Re: Is the IANA a function performed by ICANN ?
At 01:49 26/06/04, Scott Bradner wrote: see RFC 2860 Dear Scott and Karl, thank you for your comments. I explain. I consider the interest of a draft on the digital intergovernance I do not know yet if I want to undertake such a task, how, with who, and where. I established a site (http://intergovenance.org) to gather inputs from different authorities (I play it low key as it could be too big a project if not worked in parallel with SIS). The idea I float is to extend and generalize RFC 920/1591 from ARPA Internet, to Internet, to current inter-digital-network-convergence. Mixing past, experience, specifics and future of the different technologies towards a coherent model of the digital ecosystem and of its usage. From bandwidth to users technical aspects. Not by who does what, but by what is needed and how it is best performed. A basic need is for a generalized e-networks lexical and theory/modelization. Nothing fancy. What we do all the day long, but put into a single structured document from telecoms, to datacoms, to communication services. Analyzed for what they should do, not for history or what they currently do. There, there is a need for a neutral, stable, reference system. Until now, this was thought as a center in the global network governance. For many reasons (risk containment, sovereignty, experimentation, operational flexibility, cybernetic warfare, economic intelligence, etc.) such centers in network horizontal governances must become a concerted specialized vertical governance within the intergovernance of the inter-networks/technology/systems/services/usages/etc. Also, there is a clear law: if one wants to keep an intergoverned system under a single governance, that governance will either obsolete (ITU?) or become a dominance (ICANN?), both being discarded (an intergovernance does not fight, it circumvents). So, the future is clear. It is made of a IANA network concerted system for the very large diversity of names and numbers used for network interoperations and users interapplications. One IANA centers per country, region, sector, culture, city, etc. down to private ones. They will provide the ubiquitous e-continuity metastructure. Each horizontal thematic intergovernance (DNS, numbering, geonumeric bases, formats, etc; etc. ) will have to devise their ways to keep their global information matrix consistent - or to restore its consistency after a dysfunction, an attack or a sovereign zone take-over for critical reasons. ICP-3 of ICANN is a good introduction to this effort in the DNS area. There are two good ways and a bad one to reach this from the today situation. - good 1. the current IANA multinationalize/multilingualize/multitechnoloze into it. This looks unrealistic but matching IETF core values. IETF already coped with other unrealistic challenges. ccTLDs could be a good existing supporting structure. But users support (@large) would be needed to establish it. IETF would have the lead. - good 2. IANA becomes a part of ICANN. ICANN is increasingly perceived as an USG agency. So, the common international practices apply. Some countries (ccNSO) want to keep using it. Some others will create their regional, national governance structures and bodies. This will be good for QoS through competition. ITU will probably then be the best solution, if it creates an ITU-I Sector. - bad one. to mix them both to impose an ICANN governance. This cannot technically work on medium/long term. A dominance does not fit in a distributed system. This will create an increasing instability and will be circumvented by usage and real world intergovernance. The bodies associated with the dominance will probably be discarded. RIRs have understood that. Most of the ccTLDs too. Let be clear. I do not speak of short term political instability. But of very long term architectural instability. To understand this let recall that positions taken in minutes as obvious in 1984 are the ruling the way the name space works today. We all know the difficulty of making move the inter-networked system, ex.: IPv6. Today 88% of the mankind does not use the Internet. Also 88% of them are neither EU/US citizens. If 70% of the mankind was connected in a decade, the increase would be 150%. If 2/3 of the new comers adopted one different parameters in an area (for example to get ML.ML denied by ICANN, or a different no spam mail system, or a different DNS RR,) we would have the same number of users than today (800 millions) using that solutions. We know the compatibility difficulty for IPv6, the threat of alt.roots for some: we would have to increasingly live for ever with this kind of problems. I have no doubt that natural evolution will correct IANA possible mishandling over the next century - the same as sometime the whole network will be IPv6, the naming multilingual, etc. But in the meanwhile? Scott, I did not quote RFCs because on the grounds above. 1. RFC
Is the IANA a function performed by ICANN ?
My understanding was that IANA is a neutral, independent, technical authority, everyone using the TCP/IP technology could trust, independently from any operational, political, national, commercial consideration which are the areas of ICANN, and of other bodies (such as GAC, MINC, ITU, ISOC, UN, etc.). Also, that as the custodian of the references necessary to use the IETF IP, it was part of the IETF IPR protection system. I understand that it predated the creation of ICANN, of ISOC, of IETF and even (under the name of NIC) of the DNS. I am therefore surprised and (IANAL) I am not sure about the implications of the following IANA definition, in a document ICANN is to publish on Monday : the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a function performed by ICANN. http://www.iana.org/procedures/delegation-data.html ICANN's position within the intergovernance is under UN study, subject to possible political negotiations or intergovernmental agreements (cf. the ongoing WSIS Prepcom meeting in Hammamet). ICANN is only under contract for three years with the USG. RIRs only entered into an MoU with ICANN on the grounds that it may not be still here in two years. The majority of ccTLDs are not interested in joining ICANN's ccNSO. I do not understand how this fits with the necessity of a perpetual, stable, not controverted, consensually accepted, trusted technical standard parameters repository? Or do I read the definition wrong? jfc ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Is the IANA a function performed by ICANN ?
On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 22:05:36 +0200, JFC (Jefsey) Morfin [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a function performed by ICANN. http://www.iana.org/procedures/delegation-data.html grounds that it may not be still here in two years. The majority of ccTLDs are not interested in joining ICANN's ccNSO. I do not understand how this IANA and the ccNSO/ccTLD are two different beasts. ccNSO and company keep track of what NS records are authoritative for what zones. IANA keeps track of things like the fact that HTTP is port 80, and which DHCP options use what numbers, and the like. pgpSc3nToMxtK.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Is the IANA a function performed by ICANN ?
At 22:39 25/06/04, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: IANA and the ccNSO/ccTLD are two different beasts. hmmm. They seem now to be both ICANN stuff. This is the point. ccNSO and company keep track of what NS records are authoritative for what zones. Happily not (most of the ccTLD would not like it !!!). This is a IANA job. At least until Monday. Then it seems it will be an ICANN job, under IANA trade name. IANA keeps track of things like the fact that HTTP is port 80, and which DHCP options use what numbers, and the like. We agree. And this Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a function performed by ICANN. Is IETF OK with that? I understood that the functions of the IANA were _currently_ supported under contract by ICANN. I have no position on this. I just want to understand where IANA fits in the intergovernance. I quoted ccTLDs and RIRs because they both expressed concerns about ICANN still being around three years from now. There is the same feeling among the @large left-overs. If ICANN closed I would not cry. But if it closed the global NIC, a contingency plan would be necessary. Other countries will certainly initiate such a plan. It is to be supposed they will mirror ICANN numbers for a while, but they may also introduce their additional ones for many reasons (testing [cf. ICP-3], national needs, etc. ). OK with me as long as they first intergovern a conflict resolution system and eventually the resulting distributed global NIC they will form. jfc ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Is the IANA a function performed by ICANN ?
On Fri, 25 Jun 2004, JFC (Jefsey) Morfin wrote: My understanding was that IANA is a neutral, independent, technical authority the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a function performed by ICANN. There is a significant lack of clarity in these matters. ICANN has a number of legal arrangements with the US Dept of Commerce and its subagencies. The most relevant to IANA is a sole-source purchase order that comes from the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (a sub-agency of the DoC) under which NOAA is purchasing an essentially undefined thing called the IANA function and ICANN is providing that thing for zero dollars. Usually in a purchase order the flow of deliverables runs towards the purchasor. In this case nothing particularly tangible flows towards the NOAA, but there does seem to be a rather cloudy delegation of authority from NOAA to ICANN. In addition there is the oft-asked and never answered question of whether NOAA (or NTIA, another sub-agency of the Dept of Commerce) has such authority to delegate in the first place. (The GAO did examine that question and found the authority to be lacking.) In any event, what commeth via purchase order can goeth via the lapse of that purchase order. Unless there is some unwritten accord, ICANN has no guarantee that it will continue to be able to act as the uncompeted, sole-source provider of the IANA function. The IANA function as practiced by ICANN appears to have at several distinct parts: 1) The operation of the L root server. I have never heard one bad word about ICANN's performance with respect to the L server As far as I can tell, the hands on those knobs are very competent. 2) The assignment and recordation of protocol numbers. This is the classical Numbers Czar function. Again, this seems to be competently handled, although I have heard complaints that processing of number assignments is taking too long. And I have had my own concern that this function is really something that more properly belongs under the IETF's umbrella. 3) ccTLD assignment authority. This is the controversial function. This is a job that requires IANA to decide who gets to act as the internet presence of each sovereign nation (that is, each sovereign nation except the US - US dealt with the .us TLD outside of ICANN and despite ICANN.) Yes, there are competing theories of whether a ccTLD is a direct aspect of sovreignty or is merely a database key that happens to be isomorphic with, but not dependent upon, the existance of soverign states. My own sense is that the latter theory is not flying well among the collective governments of the world. ICANN does not keep time cards, or at least it didn't when I last checked. And there is a great intermingling of tasks among the ICANN/IANA staff. These two aspects combine to make it very difficult to assign a quantitiative cost or level-of-effort number to IANA as a whole and much less to the distinct IANA tasks. However, by observation it appears that the bulk of the cost, and trouble, of IANA is in item #3. I have had concern that ICANN, or rather IANA, is being used as a pawn by political factions in a number of countries. ICANN's redelegations are often based on fairly thin bodies of evidence and are supported often by some rather questionable assertions (e.g. a letter relinquishing a ccTLD that was on an otherwise blank sheet of paper without letterhead and over the unverified signature of someone claiming to be the long lost contact.) During my term I never felt that ICANN or IANA had the staff expertise to be able to swim in those shark infested waters. However, my sense is that with the advent of current president and other staff changes that ICANN, oops, IANA, is perhaps better equipped for this now than it was 18 months ago. But the question is still present: Might not the question of who is the most rightful operator of a ccTLD be better handled by existing organizations that are much more sophisticated in matters pertaining to who is the rightful sovereign power of a nation? --karl-- ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Is the IANA a function performed by ICANN ?
see RFC 2860 Scott ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
