Nasscom, Global Internet Body to Set Standards for IoT Devices to use Domain Name System

India's apex body for IT, NASSCOM, has partnered with ICANN, or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a global organization that is responsible for allocating IP addresses and managing the domain name system (DNS), for working in developing standards that will feed into the global consultation for managing Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices.

ICANN, which is often called the phone book of the internet, matches domain names with appropriate IP address numbers. Its partnership with Nasscom, which was announced last year and has so far focused on building standards for IoT, will also collaborate on other research.

Together, they will first focus on updating IoT devices using domain name system (DNS) even in a situation where the manufacturer or supplier has closed down the business.

"Future of the digital era has to be about partnerships. We have to significantly increase research and development capacity. The way we innovate has not only to solve India's problem but also of the world," Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh said.

The project team comprises ICANN's technical experts, Nasscom's Centre of Excellene-IoT team, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad, and participants from India’s Education and Research Network (ERNET). The teams began research on the DNS and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT) last year.

The project aims to explore the industrial and large-scale deployment issues associated IPv6-only devices. It is being carried out with a series of simulations and experiments to explore automated updates of different kinds of IoT- enabled devices.

India, with a base of 560 million Internet users and still growing, also leads the world in the adoption of a new set of Internet addresses, called IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6). Most upcoming IoT devices are expected to have addresses belonging to IPv6.

"This collaboration provides a structure for us to jointly identify research projects, particularly in new technologies related to the internet's system of unique identifiers," said David Conrad, Chief Technology Officer, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

ICANN is a nonprofit global organization that overlooks all the internet plumbing on behalf of governments, universities and companies, as well as the public. It is a global multi-stakeholder organization that was created by the U.S. government. However, since in March 2016 ICANN is no longer overseen by the US government and its ropes is now into the hands of a lesser known organisation that will have a number of countries on board.

Source - Business Standard

Soon Internet Domains to be Available in 22 Indian Regional Languages Scripts

Son you can see and own website domain names in your own regional language as global internet body ICANN is working on a proposal to enable booking of website names in non-English languages including Indian scripts starting with Devanagari, Gurmukhi and Gujarati.

ICANN, or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a global multi-stakeholder organization responsible for IP address space allocation, has been on a new task to support domain names in numerous languages spoken in India, including the 22 scheduled languages of the country.

ICANN India head Samiran Gupta said, “Work is on for nine Indian scripts – Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil, and Telugu. These scripts are expected to cover many different local languages."

A Neo-Brāhmī Generation Panel (NBGP), set up under ICANN, has started consultation to enable registeration of website name extension, technically called top level domain (TLD), like .com, .net, .in, in the three Indian scripts.

The Neo-Brāhmī group is so named to cover all such scripts used today and which are based on Brāhmī scrpit, which is an ancestor of all scripts used to write modern Indo-Aryan languages in Southeast Asia including Burmese, Thai, Lao, Khmer (in South-East Asia), and others in Central Asia.

In October last year, ICANN began “IDN Variant TLDs” initiative with six generation panels, based on specific scripts from major writing systems -- Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, CJK, Arabic and Devanagari.

The technical standards once freezed through the process, called Label Generation Rules for the Root Zone (RZ-LGR), will allow people to use any word of their choice as TLD in the Indian scripts.

"After integration in root zone of these LGR's people from all over world will be able to apply for top level domains in these scripts. This means that internet domains will be possible for public at large in names of there choice and make internet access in there own language," NGBP Chairperson co-chair and Data XGen Plus founder and CEO, Ajay Data told .

Also Read - From 1st Oct'16 The US Will Lose Its Authority Over Internet’s Naming System

The root zone are the main servers that convert name of website in digital form and identify address of server where the website is hosted to connect visitors of online portals. These servers are managed by the not-for-profit organisation ICANN.

While there are nine scripts in works at ICANN, NBGP intends to publish the proposals for the developing technical standards for all nine in three sets starting with Devanagari, Gurmukhi, and Gujarati.

At present website name with extension .bharat can be booked only in Devanagari script which has limited letters that are identified by internet servers.

In 2014, Indian government launched Dot Bharat (.भारत) domain in Devanagari script. The domain has been launched for non-English speaking people, and will cover eight languages like Hindi, Dogri, Bodo, Maithili, Konkani, Marathi, Nepali and Sindhi.

At present you can also search content in the regional language on Google. But, the effort from ICANN is to also enable the domain name in the local language that will make the existing process easier and would also enable the system to publish regional language content that is being searched by the users.

Notably, Devanagari was representative of the Brāhmī family scripts and is currently used for 11 out of 22 official languages of India (Boro/Bodo, Dogri, Hindi, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Marathi, Nepali, Sanskrit, Santhali and Sindhi).

In 2016, ICANN introduced .Google, .Apple, .ibm, and other branded internet addresses.

In the same year, India's state-owned telecom operatoe BSNL introduced free E-Mail Address service in 8 Indian Languages to its broadband users by launching a ‘DataMail’ service. Now BSNL broadband users will be able to open an email ID in DataMail service in their own language.

Via - Times of India | References - Zipdocs.Tips

[Top Image - Microsoft.com]

This is It !, The Internet is No Longer Under US Control

While you might not have noticed, the world of Internet has undergone a major change since Saturday i.e. 1st October.

Last month, we reported that the US would lose its authority over Internet.

Now finally, the long-delayed and perhaps the most-awaited transfer of the World Wide Web's technical management from the United State's government to a nonprofit multi-stakeholder entity has taken place on the 1st of this month. Instead of the power being held just in the hands of the U.S., this particular global community has international representatives from foreign governments and tech companies.

Though the decision to do the changeover has been the pipeline for quite sometime, it took a long time to get it implemented. In fact, there were some last-minutes hiccups. Some conservative politicians and officials tried to stall the handover at the very last minute.

A lawsuit to cancel the handover was filed by the Republican states of Arizona, Texas, Nevada and Oklahoma against the federal government on last Wednesday. According to them, the handover was completely unconstitutional and required congressional approval. But, a federal judge ended up denying the lawsuit on Friday and the changeover transition took place smoothly thereafter on Saturday.

Since its origin, the United States government has held the reigns of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). This meant, they administered the global database of addresses for almost all the servers and websites that were there on the Web. Prior to the handover, ICANN was being administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is a part of the United States' department of Commerce.

People criticising the handover debated that the handover could end up jeopardising free speech online. These claims were dismissed by the Obama administration and technology companies on the basis of lack of merit.

The ICANN will now be administered by a collection of public interest advocates, technical experts, academicians, private industry and government representatives, and users from all around the globe. The ICANN is calling it as a “multi-stakeholder process.”