The top-level domain (TLD) “XN—S9BRJ9C” might seem like a random assortment of numbers and letters, but it actually has a very specific meaning and function in the world of Internet domains. It’s a Punycode representation of an Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) TLD. Punycode is a method to encode Unicode characters in ASCII, which is the character set that domain names traditionally use.
This particular TLD “XN—S9BRJ9C” represents the domain suffix “.भारत”, which means “India” in Hindi (Devanagari script). It’s a country-code top-level-domain (ccTLD) used in India. The goal behind introducing TLDs such as “XN—S9BRJ9C” was to make the internet more accessible and easier to use for people who read and write in scripts other than the Latin alphabet.
The Unicode IDN ccTLD “.भारत” was approved by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) on 27th August, 2014 as part of their “Fast Track Process”. This was a program to increase the use of non-Latin characters in domain names. The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) manages these ‘.भारत’ domains.
The use of IDN TLDs like “.भारत” allows internet users in different regions and language communities to access web addresses in their native scripts. For example, the Indian government’s official portal can be accessed not only through “www.india.gov.in”, but also “www.भारतशासन.भारत”.
Other examples of such IDN ccTLDs used include “.рф” for Russia, “.中国” for China, and “.みんな” for Japan, having Punycode representations as “.xn—p1ai”, “.xn—fiqs8s” and “.xn—q9jyb4c” respectively. They each serve a similar function as “.भारत”, allowing web addresses to be typed in the respective native scripts.
Creating these native script domain names are a crucial part of ensuring that the internet is globally accessible and linguistically diverse, and can especially have a lot of utility in countries like India where a significant portion of the population is not comfortable with English.
In summary, “XN—S9BRJ9C” is a Punycode representation of the internationalized ccTLD “.भारत”, making it possible for people in India to use and access domains in their native Hindi script.
Sources used for the answer:
1. ICANN organization – Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) Program
2. ICANN organization – ASCII Compatible Encoding (ACE)
3. National Internet Exchange of India – Internationalized Internet Domain Names (IDN)
4. ICANN Announces Successful Evaluation of Three Proposed Internationalized Domain Name ccTLD Strings – ICANN Press Release, August 27, 2014
5. ICANNwiki – .भारत
6. Official portal of Indian Government – www.भारतशासन.भारत
7. RFC 3492 – Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)
