Cerf To Surf Out, IDNs To Surf In

"The Architect," you might call him, or "The Father of the Internet," or more recently, as Google has titled him, "Chief Internet Evangelist," Vinton Cerf will perform one of his last official functions as Board Chair of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) next month.

Of specific interest to many at that meeting will ICANN's progress on implementing internationalized domain names (IDNs), which will expand the characters available for domain names from the present 37 to "tens of thousands of characters" from many of the world's languages.

“IDNs are going to change the face of the Internet when they arrive," said Dr Paul Twomey, president and CEO of ICANN, in a statement.

"It will give people the chance to register domain names with their names in their languages.

“ICANN is about to launch a technical evaluation of the impact IDNs will have, and if all goes well internationalized domain names could be available sometime in 2008.”