On May 11th, the sunrise for .asia IDN domain names began. IDN means Internationalised Domain Names and means domain names can also contain non Latin characters. Since May 11th, this is also possible for .asia names.
The sunrise for this extension will end on July 20th 2011. During this sunrise, owners of a registered trade mark which contains Chinese, Japanese or Korean signs, can register this as an IDN name under the .asia extension.
During this sunrise domain names need to be registered per 2 years. If 2 or more applications are filed for 1 name, this domain name will be sold during an auction to the highest bidder. Only registrants who filed an application can participated in the auction.
The sunrise will be followed by a landrush which will start on August 2nd 2011 and end on October 11th 2011.