Domain Names for All Nations
By John Yunker
The domain name system (DNS) functions as the virtual phone book of the Internet. Just as everyone with a phone has a name and matching phone number, every computer connected to the Internet has both a domain name and matching Internet protocol (IP) number. Without the DNS, users who want to visit a Web site like Amazon.com would have to type in its IP address: 207.171.181.16. DNS provides a user-friendly alternative to remembering those cumbersome IP addresses.
Unfortunately, if you don't speak English, the DNS isn't nearly as user friendly. Consider the dilemma of the French car manufacturer, Citrożn. If a Web user tries to visit Citrożn's Web site by entering www.citrożn.com, that user will be disappointed. The DNS doesn't recognize European characters like ż, ż, or —. As a result, users must type www.citroen.com. While this may seem like a trivial detail to many English speakers, it's anything but trivial to French speakers.
The current DNS allows for only a subset of the ASCII character set, specifically the letters A through Z (both upper and lower case), the digits 0 through 9, and the hyphen. Citrożn is relatively fortunate, because most of the characters in its name are included in ASCII. Consider how frustrating it must be for companies with names in languages that use no ASCII characters at all, like Thai and Arabic. And consider the host of trademark issues that arise for companies that can't register their company names as domain names.
According to the Aberdeen Group, only 48 percent of Internet users are English speakers.
