A IDN domain, an acronym for Internationalized Domain Names, are domains with special characters that deviate from the ASCII standard. This includes letters like "Ñ", umlauts, "ç", and other characters.
IDN domain example: designdomain.COM
Can it bring me complications that my domain is of IDN type?
Not really for navigation. Most browsers fully understand these domains and will allow you to open your website without any problems. However, if you are going to use mail @ a domain with special characters, it is better that you look for a variant for your email accounts since some email servers do not recognize or take messages from domains of this type as erroneous or SPAM.
Our recommendation is that if your main domain is "mydesignstudio.com", you also register, for example, one like "mydesignstudio.com" to use with your emails. After all, you will be able to park it from your control panel and create your email accounts with this extension.
How does the browser translate the domain to make it functional?
The domains with special characters (IDN) are encoded in "Punycode", which is an encoding language that transforms text strings with "special" characters so that they are compatible with traditional systems.
IDN domain (utf-8): mydesignstudio.com
Punycode domain for "mydesigndesignstudio.com": xn--mydesigndesignstudio-lub.co
When you have to configure your domain or operate with different tools on it (such as ping, traceroute or others) you must use its "Punycode" version, which is ultimately the real name of the domain without its special characters.
What are the valid characters for a domain?
The domains must be formed only by letters and numbers (from a to z and from 0 to 9). The hyphen (-) is also valid, but it cannot be placed as the last or first character of the domain. Domains cannot contain spaces, periods (., :), or special characters such as &, %, $, /, (, ), =, ?, ¿, ", !.