The Luxembourg IPv6 Council has followed closely the introduction of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), especially the recent launch of the .eu IDN in December 2009. The introduction of IDN will require more IP address space which is no more guaranteed by the remaining 10% of the IPv4 address pool expected to be depleted by 2011. IPv6 will therefore extend the needed IP address capacity for IDN deployment around the world.

Photo R. Somers: Xavier Buck, CEO of EuroDNS

The implementation of IDNs gives companies and individuals based in the European Union the chance to register domain names that contain non-Latin characters under the .eu domain. The .eu IDNs support the 23 official languages of the European Union as well as the entire alphabets.

It was important for the Luxembourg IPv6 Council to analyze the interaction and market adaptation of these IDNs in relation with the next-generation Internet Protocol version 6. It was also a major step forward for key players and domain name registrars to implement IPv6 within their technology.

Together with EuroDNS, one of the IDN domain registrars, the Taskforce was able to evaluate possible influences, and confirm that both the implementation and usability of IPv6 in relation with IDN domain names works as smoothly and easily as for non IDN domain names.

“IDNs & IPv6 are good room-mates to extend the Internet over and beyond current limited scale. EuroDNS has already implemented IPv6 for .eu IDN. This is a major milestone for the New Internet in the making” states IPv6 Forum President Latif LADID, based in Luxembourg. EuroDNS is a leading registrar of international domain name, offering more than 150 extensions. Any user who registered an IDN domain name at EuroDNS.com can simply go through his DNS management interface and select an IPv6 address for any registered domain name.

Xavier Buck, CEO of EuroDNS explains, “At EuroDNS, we always strive to implement and adapt to the highest technological advancements existing on the market. For the development of .eu IDNs we felt it was important to use the most adapted technology, hence IPv6 that provides greater possibilities and name resolution”.