Trials and tribulations of changing oversight of core internet infrastructure

Monika Ermert, Heise, Intellectual Property Watch, VDI-Nachrichten, Germany

PUBLISHED ON: 05 Nov 2014

Changing oversight of core internet infrastructure: much process, little time

The internet naming, numbering and standardisation communities are falling over their feet to meet the deadline - next September - for fixing the future oversight of Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA). While some fear it might be the only opportunity to end the privileged oversight role of the United States government, others warn against a rushed solution leaving aspects of the core internet infrastructure at the mercy of a private California-based company, namely the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). IANA is currently a department of ICANN. The question is: can the net community really govern some of its core infrastructure and how much does it need governments for that, if at all?

It was only on 15 March this year that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an agency of the US Department of Commerce, announced that the US administration would withdraw from its oversight role of IANA. Yet, over the coming three weeks, the Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE, French for "European IP Networks"), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Cross Community Working Group of ICANN (CWG) have to discuss their proposals for the future IANA and ICANN's preparedness to continue being the IANA operator. 

IANA – a list of management jobs

The IANA operates a central database for protocol numbers (e.g. http is port 80); the central IP address pool to ensure unique allocation of numbers throughout the five Regional Internet Registries service regions; the central root zone of the domain name system, again to ensure uniqueness and universality for old (.com) and new (.hiv) zones. These jobs are combined by the mere fact that they were performed for years by one and a same US academic, Jonathan B. Postel. Two years after his passing (2000) the now discussed IANA functions contract between the NTIA and the then just established ICANN came about. Despite the rather technical nature of the functions performed since the commercial take-off of the internet, the US role as a contractor and the NTIA's task in controlling root zone changes have resulted in fierce diplomatic debates. In theory the public servants at NTIA could block a zone from going into the root, or could make changes to take a zone away from an operator they think illegitimate or hostile to US interests. Practically, the US administration has stayed clear of such direct intervention. For detailed information on the history and contracts, see papers by ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee http://goo.gl/yNolM1

Complex bag of issues

What makes this process so complex is that IANA is a list of jobs – including IP address allocation in a central pool, management of the core domain name root zone, attending the database for protocol numbers. The transition looks much easier for the number and protocol people (at the RIRs and the IETF). Clearly, the IANA tasks for numbers and protocols did practically not involve the United States government oversight, fights about service levels have been fought over ICANN's first decade and seem to be settled. The IETF and the Regional Internet Registries do thereby not see a need for change.

Having a draft proposal out already, the IETF is most advanced: while discussion was not complete, IETF Chair Jari Arkko, said in Los Angeles: “the IETF community was quite clear that the transition needs to stay within the current operational model which in our mind means no change to the roles of organisations and no new organisations are needed.” The RIPE Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) on the other hand has asked for a mandate to complete the proposal and to submit it to the the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) before 15 January 2015.

The blanket mandate has already stirred some discussion, starting with an ex-official of the International Telecommunication Union, Richard Hill, who asked how the community itself would be participating. Yet, given that the RIPE also has to coordinate with its four sister regional address registries (RIRs) from Asia, North America, Latin America and Africa, time is flying. The ICG receives all proposals by 15 January and needs to stitch the three proposals (names, numbers, protocols) together before June 2015.

Domain names as the hot potato

Given the long list in issues that ICANN’s Cross Community Working Group has to address and the challenge to fill the oversight gaps opened by the transition, oversight for IP addressing and protocol resources looks a lot easier to solve. While IP address allocation has made it to intergovernmental discussions at the International Telecommunication Union time and again (and has just again been discussed at the ITU Plenipotentiary in Busan) – the hot potato has always been DNS root zone management. Should one government even in theory be able to directly control additions and deletions to the root zone and perhaps, more subtly, should it be able to prevent a name from going to the root by putting pressure on the IANA operator ICANN?

With the extensions of the DNS to hundreds of gTLDs and the growing importance governments attach to their country code top level domains, more players have taken an interest in management and policy development of the DNS. To address the concerns of registries and registrars, of managers of country code TLDs and also of governments and user organisations, a lot of stitching will be necessary before a names proposal can even go to the ICG on 15 January.

One question haunts the names group in particular: how can ICANN be held accountable and true to its current by-laws once the whip of the US administration is gone. Once IANA is gone, a future ICANN management could just cancel the now existing review procedures, Steve Del Bianco, Executive Director of NetChoice and de facto speaker of the US business sector warned in Los Angeles. Redress and appeal procedures might be an issue too for those ‘governed’ by ICANN. The IANA transition, he said, “is our last best point of leverage to get the accountability we need for the ICANN of the future”.

Oversight council and the role of governments

Several proposals on the accountability question have been made in Los Angeles circling around the idea of a community driven ‘oversight body’ that will hold the ICANN board to account and keep it from changing or expanding the ICANN mandate or breaking with its core values. Should the ‘Oversight Council’, or at least the ‘Service Level Agreement Council’, be inside or outside ICANN? This is one of the pressing questions under debate in the Cross Community Working Group which will meet mid November in Frankfurt to advance its draft proposal.

Many would have liked to avoid the debate on such a new body, especially when it comes to the fight around who should be given what role in the the Oversight Council. The mere advisory role of governments, for example, has been criticised by governmental representatives many times. Even lobbying in favour of making governmental advice a practical veto at ICANN have been observed. Yet the mere notion of a governmental veto for governments or an oversight council of some sort are unpopular in the ICANN community. This could open a gap between the protocol, numbering and names communities, as Milton Mueller, the founder of the Internet Governance Project and member of the ICG, put it. “What incentive would there be [for the protocols and numbers people] to agree to additional mechanisms designed specifically to address names issues? What if these are perceived to add unnecessary complications for the working mechanisms in the protocols/numbers area?,” Mueller quotes Daniel Karrenberg, Chief Scientist of the RIPE NCC. “Trying to keep them all together in the same organization as ICANN’s policy process may be a threat to the stability of the former (protocols) and a mettlesome constraint on the solution set of the latter (names),” Mueller wrote.

Zooming out to take a hard look at ICANN

Several governments gathered at the ICANN LA meeting in mid-October underlined that a mere handover of the IANA functions to ICANN would overlook deeper problems of the self-governing structures of the internet. Brazil in the first place warned not to overlook the issue arising from the fact that ICANN is bound to a single jurisdiction and proposed to consider discussion of a new status for the organisation as an “international organisation”.

The Brazilian representative to ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee argued: “If we limit the transition to the mere compliance with the conditions that were spelled out by NTIA for the transition, we forget about the other elements that form the perspective of government” and it would be a “lost opportunity” to create an ICANN “that would be seen more legitimate for not being attached to one single jurisdiction but being responsible to the multi-stakeholder community.”

One can be sure that there will be no consensus for such far reaching ideas in the transition proposals to be tabled over the next weeks. It is even doubtful that they will succeed in slowing down the tightly scheduled discussion rounds. This said, the far reaching reform ideas will not go away.

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