Every user's first step in beginning their Internet experience is the actual input of a short chain of alphabets or symbols in their URL bar or e-mail address bar.

Even as local web content is growing, users who are not equipped with English-language literacy are still barred from accessing the Internet.

3 years ago, our team of researchers validated the global demand for a method of Internet access that will eliminate all linguistic barriers. This eventually led to the pioneering of Internationalized Domain Name System allowing for native-character domain names to be used.

Non-English Internet users no longer need to struggle to get onto the Internet or deal with memorizing long addresses that are meaningless to them.

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Why should I use or register Internationalized Domain Names?
  • Maintain cultural identity.
  • Retain a brand's true meaning.
  • Trademark and Copyright protection.
  • Target a specific ethnic demographic.
  • Identify with your intended audience.
  • Market a URL that speaks your business.
  • Create a new business model based on a great new name.
  • Increase revenue stream through new business channel.

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What bodies are responsible for the governance of multilingual domain names? What is your company's affiliation with such authorities?
a) The Internet Engineering Task Force, IETF (www.ietf.org/)
The Internet Engineering Task force (IETF), the Internet's premier standards-setting body, is the rightful authority appointed to look into creating a Standard for Internationalized Domain Names. A standard in place will allow for cross-operability between the various multilingual Internet technologies available in the market, as well as interoperability of the various Internet services such as e-mails, domain names, ftp, telnet, etc.

The creation of an open Standard is a highly challenging task in view of the complexities involved in ensuring that the Internationalization process does not disrupt the stability of the current Internet structure.

i-DNS.net works closely with IETF and recognizes it as the rightful authority and forum for any establishment of a technical standard for the requirement of IDN. i-DNS.net will adapt its flexible technology to be compliant with any standards promulgated by IETF.

b) The Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN (www.icann.org/)
Formed in October 1998, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a non-profit, private sector Corporation formed by a broad coalition of the Internet's business, technical, academic and user communities. ICANN has been recognized by the U.S. government as the global consensus entity to coordinate the technical management of the Internet's domain name system, the allocation of IP address space, the assignment of protocol parameters, and the management of the root server system.

Recognizing the importance that the Internet evolves to be more accessible to those who do not use English character sets, ICANN seeks to facilitate the Internationalization process by playing a coordination role. ICANN may go into policy formulation upon the development of a technical standard.

i-DNS.net has been participating in ICANN meetings and its forums.

c) The Multilingual Internet Names Consortium, MINC (www.minc.org)
Launched in June 2000, the Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC), is an inclusive and open international organization founded for the coordination on multilingual Internet names worldwide and the facilitation of the internationalization of the Internet for all peoples of the world.

The Consortium was founded through the collaborative efforts of the Asia Pacific Networking Group (APNG), National University of Singapore (NUS), the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada and members of the Asia Pacific Internet academic, government and business communities.

i-DNS.net International is one of the founding members of MINC.

Since MINC's inception in 2000, i-DNS.net has been actively involved in the consortium's language and technical working groups, sharing its technical and deployment expertise with a view to ensuring technical interoperability and the successful evolution of an international standard.

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How did Internationalized Domain Names come about?
i-DNS.net trail-blazed the development of Internationalized Domain Names when it developed the Internationalized Domain Name System (i-DNS), technology that empower people anywhere to navigate the Internet in any language. Prior to iDNS, there was no technology that can accommodate non-English web and email addresses.

iDNS began as an academic project in early 1998. The idea was first mooted by Dr. Tan Tin Wee, then Chairman of the Asia Pacific Networking Group (APNG; http://www.apng.org), and currently interim CEO and founding member of the Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC).

It was believed that the availability of domain names in local languages and scripts would facilitate the intuitive use of the Internet among an increasing online population of non-English speaking users. A working prototype was developed and intensively test-bedded over a 6-month period, involving the Network Information Centres (NICs) of various Asian countries, including Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. The test-bed proved a success, and the results were presented at the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies (Apricot Singapore '99) and the Annual Internet Society Conference (INET '99).

i-DNS.net was incorporated in October 1999 after securing funding support from US-based General Atlantic Partners LLC.

Since then, Internationalized Domain Names was made available to the global population at large, with take-up rate growing exponentially.

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How does i-DNS work?
i-DNS internationalises and updates the existing Domain Name System (DNS). The DNS works by linking easy-to-understand, hierarchical names for host computers to unique numerical network addresses. However, to be recognised by the DNS, the names must be registered using the ASCII character set, which cannot be used directly to describe many languages other than English. i-DNS technology converts native language encoding to ASCII characters using a conversion process. In this way, iDNS is "backward compatible" with the existing DNS.

Based on Unicode, the technology supports all legacy encoding standard, including GBK, BIG5, Shift-JIS, EUC-KR (widely used in China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea respectively), ISO-8859 standard (used in European and Middle East) and Windows CodePages (used in localized Windows 3.1 and 95 system). In addition, it also supports UTF-8 (used in Windows 98/2000/ME, Internet Explorer, Netscape 6) and various others ACE such as RACE, LACE, DUDE, AMC-ACE-Z and UTF-8.

For a full explanation of how iDNS works, click here

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• A local language operating system;
• An English operating system with special "input method editor" software which allows characters in the local script you wish to input into a web browser; or
• Microsoft Global Input Method Editor software, available via a Windows update from the Microsoft web site.

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How do I go about getting i-DNS to work on my home computer?
Please take a look at our Internet User Support here.

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What do I have to do to start hosting my own DNS servers?
Please contact your registrar and inform them of your decision to host your own domains. There should be no problem in transferring the domain authority to your own DNS servers. Please take a look at the Multilingual Domain Names Hosting section of this faq with regards to any technical concerns.

Can I have my new multilingual domain name point to my existing site? Yes. You can arrange to have both your multilingual and your English domain name point to the same web site, or to different sites, if you prefer.

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Where are the i-DNS servers located?
Check out their locations on our server list here.

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How and with whom do I register a multilingual domain name?
You may register online with any of our Registrar partners located in your home country, or with any of our global-based registrar partners. Click here to get a full listing of all our registrar partners worldwide.

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What is your stand against cyber-squatting?
We perform a pure Registry function and we do not seek to regulate the actual registration of names. Click here to view our registration policy.

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What is your dispute policy?
Our dispute policy is available for viewing at this location on our website: http://www.i-DNS.net/company/policies/dispute.html

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How does one transfer domain names from one registrar or registrant to another?
Domain name transfer procedure is available for viewing at this location on our website: http://www.i-DNS.net/company/policies/registration.html

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Does i-DNS translate my existing domain name into the local script?
No. Your multilingual domain name is a new domain name. Owning the rights to a translated, equivalent word or phrase in English does not automatically secure you the equivalent domain name in another language through i-DNS.

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Do I have to supply the name in the local text?
Yes. You will need to know the specific characters to use in order to register your Chinese or multilingual domain. Please seek advice regarding the translation of your name and the identification of the most appropriate characters to use.

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If I register a Chinese domain name in Big5, do I need to register the same domain name in GB again? No. When you register a Chinese domain name in either Big5 or GB encoding, the domain name is automatically registered in both Big5 and GB encoding. Therefore, you need not register the same domain name in the other encoding.

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Why should I choose to register a multilingual domain name with your system?
There is still no standard for multilingual domain names at this point in time. Consumer decision on which system to adopt is best based upon consideration of:

1. Its technology (Interoperability, robustness)
2. Its deployment (Degree of market penetration, number of current users worldwide)
3. Its involvement on global Internet forums (ICANN, IETF, APNG, APTLD, MINC) You may want to read through the other sections of our website to gain a better understanding of our technical elegance, global deployment success and our standardization path.

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How much do you charge per domain name?
i-DNS.net International is a multilingual Internet solutions provider. We work with our Registrar Partners in each country to deploy our technology. We do not dictate the pricing policies of our partners and they determine their fees according to operational costs and market forces. Therefore, please direct all questions on pricing to the registrar with whom you intend to register your multilingual domain name with. Click here to see our registrar listing.

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What happens to overlapping registrations on different systems? Do I have legal right over the domain I registered?
If you register a multilingual domain name with an i-DNS affiliate, you are then entitled to use the name in the i-DNS.net system - a global multilingual domain name system.

The registration of a domain name entitles the registrant to the use of the domain name in accordance with terms and conditions. Registration does not confer any legal ownership or intellectual property rights over the domain name. The existence or extent of such legal rights depends on the intellectual property rights (eg. trademark rights) you may have over the particular name.

In the event of a domain name dispute, we will follow the processes on our dispute policy and forward the matter to the relevant body for dispute resolution. We make no claims nor do we regulate any language domain space.

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What happens if another system is chosen? What happens to the existing database?
In the event that i-DNS is not adopted as the standard for internationalized domain names, we will

1. Adapt our technology to include/comply with the new standard/protocol; or
2. Migrate our database to the proposed standard

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How do I host multilingual domain names on Unix platform?
You may do so by modifying the DNS hint file or installing iBIND. Please refer to: http://www.i-DNS.net/xxxxx for details.

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What versions of Unix is required to support iBIND?
iBIND can be installed and will run on most versions of Unix e.g. FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris.

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How do I host multilingual domain names on Windows platform?
By modifying the DNS hint file. For details, please refer to this section of our website: http://www.i-DNS.net/xxxxx

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What are the requirements for Windows NT to host multilingual domain names?
You will need to run Windows NT 4.0 and Microsoft DNS. If you are using service pack 4 and above for your WinNT, you can only configure it as an authoritative name server and not as both a caching and authoritative name server.

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Can I use Windows 2000 for multilingual domain name hosting?
Yes. Windows 2000 Microsoft DNS works in the same way as Windows NT.

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Can I use native strings domain name in my host file?
No. You must use a UTF-5 representation of your native string domain name.

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Internet users can download and install our free iClient software to access websites using multilingual domain names registered with i-DNS.net or within VeriSign's multilingual testbed.

i-DNS.net is also offering for free download, a Software Development Kit (SDK) to help application developers IDN-aware their solutions and products, further complementing VeriSign's efforts.

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What is i-DNS.net approach and strategy with regards the deployment of Internationalized Domain Name?
i-DNS.net's has announced its Corporate position paper in October 2001. The paper emphasizes the company's belief in complying with the standards and design requirements recommended by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB); and affirms its continuing efforts to develop robust DNS-based solutions that are flexible enough to integrate seamlessly with all Internet protocols and applications. The paper also articulates i-DNS.net's history, offerings, vision, solution design tenets, strategies in normalizing adoption, usage of Internationalized Domain Names (IDN); and addresses industry issues like:

• Evolving technical standards
• DNS and Keyword-based implementations of IDN
• Multiple IDN scenario
• Protection of consumer interests
• Emergence of 'Alternate Root' services.

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