Jan, 2008 : Successful Evaluations of .test IDN TLDs

In October 2006, ICANNengaged Autonomica AB of Stockholm, Sweden, to develop, conduct, and reporton the results of laboratory testing of internationalized top-level domainsin a setting corresponding to the public root. On 7March 2007 theresult of the laboratory tests were reported successfully. The laboratory technicaltest was one of the prerequisites to eventual insert internationalized toplevel labels in the root zone, which subsequentlywere done andthe associated test facilitywas launched.

Following the project plan, Autonomica then conducted a replication of thelaboratory test, live in the DNS. Quoting from their report:

"Autonomica AB has, under a contract with ICANN, investigated whetherthe addition of top level domains containing encoded internationalized characters(so called IDNs) to the public root zone for testing purposes has any impacton the iterative mode resolvers used to look up the information. No impact at all could be detected. All involved systems behaved exactly as expected."

Therefore, the Automomica test raised no issue regarding the ability of root-seversand iterative mode resolvers to handle IDN TLD queries.

Details of the test result can be found here [PDF,129K].

For any questions or request for additional details of the test design andresult please contact Tina Dam at tina.dam@icann.org.

For further information around ICANN's IDN Program please visit https://www.icann.org/topics/idn.