The introduction of internationalized domain names (IDNs) has come a step closer, following the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' (ICANN) meeting in Kuala Lumpur last week.

An advisory group is to be set up to examine IDNs and their use by the global internet community.

IDNs allow domain names to be registered using characters in non-Latin-based languages, such as Korean, Chinese and Japanese.

IDNs were discussed during a one-day workshop at the quarterly ICANN meeting. ICANN president and CEO Paul Twomey said: "Letting people access information and the internet in natural languages and scripts is one of the most important challenges we face."

Twomey added: "ICANN was facilitating this event to bring experts together to share knowledge, opinions, and experiences so that the internet community can move this issue forward, together."

The ICANN meeting attracted more than 700 participants from 50 countries. Other topics discussed included the implementation of the Ipv6 technology which enables trillions more web addresses to be created.

More information is available on the ICANN website.

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