hi all, i walked out of our last call with an action item to get cracking on the "educate Mikey about IDNs" project that Chris Wright (of the dotShavaka Registry (http://xn----1mcbc7cp0fnu.xn--mgbaam7a8h/index-en.php) dreamed up in Durban. i'm happy to report that we finished it up last week and i've posted the result to our web site. i think it's great. i learned a *lot* about IDNs and feel a lot more comfortable talking about them in a policy context. here's the link to the series: http://www.ispcp.info/policy-resources/idns-a-brief-whirlwind-tour/ and here's what is covered: Session 1: Introduction to IDNs (24:49) – covers the basics of DNS, ASCII, Unicode, languages and scripts. It focuses on how computers process domain names. After the session, users will have a better understanding of the following concepts: encoding systems, ASCII, case insensitivity of domain names, Unicode, code point, and challenges of Unicode. Session 2: Introduction to IDNA (Internationalized Domain Names for Applications) (14:40) – covers the basics of the IDNA protocol. After the session, users will have a better understanding of: what IDNA does, punycode encoding and decoding, U-Labels and A-Labels. Sessions 3: IDN Registrations and Registry/Registrar operations (25:36) – covers the basics of registry and registrar operational practices that are needed to support IDNs. After the session, users will have a better understanding of what registries need to do to support IDNs, when/where the registry/registrar interaction takes place. Session 4: Blocking Variants (15:02) – covers the basics of variants of IDNs and how a registry could provision them in order to maintain the security of an IDN namespace. It provides examples of variants, the security issues they pose, challenges of supporting variants, and one registry’s practice to handle variant blocking. Session 5: Activating Variants (16:46) – covers the basics of blocked vs active variants, what the challenges of activating variants are from a registry’s perspective, and Shavaka Registy’s approach to active variants. Session 6: IDNs putting it all together (15:15) – a brief review of the topics covered in this series, an overview of some of the challenges for IDN adoption and a brief discussion of why IDNs matter. Here’s a link to the slide deck that Chris used during the conversation. the whole series comes to something over 3 hours -- so i'd suggest taking it in a few bites rather than all at once. but most of the bites are pretty manageable -- about 15 minutes long. there are a couple 25 minute ones that cover topics that just didn't split up very well. see what you think. all the credit for the good ideas belongs to Chris Wright and Steve Sheng. all the bad ideas are mine. mikey PHONE: 651-647-6109, FAX: 866-280-2356, WEB: www.haven2.com, HANDLE: OConnorStP (ID for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)