The top-level domain (TLD) you mentioned, XN—45BRJ9C, is an Internationalized Country Code Top Level Domain (IDN ccTLD). The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) introduced IDN ccTLD to allow non-english speaking nations to have domain names in their native language or script.
In specific, “XN—45BRJ9C” corresponds to the IDN ccTLD for India, in its official language, Hindi. The domain is Punycode for “भारत”, pronounced as “Bharat”, which is the Hindi word for India. ICANN introduced this IDN ccTLD back in 2011 with the aim of expanding the global interoperability of the Internet and enhancing its multilingual user accessibility, enabling greater diversity of languages on the web.
When encoded to Punycode, the representation of “भारत” becomes “XN—45BRJ9C”. Punycode is a form of encoding used in the Domain Name System (DNS) that allows the use of Unicode characters not typically allowed in DNS names. In essence, it’s a way of representing international characters in the ASCII character set used by DNS.
For example, the website of the president of India, is available both as http://presidentofindia.nic.in in English, and also as http://राष्ट्रपति.भारत or http://xn—i1b6b1a6a2e.xn—h2brj9c in its DNS name. Other services in India too, can make use of this TLD, like local businesses, government institutions etc., which makes accessing websites more user friendly and familiar to the native Hindi speaking population.
It’s worth noting that ICANN works closely with the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), which is responsible for the .in ccTLD for India, to ensure that the IDN ccTLD “XN—45BRJ9C” meets the technical and policy requirements of ICANN’s IDN ccTLD Fast Track Program.
In summary, “XN—45BRJ9C” is one of the IDN ccTLD introduced by ICANN for Hindi language which reflects the cultural and linguistic diversity on the Internet and makes it more accessible to people around the world.
(Sources: ICANN IDN Wiki: भारत – xn—h2brj9c, NIXI: .IN Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (INDRP), RFC 3492: Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA).)
