UAEnic officials discuss domain name developments with ICANN

The meeting was held to exchange views on the progress made by UAEnic and to discuss mutual areas of cooperation to benefit the Internet community across the UAE and the Region. Abdulla Hashim, UAEnic manager and John Crain, Chief Technical Officer of ICANN were among the top officials who attended this meeting.

During the meeting, UAEnic gave the members of the ICANN delegation insights into the IDN (Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) initiatives in the region and particularly with the testing of Arabic domain names. UAEnic initially started working with counterparts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman to develop domain names in the Arabic language.

Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Jordan are the other countries which have joined the testing initiative which is set to expand further with more countries joining in. From the ICANN side, Tina Dam, IDN Program Director briefed the UAEnic team about the recent developments in terms of the progress made in testing internationalized labels as the top level domains in the root server system.

On the IPv6 front, UAEnic members explained the steps taken in the country to enable deployment of IPv6. Etisalat is a key member of the UAE IPv6 taskforce and has been devoting considerable time and resources to helping the task force fulfill its mandate of increasing the deployment of IPv6 to enable IP based devices seamlessly communicate and interoperate in a much more efficient manner.

It was agreed during the meeting to organize a workshop with the Arab ccTLD Administrators to increase awareness about the developments and latest technology in this domain. Issues such as DNSSEC( DNS Security), IDNs, interfacing with IANA(Internet Assigned Number Authority) and best current practices for registry operations and policies, are all going to be addressed in this workshop. The workshop will take place in Dubai on the 20th and 21st of November 2006.

According to Abdulla Hashim, Manager, UAEnic,

"This meeting with ICANN is significant and has helped to raise awareness on both sides about the developments in the Middle East and in the UAE in particular. I am very happy that the ICANN staff was impressed by the infrastructure setup of UAEnic including the expertise of the team responsible for the day to day operations. This is testimony to the constant efforts made by UAEnic to enhance its infrastructure and processes in order to be in line with the latest international technology standards and best practices to serve the local and international Internet communities."

"This meeting is in line with the outreach plan for the Middle East in which the ICANN is trying to work more closely and effectively with the Internet community in the region. The meeting was a good opportunity for both sides to discuss the latest advancements pertaining to the Internet unique identifier system and particularly the topic of internationalized domain names (IDNs) which is of paramount importance to UAEnic.

'UAEnic is a leading ccTLD registry in the Arab world not only in terms of the number of domain registrations they maintain but more importantly in the level of expertise they have which will definitely help them achieve more progress and success," says Baher Esmat, Middle East Liaison of ICANN.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is an internationally organized, non-profit corporation that is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet's system of unique identifiers. This includes Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic top level domain
(gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions.