top-level Internet domain

.top is a generic top-level domain, officially delegated in ICANN's New gTLD Program on August 4, 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ajay Data</span> Indian entrepreneur

Ajay Data is an Indian entrepreneur with interest in IT, Edible Oil and Handball. He is elected Chair of Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG). Data led the creation of one of the world's first linguistic email address mobile apps for Internationalized Domain Names domains. He provided leadership as chair to bring Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Indian language Top level domain (TLD) into root servers. He has been recently credited with Graham Bell Award for this innovation and Pt Deendayal Upadhyay Excellence Award for work in languages and script. ICANN-UASG case study explains and talk about it in detail. He had proposed a standard for downgrading with Alias, which was accepted and recommended as best practice by Universal Acceptance Steering Group. His mobile app provides access email access in 19 languages including Cyrillic, Arabic, Thai, Mandarin, Korean and 15 Indian languages. which is available through DataMail app.

An emoji domain is a domain name with one or more emoji in it, for example 😉.tld.

References

  1. ↑ "ICANN - Universal Acceptance". ICANN. February 25, 2012.
  2. ↑ "ICANN Releases Beta-3 Version of TLD Verification Code". ICANN. Retrieved March 21, 2023.
  3. ↑ "First IDN ccTLDs available". ICANN. May 5, 2010.
  4. ↑ "UASG Quick Guide" (PDF). Universal Acceptance Steering Group. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
  5. ↑ "Home | ICANN52 | Singapore". archive.icann.org. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  6. ↑ "Universal Acceptance Steering Group Workshop | ICANN53 | Buenos Aires". archive.icann.org. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  7. ↑ "ICANN - Universal Acceptance". ICANN. February 25, 2012.
  8. ↑ Mohan, Ram. "More problems crop up with universal acceptance of top level domains". CircleID. Retrieved 19 February 2020.
  9. ↑ https://uasg.tech/wp-content/uploads/documents/UASG025-en-digital.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
  10. ↑ "Universal Acceptance of Popular Browsers" (PDF). Universal Acceptance Steering Group. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
  11. ↑ "Use Cases for UA Readiness Evaluation" (PDF). Universal Acceptance Steering Group. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
  12. ↑ "XgenPlus empowers BSNL to host linguistic domains". www.aninews.in. Retrieved 2018-03-06.
  13. ↑ "Data XGen Launches Linguistic Email ID Service In India - CXOtoday.com". www.cxotoday.com. Retrieved 2018-03-06.
  14. ↑ "Internet Governance: Challenges and Opportunities for the ESCWA Member Countries"" (PDF). Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), United Nations. 15 June 2009.
  15. ↑ "EXPERT GROUP MEETING ON THE USE OF ARABIC SCRIPT IN DOMAIN NAMES" (PDF). UN ESCWA Arabic Script Languages. May 28, 2008.
  16. ↑ "UASG Elects New Chair". Universal Acceptance Steering Group. 15 March 2019.
  17. ↑ UASG. "UASG Leaders". Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG). Retrieved 2022-06-14.
  18. ↑ UASG. "Working Groups". Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG). Retrieved 2022-06-14.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.