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Speaking in Sydney, Australia, Paul Twomey, chief executive at the organisation which oversees the entire domain name structure, said that at the recent UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Greece ICANN had come under 'significant' pressure from the non-English speaking world.

While accepting that 'we all want a multicultural Internet' he said nothing would be done before ICANN has completed its exhaustive

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testing.

'The Internet is like a fifteen story building, and with international domain names what we're trying to do is change the bricks in the basement,' he said. Currently just 37 characters are permissible in domain names; internationalisation could increase that to 50,000 or more, he explained.

A significant problem lies in the fact that many characters from different languages look very similar. Although this could frustrate users who end up an entirely different website to the one whose address they thought they had typed, a more serious concern is the potential for fraud and phishing.

Such concerns mean that ICANN is likely to approve a subset of characters that can be used in international domain names. The organisation's chairman, Vint Cerf, suggested as much during his opening address to IGF.