Internationalized country code top-level domain

An internationalized country code top-level domain is a top-level domain in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. IDN ccTLDs are specially encoded domain names that are displayed in an end user application, such as a web browser, in their language-native script or alphabet, such as the Arabic alphabet, or a non-alphabetic writing system, such as Chinese characters. IDN ccTLDs are an application of the internationalized domain name system to top-level Internet domains assigned to countries, or independent geographic regions. Although the domain class uses the term code, some of these ccTLDs are not codes but full words. For example, السعودية (as-Suʻūdiyya) is not an abbreviation of "Saudi Arabia", but the commonwealth short-form name of the country in Arabic. Countries with internationalized ccTLDs also retain their traditional ASCII-based ccTLDs. As of August 2018 there are 59 approved internationalized country code top-level domains, of them at least 47 used. The most used are .рф (the Russian Federation) with over 900,000 domains names, .台灣 (Taiwan) with around 500,000 and .中国 (China) with over 200,000 domains. Still as of 2018 around 20 countries using non-Latin script do not have an internationalized country code top-level domain, including Japan. The ICANN board approved the establishment of an internationalized top-level domain name working group within the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) in December 2006. They resolved in June 2007 inter alia to proceed and asked the IDNC Working Group to prepare a proposal, which the group delivered in June 2008, "to recommend mechanisms to introduce a limited number of non-contentious IDN ccTLDs, associated with the ISO 3166-1 two-letter codes in a short time frame to meet near term demand." The group proposed a methodology using ICANN's Fast Track Process based on the ICANN charter to work with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority Identify technical basis of the TLD strings and country code specific processes, select IDN ccTLD personnel and authorities, and prepare documentation; Perform ICANN due diligence process for technical proposal and publish method; Enter delegation process within established IANA procedures.