Become an IDN Registrar

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) enable Internet users to navigate and communicate online in their preferred script, transforming the Internet into a truly global and multilingual tool. By adding IDNs to their .com, .net, .tv, and .cc domain name options, registrars have the opportunity to expand services and help increase revenues. For assistance or questions, please contact the VeriSign Customer Affairs Office, 703-925-6999 or cao@verisign-grs.com.

To Register IDNs with .com or .net

You must become a registrar for .com or .net before you can offer IDN options for those top level domains (TLDs). Become a .com, .net Registrar.

To Register IDNs with .name

You must become a registrar for .name before you can offer IDN options for this TLD. Become a .name Registrar.

To Register IDNs with .tv or .cc

You must become a registrar for .tv or .cc before you can offer IDN options for those TLDs. Become a .tv, .cc Registrar.

Add IDN

Registrars are welcome to download the IDN Software Development Kits (SDKs) and implement IDN offerings into your domain name registration service. Go to IDN SDKs.

Technical Considerations

VeriSign IDNs follow Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Standards related to IDN. There are important points to consider when registering an IDN.

IDN Registration

The VeriSign Shared Registration System (SRS) allows a registrant to register IDNs through a registrar in any script supported by Unicode. The registrant's IDN is stored in the Registry’s database in an ASCII-compatible representation as defined by RFC 3492 (Encoding Scheme: punycode). The uniqueness of a domain name registration is determined by its Unicode representation. Valid characters for IDNs are those identified within the Unicode 3.2. For more information, see Policy for IDN Code Points.

Dispute Policy

VeriSign processes IDN transactions on first-come, first-served basis in the same manner as with all registrations in the .com, .net, .name, .tv, and .cc registries. If a dispute occurs, VeriSign follows any and all policies established by ICANN to uniformly administer the domain name transfer dispute process.

To assist with potential disputes, VeriSign has created the IDN Conversion Tool, which works as follows:

• Any user may input an IDN character string into the tool and click Convert.
• The tool will perform the conversion and display the string, after applying Name Preparation, and the punycode character string for the prepared domain name character string (e.g., xn--yal93qak4a).
• Under Whois Query, the user may select either Domain or Nameserver, then click the Query button to query VeriSign's Whois for the punycode character string.
• The VeriSign Whois displays the appropriate registrar for the punycode character string, and the user may continue with normal procedures for researching, preparing, and submitting a complaint under the UDRP.

Please contact VeriSign Customer Service if you have any questions.

Registrar Tools

Sample User Interface
Sample user interfaces (UIs) for domain name registration highlight possible implementations of language tags into the purchase flow. Go to Sample User Interface.