Internationalised domain names (IDNs) have moved closer to being realised, after ICANN announced it had successfully completed testing of the names. Domain names can currently be composed of only 37 different symbols, including digits, Latin letters, and the hyphen. However, those who use languages which employ other characters, such as Chinese or Arabic, have long been demanding the ability to use Domain Names which are based on those characters; navigation of local sites would become much easier if this was done. Advocates see this development as crucial to retaining a single global internet, rather than a network divided by which languages and characters are "allowed".

ICANN commissioned a laboratory test of IDNs in October 2006. The test was designed to establish whether the use of international characters would "have any impact on the operations of the root name servers providing delegations, or the iterative mode resolvers".

ICANN recently announced the results of their testing. "No impact at all could be detected," wrote Lars-Johan Liman, one of the testers. "All involved systems behaved exactly as expected." All details of the test setup and design are available on ICANN’s website, so that it can be replicated if needed.

Celebration may be premature, though, as the test did not include a live root test, or how the IDNs would look for users. Instead, they only concentrated on "replicating the root server environment". Significant further testing will therefore doubtless be necessary before IDNs can be launched.