Singapore To Test Chinese Domain Names

The Asia Pacific Networking Group (APNG), an international non-governmental Internet organization with members from Asia Pacific, and two-year-old Singapore Internet startup BioInformatrix Pte Ltd (BIX) are developing a Singapore-wide test bed to support multilingual domain names starting with the Chinese language.

APNG and the Singapore Broadcasting Authority (SBA) are talking to local
Internet industry players, including ISPs, to
adopt the multilingual domain names technology called Internationalized
Domain Name System (iDNS).

iDNS is capable of supporting multilingual domain names as opposed to the
existing DNS, which is an addressing system that recognizes a Web site or
e-mail address based on ASCII.

Jointly developed by APNG, the National
University of Singapore (NUS) Center for Internet Research (CIR), and BIX,
iDNS will run the nation-wide test bed.

BIX’s role here is to commercialize the software technology for sale to ISPs.

The first phase of the development of a nation-wide test bed to support
multilingual domain names began with the development of a Chinese domain
name for users of the Chinese SingaporeONE WebTop.

The Chinese SingaporeONE WebTop initiative was supported by the National
Chinese Internet Program (NCIP), a program started by the National
Computer Board (NCB), National Science & Technology Board (NSTB), Ministry
of Information and The Arts (MITA), and SBA.

APNG has also received a research grant from the International Development
Research Center of Canada to carry out further research on multilingual
domain names for the next generation Internet protocol, IPv6.

APNG is now actively evangelizing the iDNS technology to the authorities in
Asia Pacific economies such as Korea, Taiwan, Japan, China, Thailand, and
Hong Kong.

APNG is also in the process of forming a committee to resolve governance
issues with regards to handling top level domains (gTLDs).