Calling researchers and academic community to explore the working of Domain Name System. If researching the internet is what drives you, we invite you to submit your ideas about what DNS problem you’d like to address and how. The challenge will fund four teams for six months to complete their research and present their findings to the global community of internet experts. You may be one of the winners selected for research funding, expert mentorship and more.
The Domain Name System (DNS) helps us to find our way around the Internet. Every computer directly connected to the Internet has a unique number. This number is a rather complicated string of digits called an “IP address”. IP addresses can be hard to remember so the DNS makes using the Internet easier by allowing a familiar string of letters (i.e., the domain name) to be used instead of IP addresses. Learn more
Through ICANN’s coordination role of the Internet’s naming system, it has an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet. The apparent simplicity of the DNS has helped to connect over 4.4 billion people globally on the Internet. As the Internet continues to grow, how the DNS is used in the future remains an integral part of research on Internet protocols. ICANN encourages and fosters interest in the use and development of the DNS by students and academia.
ICANN and NASSCOM COE IOT & AI signed a Memorandum of Understanding in June 2018 and one of the intentions was to implement jointly developed research projects on unique identifier technologies. These joint projects are developed with the support of ICANN’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO). To learn more about ICANN OCTO please visit here.
The NASSCOM Center of Excellence – IoT & AI is the largest collaborative innovation platform in the emerging technologies of IoT, Analytics, AI/ML, AR/VR and Robotics for Digital Transformation. The main objective of the CoE is to help Indian Deep-Tech Startups & Companies leverage cutting edge technologies to build market-ready products. Through the Startups Program, CoE aims to build industry capable talent in an entrepreneurial ecosystem by facilitating Incubation, Funding, Acceleration, Industry Connect and Mentoring. NASSCOM CoE was set up in July 2016 as part of the Digital India initiative of MeitY, with the objective of aiding innovative start-ups in the emerging technologies. NASSCOM CoE-IoT has centres in Bengaluru, Gurugram, Gandhinagar & Vizag.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a not-for-profit public- benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable, and interoperable. ICANN helps coordinate and support the unique identifiers in the DNS. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers. Learn more.
ICANN recognizes that as the Internet continues to expand, it is increasingly important to involve the younger generations, who are digital natives, in Internet governance discussions. The youth represent future leaders, and ICANN encourages them to take an active role in shaping Internet policies. Here are some ongoing youth programs ICANN is involved in:
The NextGen@ICANN Program caters to the next generation of individuals who are interested in becoming actively engaged in their regional communities and in shaping the future of global Internet policy. This program is offered during ICANN Public Meetings. Through the NextGen program, ICANN provides coaching and travel assistance to students from the regions where the ICANN meeting is taking place. Read more.
The ICANN Fellowship Program aims to strengthen the diversity of the multistakeholder model by fostering opportunities for individuals from underserved and underrepresented communities to become active participants in the ICANN community. Fellows are exposed to the workings of the ICANN community, assigned a mentor, and receive training across different areas of knowledge and skill building before, during, and after an ICANN Public Meeting. Read more.
The Asia Pacific Internet Governance Academy (APIGA) is a five-day capacity-development workshop focusing on topics related to ICANN and Internet governance. It is targeted for, but not limited to, undergraduate and graduate students from universities and tertiary institutions in South Korea and Asia Pacific. The aim is to develop youth leaders’ understanding of the Internet and its ecosystem by youth leaders. Read more.
Application Invitation
Meetups / Educational Webinars
Final application Submission
Screening and shortlisting
Shortlisted Teams Present their Projects
Project Execution
Final Report Submission
It Is now possible to register a domain name and email address using a variety of top-level domains (e.g. .desi, .guru, . technology, .abudhabi, .photography, etc.) and in your own language (e.g. .bharat in Gurmukhi, Devanagari, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil, and others). Many tools, applications, websites and mail servers may still not be able to effectively process such domain names and email addresses. The goal is to have Universal Acceptance(UA) of domain names and email addresses, to provide end users both choice and access using this available variety in domain names. The technical community can achieve this by developing testing tools for identifying gaps in UA readiness, as well as enhancing current technology to be able to support UA. For further details see the UA Readiness Report 2020.
Here are some project examples related to UA:
Measuring UA readiness of local websites (accepting all domain names and email addresses, including those in local languages)
Measuring status of local mail servers sending and receiving emails in local languages
Validating mailbox names for local languages and scripts for system administrators (including determining rules for “good” labels)
Updating available HTTP clients to handle Unicode normalization and ASCII conversion of Unicode domain names in local languages
Other possible use cases are given below. Teams are encouraged to explore more research topics and come up with their own ideas about what they wish to explore.
Using DNS to store large data.64k
New RR type to include a port number
Detecting DNS Replay
Measuring ratio of A queries over IPv6 transport/total A+ AAAA queries over IPv6 transport
Measuring ratio of AAAA queries over IPv4 transport/total A+ AAAA queries over IPv4 transport
Using DNS for new activities
To help the research teams, NASSCOM CoE and ICANN have onboarded following industry experts as mentors for the challenge:
In case students from the winning teams want to have internship certificates also, they will have to provide following:
The certificate will only be issued at the successful completion of the project.
| Chandigarh University | Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College |
| Vignana Bharathi Institute of Technology | Vellore Institute of Technology |
| SRM University, Andhra Pradesh | Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology |
| Chalapathi Institute of Technology, Andhra Pradesh | Sreenidhi Institute of Science and Technology |
| International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore | Dr. G. R. Damodaran College of Science |
| JNTUH College of Engineering, Jagtial, Telangana (JNTUHCEJ) | BVRIT Hyderabad College of Engineering for Women, Hyderabad |
| Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering | Sri Krishna College Of Engineering and Technology |
| National Insitute of Technology, Karnataka | Lovely Professional University |
| College/Institute Name | Team Members | Download Reports | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Farhan P Mohammed (Captain) | Download | |
| Alen Morres | |||
| Keerthi T M | |||
|
Munagala Nitya Jahnavi | Download | |
| Durki Harihar | |||
| Vellanki Mahita Divya | |||
|
Naga Srihith Penjarla (Captain) | Download | |
| Nandakishore S Menon | |||
| Mayank Kabra | |||
|
Nidhish Bhimrajka (Captain) | Download | |
| Harshita Gupta | |||
| Daksh Agarwal |
