Ref. ICANN.org : 2008-01-31

Successful Evaluations of .test IDN TLDs

In October 2006, ICANN engaged Autonomica AB of Stockholm, Sweden, to develop, conduct, and report on the results of laboratory testing of internationalized top-level domains in a setting corresponding to the public root. On 7 March 2007 the result of the laboratory tests were reported successfully. The laboratory technical test was one of the prerequisites to eventual insert internationalized top level labels in the root zone, which subsequently were done and the associated test facility was launched.

Following the project plan, Autonomica then conducted a replication of the laboratory test, live in the DNS. Quoting from their report: "Autonomica AB has, under a contract with ICANN, investigated whether the addition of top level domains containing encoded internationalized characters (so called IDNs) to the public root zone for testing purposes has any impact on 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-severs and iterative mode resolvers to handle IDN TLD queries.


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

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