ICANN Terms

The following terms are commonly used by the ICANN Community.

Actors/Roles

• CA – a third party company that issues digital certificates and public-private keys as a part of a chosen Public Key Infrastructure.
• ICANN Fellow – A member of the Internet community and recipient of a grant provided by the ICANN Fellowship Program.
• Internet Service Provider
• Independent Objector – a position created by ICANN to determine if a new gTLD application is in the best interest of the Internet community.
• NIC – A network information center manages a registry and contracts with the registrars accredited to sell domains under a given TLD.
• Registrant – A person who has registered a domain name through a registrar.
• Registrar – A company that is authorized to sell domain names.
• Stakeholder

Communities of Practice

• DNS Stability Panel reviews proposed new TLD applications to ensure that they will not harm the security and stability of the Internet.
• GA – the General Assembly Mailing List is an open forum for participation for the GNSO.
• Constituency
• ICANN Studienkreis – an open network of experts dedicated to organizing high-level seminars on Internet industry and governance
• IESG – the Internet Engineering Steering Group oversees the technical management of the IETF.
• ICANN Bodies
• MAG
• RSTEP
• TDG
• TLG

Working Groups/Work Parties

• ASIWG – Arabic Script IDN Working Group
• CCWG-IG – Cross-Community Working Group on Internet Governance
• FFWG
• IDN WG
• JIG – The Joint ccNSO-GNSO IDN Working Group deals with the introduction of IDN ccTLDs under the Fast Track Implementation Process
• PDP-WT
• PEDNR WG
• RAP WG
• VIWG
• WGIG

Task Forces

• IETF – The Internet Engineering Task Force is a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet.
• Whois Task Force

Teams

• CERT – A Computer Emergency Response Team or Computer Security Incident Response Team is a group designated to handle computer security.
• Communications and Coordination Work Team – GNSO team for developing proposals for the Council in response to recommendations made by the BGC WG.
• GCOT– the GNSO team for identifying areas for review to best seat a new Council and gather OSC feedback
• IRT The Implementation Recommendation Team is an Intellectual Property Constituency-created group of consumer protection and trademark law experts.
• STI-DT

Committees

• BGC - a committee established to enhance the performance of the Board, lead the annual Board performance review, including the CEO, and recommend nominees for Board Chair, Vice Chair, and other leadership positions.
• CEO Search Committee
• OSC – GNSO Operations Steering Committee
• PPSC
• SIC
• TMC

Databases

• Registry – a database of all domain names registered under a certain TLD.

Documents

• Applicant Guidebook – ICANN guidebook for applying for new gTLDs in the New gTLD Program
• Community Objection – a formal public comment made during the objection period of the New gTLD Program.
• ICANN Bylaws

Organizations

• APTLD – the Association for ccTLD registries in the Asia Pacific region
• ASIP – a non-profit organization, based in Jordan, for developing and modernizing intellectual property laws and systems in Arab countries.
• CORE – The Internet Council of Registrars is a non-profit organization formed in 1996 based on the gTLD-MoU to assist the launch of domain name spaces
• ICANN
• IGF
• ISOC – The Internet Society
• PTI –

Processes

Mechanisms

• ADR – an Alternative Dispute Resolution is a process for helping parties under dispute resolve their argument without filing any litigation.
• Batching – ICANN's process for dividing applications for the new gTLD program into batches.
• Digital Archery – ICANN mechanism for determining the processing time or batch slots for each gTLD application using target time variance.
• Public Comment
• RSEP – ICANN process for screening and approving proposals made by gTLD operators for new registry services.

Practices

• Cybersquatting – attempting to profit by purchasing domain names made of marketable and trademark-related terms and later reselling or licensing those names back to the companies that developed the trademark
• Data Escrow – storing data with a neutral third party in case of registry or registrar failure, accreditation termination, or accreditation relapse without renewal.
• Defensive Registration – registering domain names, often across multiple TLDs and in various grammatical formats, to protect intellectual property from DNS abuse.
• Delegation – entering a new TLD into the Root Zone of the Internet.
• Direct Navigation – visiting a website while bypassing online search engines to arrive at the desired domain.
• Domain Kiting – returning a name just before the five-day period expires and re-registering it again as soon as it becomes available.
• Domain Monetization – purchasing domain names and then either selling, leasing, or parking them to earn money.
• Domain Tasting using the free five-day grace period at the beginning of ICANN's registration process to test the marketability of a specific domain name.

Functions

• IANA –

Programs

• Fellowship Program
• New gTLD Program – a process by which ICANN accepts applications to add new TLDs to the Root Zone.
• NextGen@ICANN

Internet Architecture

• ARPANET – the first wide-area packet-switching network with distributed control to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite; the technical foundation of the Internet.

Domain Name System

• DNS – The Domain Name System translates between alphanumeric domain names and IP Addresses.
• Root Zone –

Protocols

• FTP – a TCP/IP-based network protocol to transmit files from one computer to another through the Internet.

Domain Name

• Domain Name – An identification string that represents an IP resource, such as a computer, website, or service.
• DNSSEC extensions that enable communication authentication between hosts and DNS data, while ensuring data integrity.
• IDN – An Internationalized Domain Names is formed using characters from different scripts, such as Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, or Devanagari. These are encoded by the Unicode standard following IDN protocol.
• Internet Layer
• IP – Internet Protocol is the means by which data is sent from one computer to another via an Internet connection.
• IP Address – the unique number given to every computer connected to the Internet. This number allows users and other computers to find each other.
• Internet Protocol Suite
• IPv4
• IPv6
• TLD – The Top Level Domain is the last part of a domain name; see the main article for more info on types of TLDs.
• WHOIS is a query and response protocol for querying databases that store the registered users or assignees of an Internet resource, such as a domain name, an IP address block, or an autonomous system.