ICANN begins testing domains in Russian

Today , testing of the International Domain Names (IDN) system has begun , which provides for the exploitation of domains with non-Latin characters in 11 languages, including Russian. As explained by Vint Cerf , domain testing is required in order to ensure that browsers, mail programs, and other applications are working properly.

As part of testing, domain names in 11 new languages ​​besides English are entered into the root server databases (root name server). Along with Russian, alphabets for Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese and Tamil are also supported. For each of these languages, test wiki-pages were created in domains of type example.test (including the Russian-language example-test domain). On these wiki-pages, users can create “subdomains” in national languages.

The introduction of non-Latin domains by the organization ICANN calls one of the most important changes of the Internet in its history. If global testing passes without serious problems, by the end of 2008, non-Latin domain names may be available for registration by anyone. Apparently, Russian Federation will be used as a Russian zone.
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via ICANN