Prague, 21 June 2012 – From 24 to 29 June, Prague will host an international meeting of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the world’s top authority on Internet issues. One of the main topics on the agenda will be additional generic top-level domains (gTLD). The new head of ICANN, who will replace the current CEO, Rod Beckstrom, whose three-year term ends this year, will be introduced at the Hilton Hotel in Prague this Friday. The 44th ICANN meeting is hosted by the CZ.NIC Association, administrator of the Czech top-level domain. The conference will be officially opened by Martin Kuba, Minister of Industry and Trade, along with Ondřej Filip, Executive Director of the CZ.NIC Association, and ICANN representatives.

“The ICANN conference is the most important Internet-related event, and Prague is only the second location in the former Eastern bloc to host it. We are pleased to be involved in such an important conference and hope to raise awareness of current Internet trends, opportunities and challenges among Czech citizens. We are also proud to be able to present the results of our work at the conference,” said Ondřej Filip, Executive Director of the CZ.NIC Association. 

At the Prague conference, the CZ.NIC Association will present the results of its work, for example the DNS server Knot DNS or the open source registration system FRED. Another important point of the agenda will be the report of the DANE working group (DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities), chaired by representatives of CZ.NIC and Google. This initiative aims to standardize a new technology that permits the verification of certification authorities on the basis of DNS. The Association will also hold a special workshop on the FRED registration system, which aroused the interest of domain registry representatives at the last ICANN meeting in Costa Rica. The FRED registration system has been successfully deployed in a number of countries – Angola, Estonia, the Faroe Islands, Costa Rica, Tanzania and the Czech Republic. 

The Prague meeting of the main players in the Internet world is open to the public. Those interested can find more information, including a registration form, on the website http://prague44.icann.org/.

O organizaci ICANN

ICANN’s mission is to ensure a stable, secure and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer - a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn't have one global Internet. ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers. ICANN doesn’t control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn’t deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet’s naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet. For more information please visit: www.icann.org.