IDN World Report Highlights 2020

IDNs in 2020: highlights of this year’s World Report

There has been a decline in the number of IDNs registered across the world. Registrations at the end of 2019 were 8.3 m compared with 9 m in 2018, an 8% drop. There are multiple reasons for this: a sharp decline in Korean IDNs (from 360 000 to 50 000); a loss of 100K IDNs in .xyz; and a general trend of slight losses in the number of IDNs across the board. As in previous years, access to data has been a challenge. The Chinese registry CNNIC ceased publishing or sharing registration data on its second level IDNs under .cn, and access to zone files through ICANN’s CZDS service can be problematic, leading to some major IDN zones not being reflected in this year’s figures.

The distribution of IDNs across the world continues to show a different pattern to that of traditional domain names, with the majority of IDNs being found in China (3.9 million), Russian Federation and Asia.

The majority of IDNs (60%) are found at the second level , and ccTLDs now comprise 80% of all IDNs. The .eu IDNs continue to be in the top 20 of second level IDN spaces.

Usage of IDNs - Universal acceptance remains a challenge

The usage of IDNs remains a problematic experience. Universal acceptance is the concept that all domain names including email addresses should work in all software applications and in every context that a traditional domain name is used. In order for devices and systems to be truly multilingual, they must accept, validate, store, process and display all domain names. Until Universal Acceptance is achieved, it is not possible to provide a consistent and positive experience for all Internet users.

Research commissioned by EURid in 2020 highlighted failures in the support of email address internationalization across major email providers. The lack of reliable functionality continues to affect the usage of IDNs. While 60% of second level IDNs have active name servers, only 37% of top level IDNs have active name servers. More than 80% of gTLD IDNs are parking pages.

Urgent action is required on the part of multiple actors to guarantee that speakers of all languages have the freedom to navigate the web, send and receive emails, login to popular platforms using domain names in their own language.

IDNs support online linguistic diversity

Where IDNs are in use, they continue to support online linguistic diversity. Four scripts, Han (60%), Latin, Cyrillic and Hangul represent 94% of all IDNs, but those scripts support a wide array of languages. Chinese, Russian, German, Korean and Japanese comprise a higher proportion of websites in the IDNs than are found in general web content. Moreover, the level of English language content for IDNs lower (10%) than is found in general web content (60%). IDN script accurately signals the language of web content, demonstrating the utility of domain names in general and IDNs in particular as an aid to navigation and comprehension. So, Arabic script IDNs are associated with content in Arabic and Persian, Cyrillic script with Russian, Bulgarian and Ukrainian web content, Han with Chinese, Han, Katakana and Hiragana with Japanese language content, Latin script with French, Spanish, German, Swedish, Czech, Turkish and others.

The low levels of Arabic script and language content in the web remain a concern, and are in stark contrast to the vibrant use of social media (and support of multiple languages across social media platforms).

.eu IDNs

2019 saw the launch of the .ευ in Greek script, creating a full complement of IDN supporting all 24 official languages of the European Union in their native scripts. Registrations of IDNs showed an upturn towards the end of 2019, coinciding with the launch of .ευ in November 2019.

Up to 76% of .eu IDNs are in active use, and support all European official languages. EURid continues to work closely with industry partners to support research and progress in achieving universal acceptance of IDNs. Research on email address internationalisation in 2020 suggests that some of the major email providers have not yet implemented the technical standard IDNA 2008, which is essential for the proper support of Greek script IDNs. EURid has opened a dialogue with leading providers to raise awareness of this issue.

Industry opinions

We now have ten years of survey results from the ccTLD community, charting confidence in IDNs as a product. Overall, the average opinions on uptake, support by registrars and end-user awareness are recovering slightly from their lowest points but are no where near recovering to their highest levels. When asked what single change would make the most impact on uptake of IDNs, the most popular theme continues to be making progress on universal acceptance (45%).

New partner for the IDN World Report

The IDN World Report welcomes a new partner in 2020, the Russian ccTLD.RU which has been a leading IDN registry since its launch of .РФ. We also said goodbye to Verisign with thanks for its many years as a supporter of the IDN World Report.

Indonesia to Register Six Traditional Scripts as IDNs

Following the successful registration of the Hanacaraka Javanese script as an IDN, the Indonesian Domain Names Manager PANDI hope to do the same with the six traditional scripts of Sundanese, Balinese, Bengkulu’s Rejangnese, Bataknese, Buginese and Makassarese.

‘This follow up action to register all Indonesian traditional scripts as IDNs is part of cultural preservation in the digital world,’ stated PANDI chair Yudho Giri Sucahyo, on Friday June 5, 2020.

The registration process of the six Indonesian scripts is likely to be more straightforward than the Hanacaraka registration, given that the scripts have been added to the unicode.

PANDI Chief Registry Operator Mohamad Shidiq Purnama outlined the trajectory for the summer of 2020. In mid-June, PANDI will submit their application for IDN Top Level Domains (TLDs) to ICANN’s IDN ccTLD Fast Track registration program. ‘Then we are just waiting for the results of about eight weeks (around early September) from ICANN,’ says Purnama, adding his hopes that ‘the process is fast’.

PANDI aims to launch the Hanacaraka Domain Name with the Java Script Congress 2020.

Welcome to ישראל for Israel

The Israeli community will soon be able to register domain names entirely in Hebrew script, thanks to the approval of a new IDN ccTLD ישראל for Israel.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) have announced the successful completion of String Evaluation of the proposed IDN ccTLD string for Israel. This is a key stage that will result in the eventual deployment of domain names in Hebrew script.

Previously Hebrew speakers will have only been able to register domain names with Latin script endings such as ‘.il’, the ccTLD for Israel. The combination of left to right and right to left writing systems within a single domain name creates challenges for both usability and legibility.

The evaluation completed by ICANN has been for a new primary string ending ‘ישראל’ [Israel]. The Hebrew script IDN TLD will enable users to have domain names in a single script and avoid the complexity of mixing scripts and direction of writing systems.

Requests for ccTLDs from countries that have completed the preparation and string evaluation stages of deployment then move into the Delegation phase. These countries can apply for delegation following the same process as is used for ASCII based ccTLDs.

The Israel Internet Association (ISOC-IL) applied for the ‘ישראל’ ending, and Hebrew users should expect to see full Hebrew-script domain names rolled out in the coming months.