[ASIA] Since the launch of its test phase in the multilingual domain game, VeriSign
(Nasdaq:VRSN) says its Multilingual Domain Names Testbed has received over 700,000 domain
name registrations since it initiated service on November 10, 2000.
The Testbed currently supports registration of domain names containing Chinese, Japanese, and
Korean characters in the .com, .net and .org top-level domain names. Officials at the Mountain
View-based registrar say registrations to date include 275,000 Chinese domain names, nearly
250,000 Korean names and 200,000 Japanese names.
The Testbed is coordinated with the work of the Internationalized Domain Name (IDN), which is
developing global standards for domain names containing characters beyond the current system of
letters from the Roman alphabet and digits.
Though currently open for registration only, VeriSign has already begun working on the resolution
phase of multilingual domains as well. Resolution is the process by which a domain name is
translated into an IP address, something the must be made compatible with the more than 24
million Roman character domain names currently in the .com, .net and .org top-level domains.
