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An IDN domain (Internationalized Domain Name) is a domain name that can contain characters from national alphabets: Cyrillic, Ukrainian letters (ї, є, ґ), Latin letters with diacritics (á, ü), and other Unicode characters. Examples of IDNs include приклад.укр or münchen.de.
Technically, these domains work through conversion to Punycode, which DNS and browsers can process. Users see the domain in its familiar form, while the system stores it in an ASCII version (for example, starting with xn--). IDNs are convenient for local brands and audiences, but it is important to consider the risk of “look-alike” characters (homoglyphs) and the registration rules of a specific domain zone.
An IDN domain is a domain name that can be written using native alphabet characters, such as Cyrillic or letters with diacritics. Users see familiar characters, but technically the domain is converted into Punycode so it can work in DNS.
For DNS compatibility, an IDN is converted into an ASCII format called Punycode (usually starting with xn--). A browser may display the domain in national characters, while internally using the punycode version.
The main considerations are possible “look-alike” characters (for example, Latin a vs Cyrillic а), so brand protection and careful spelling choices are important. Also, some services and older systems may display the punycode version of the domain instead of the native-script version.