The Executive board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN) led by Dr. STEVE CROCKER, fielded questions from
participants of the ICANN 49th public meeting in Singapore’s International
Convention Centre recently. Our Group Executive Editor, DigitalSENSE Business
News, Remmy Nweke was there. Most of the interaction was on NTIA plans to
transfer IANA functions to ICANN.
Excerpts:
STEVE CROCKER: Welcome, everybody. This is the part of the programme that I know
many of you have been waiting for all week when you get to talk to us, talk to
each other, talk to the community at large.
This session is intended to give you a direct line of
communication, as I said, to both the rest of the community and to the board of
directors without formality, without filters.
In addition to all of the formal processes that we have -
and we have a lot of formal processes; the public forum is all about
understanding communication, free exchange of ideas, and in just a few minutes,
we’ll welcome your questions and comments.
What is ICANN’s public forum?
I’ll start off by explaining what the session is, and just
as important, what it’s not.
The public forum is the community’s opportunity to make
comments and ask questions, a chance to talk to us directly, as I’ve said. It’s intended to encourage dialogue. it is not a replacement or an add-on to public
comments that ICANN seeks on issues and policies.
Please do continue using those channels to provide formal
feedback on specific issues that are open for public comments. They’re the only way that they will receive
proper consideration from the appropriate committee, supporting organization,
and staff members.
So with that, let me toss this back to you, Brad White, for
an overview of how the questions will be fielded. Brad, as everyone knows, is
our director of global media affairs.
BRAD WHITE: Thanks, Steve. What we’re trying to do here
today is balance a couple of concerns.
We want to facilitate, that’s the board wants to facilitate
as many questions and comments from you as possible, but we also recognize that
you want to hear the board. So, we’re trying to balance those two
concerns.
You’ll notice on the agenda later in the afternoon there’s a
couple of sessions, dedicated time sessions, for subjects that have not yet
been determined. That’s because the
board very much wants the community to help them select what those subjects
will be.
In Buenos Aires, we tried something for the first time that
worked. The comments we got after the
Buenos Aires public forum indicated that folks liked it, so we’re going to do
it again.
Basically, in a few minutes, these two microphones in the
front, Steve will seek your input into what you want to talk about during those
two time blocks. What might be a good
session, a dedicated time session, to a given subject.
We’re looking at headlines here. We’re looking at one sentence. He just wants some ideas. That’s going to take about 10 or 15 minutes and
then we’ll shut it down after that. Remote participants can also join and ask
questions by emailing us at forum@icann.org. We’ll read your questions.
When speaking, speak clearly and slowly. This is primarily
for our scribes. If you’re going too fast, they’re simply not able to keep up,
so it’s sort of a courtesy to everyone else.
Give us your name and who, if anyone, you’re representing. Also, we have
standards of behavior.
Be respectful. I
mean, we can get impassioned over some of these issues. Be respectful of other
opinions, be short, concise, and always be conscious that there are other
people who want to speak.
Addressing what I
began with was
the balance between
asking questions and facilitating as many people as possible in this
room. We’ve adopted what we call the
rule of twos.
What that basically means is that you’ve got two bites at
the apple. So when you come to the microphone after a session - after a subject
has begun, you can ask a question or make a comment.
You’ve got two minutes to do so. After you do that, the board has also got a
timer on its response.
They’ll respond within two minutes as well. Now, the
facilitator of a
given session can
answer your question, perhaps call
on one of
his or her
colleagues who might have better expertise in a given subject to
respond to that question, or they might call on one of the staff leaders over
here with greater expertise in a given subject to respond to the question.
Following that, you’ve got a chance for a follow-up. Again, two minutes. And again, the board will
respond in two minutes. Again, it’s all part of the balancing act, trying to
give you as much access as possible to the board. That’s the basic
overview. Steve, I’ll turn it back to
you.
STEVE CROCKER: Thank you, Brad. We have organized a first
section of a first portion of the time that will be used to talk about Internet
Governance and Internet Assigned and Number Authority (IANA) functions, so
after this exercise which
we’re going to
do right now,
we do a community subject selection, we will then
move to that, and then in the background we’ll be collating the topics that
you’re about to give us and organize how we’ll use the time for the rest of the
afternoon.
So to repeat the instructions that Brad has shared with you,
we need quick, short one sentence, please. Line up at the microphones and we’ll
roll through this.
And don’t feel obliged to repeat your topic if somebody else
has already suggested it. We get it the
first time. There’s not a lot of value
in saying it over again. There’s not
really much value in saying it over again. Laughs.
STEVE CROCKER: Okay.
Let’s begin.
How come nobody’s at the microphones? Or maybe the lights
are in my eyes and I don’t see them. A dependable person.
AMADEU ABRIL: Okay.
Sorry. I never know whether you’re pointing at me or to the other
microphone. The topic I propose is ICANN
policy making process. Who does what,
who should be doing what?
ELISA COOPER with the
business constituency. New Generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) implementation
issues.
WERNER STAUB from
CORE: Generic top-level domains and competition. I mean competition not in the DNS, but
elsewhere.
MARTIN SUTTON from the Brand Registry Group. I’d like an update at some stage on
Specification 13, progress with the negotiations.
MICHELE NEYLON from
the registrar stakeholders group. ICANN
contracts and local law.
PAUL FOODY speaking
on my own behalf. How many new gTLDs will we allow before it becomes a very bad
thing?
NIGEL ROBERTS: IANA transition.
ZHANG ZUAN with CONAC and I will suggest talk about name
collision issues. Thanks very much.
LILLIAN FOSTERIS from FairWinds Partners. Also Specification
13.
MARILYN CADE with the business constituency and I propose we
talk about accountability mechanisms, in particular, in relation to ATRT2.
ANTHONY NIIGANII, a mentee in a mentor programme: One of the things that I was thinking of is
how to engage indigenous people around the world who are underrepresented
within ICANN.
STEVE CROCKER: Thank you.
Well, thank you very much.
I think we can probably keep track of those and put them in some order
and allocate them to the facilitators. So, with that, let me move us
immediately into the first block of time devoted to a particular subject, and
the subject is actually a compound one:
Internet governance on the one hand and stewardship of the IANA
functions on the other hand.
Before we get into the question and answer (Q&A) and so
forth, it will be helpful to do two things.
One is to have a brief description of what the IANA function
actually is. One of the things that
we’ve become keenly aware of is the lack of detailed knowledge of - that most
of the community actually has about how the IANA function works.
The other thing that we will do which fits here is to have
some brief two-minute-style reports from several of the advisory committee and
supporting organization leaders.
I believe that we have Patrik Faltstrom from SSAC, Jonathan
Robinson from GNSO, Byron Holland from ccNSO, Olivier Crepin-Leblond from ALAC,
and Adiel Akplogan from NRO, so that’s what’s coming. And then we’ll start the queue. Excuse me.
Kuo-Wei Wu, to my right, will handle the IANA functions
stewardship questions and I’ll handle the Internet governance questions, and
so, Kuo, let me ask you to start up with a description, in conjunction with
Elise, on what IANA is actually all about.
KUO-WEI WU:
Okay. I think this is a good time
for all non-Chinese speakers or non-Chinese;
you know, it’s time to learn Chinese now. I will start to speak in Chinese. (speaking
in Chinese)
In this ICANN 49 Singapore conference, when we are talking
about the IANA, before that I would like to say that IANA over the past two
years have been doing a lot of work.
So, I would
like to say
over the past
two years, IANA committee has automated all the
functions. That means in the whole
process we don’t need a lot of review work.
So this is very important ... at the end of last year, IANA committee
has no longer operated at the very beginning of this year. We have to look at this with two angles. So
you don’t see the IANA committee from this year on.
In my interpretation, you know, my personal interpretation;
one thing is IANA committee is very boring.
You know, nobody wants to join me, you know. [Laughter]
KUO-WEI WU: Because
it’s a regular process. It’s a very
really regular process. The second thing, I think, it’s as much real, is IANA
is the people all are concerned. So, we
have to move the IANA function and report to the whole board. Okay?
So I would like to say IANA functions over the past two
years; we have seen that IANA functions have been working smoothly. This is the
status of the IANA committee. I would
like to ask IANA workers to tell
you about the
daily work of
IANA as well
as the communication with other
groups and stakeholders, so that we have the basic understanding and we need
that so that we can dispel misconceptions.
I think this might be useful and helpful while we are
talking about the whole IANA function issue.
So, Elise, you have only five minutes. Okay?
I ask you to explain what is the office doing on daily basis and can you
explain your communication with the different groups, including the NTIA -
National Telecommunications and Information Administration?
So that is the basis, so that people can understand what
you’re always doing, so when we’re talking about IANA, you know, the
transition, it’s much based on the fact, not based on the imagination.
ELISE GERICH: So,
I’ll give you a couple of responses in two minutes, of what the IANA function
does.
We have three primary areas which you’ve heard a lot of this
week; Names, Numbers, and Protocol parameters.
And basically, for names, we work with all the TLDs (Top
Level Domain) to manage the root zone, and there’s a root zone management team
which includes ICANN, NTIA, and VeriSign.
So, the TLDs will submit changes to their root zone, to us,
ICANN. We verify that it meets the
criteria. Then we send that
verification on to NTIA. NTIA verifies
that we followed the process. And then
they give the okay to VeriSign to create the root zone that will get
distributed twice daily to the root servers.
So, that’s what we do that has to do with names.
Secondly, we do numbers.
So the RIRs, the regional Internet registries, they come up with
policies, global policies. Those global policies are derived from the local
regional policies in the five regional Internet registries.
The IANA function adopts or works to those global policies
that the regional Internet registries have created, and that’s what we use when
we distribute -- or used to distribute IPv4 – Internet Protocol version 4)
addresses- our pocketbook is empty; the IPv6 addresses and the autonomous
system numbers. And then the bulk of our requests and transaction handling is
for the protocol parameters.
So, the protocol parameters
are really the kind
of secret code that machines talk to each other with on the
Internet.
Therefore, if you were a developer or a software writer or
someone like that, you would go into these registries and you would find out
what you need to know so that the thing you’re going to build, the device, the
entity that you want to put on the network, the Internet, will be able to talk
to other devices that are on the network.
We maintain those lists, those registries that the Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF) defines in their RFCs (Request For Comments). So,
those are our three basic functions, and that’s what we do on behalf of the
global community.
And as I
mentioned before, NTIA
has a role
in the root
zone management piece and they’ve had that role for a very long time,
and then also, ICANN
has a contract
with NTIA which
sets out some guidelines on how we’re supposed to
behave with the community. And we have,
on the IANA Web page, performance standards, reports on what changes were made
to the root zone, and all the changes that have been made to the Internet
Protocol parameters registries.
So if you
ever want to
look at what
we’re doing and
what our performance standards
are and how
we’ve met them,
go to www.iana.org/performance
and you’ll be able to click on the various reports that are out there.
And I think,
Kuo-Wei Wu, that’s
all I have
to say, unless
there’s something else you’d like
me to add.
KUO-WEI WU: I would
like to ask a question like. When you communicate with the NTIA or communicate
with the IETF or IAB (Internet Architecture Board), are those documents in
public?
ELISE GERICH: The reports are published, yes. They are published on the www.iana.org web
site for anyone and everyone. In fact, that’s an important point,
especially the lists that we maintain, they are all open and public and
basically free of charge. So, you can see any of those registries. You can find out which allocations of I.P.
addresses went to which regional internet registry. You can see what the protocol parameters are
for, say, DNS or BGP or any other Internet protocol. Just go online and they’re
there for your perusal. Thank you.
KUO-WEI WU: Thank
you, Elise. I think it is important for people to understand what the regular
operation in the IANA office is and what is the communication between the IANA
office to all the other different groups. And just like Elise is saying, all
kinds of report is transparent and public and published in the public. So if you would like to see what is the
meeting minutes or what is the
report we communicate
with the different groups,
it is always published on the Web
at iana.org. You are always welcome to
see. Everything is transparent and also
is clear.
Now, Steve, we can open for the mic.
STEVE CROCKER: Thank
you. I hope the description of the IANA function has been helpful. Continuing on the theme that is probably is
not as well understood as it should be, we’re looking for feedback on what you
just heard and staff will be trying to develop materials that make the function
a lot more visible and a lot clearer. It is one of those things that’s working
well in the background and so there hasn’t been a sense of the need to
highlight it quite this way. But, clearly, with the announcement from NTIA two
weeks ago and all of the focus on it, this maybe now a good time to do a little
study of what it actually does and probably more importantly what doesn’t
happen in the IANA functions.
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