Domain names

Today, 26/6/2008, the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will vote on two key proposals.

The first would allow domains that do not use Latin characters, meaning domain names using Chinese, Arabic or Cyrillic letters.

The other proposal would allow domains to use nearly any letter or number combination, up to 64 characters.

Why Greek letters were left out is not known.

Perhaps the board members forgot about them.

ICANN can also allow Latin letters with diacritical marks.

India has many languages and scripts.

India can set up Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers in Indian languages (CANNIL).

This can allow Assamese, Bengali, Brahmi, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurumukhi, Kannada, Kharoshti, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu and other letters as domain names.

Bengali is also spoken in Bangladesh and an understanding could be reached.

Urdu letters have 28 Arabic letters so it will be difficult for CANNIL to allow domain names in Urdu.

Besides India can have many domain names in Latin (Roman) letters.

Every state, union territory, district, taluk, city and village can have a domain name of its own.

Every association, company, firm, society, trust etc can have a domain name of its own.

It is unlikely that many will opt for domain names of 64 characters.

The shorter the domain name the better.

Typing 64 characters will take a long time compared to typing three characters.