[discuss] Options for root zone

Fri Jan 17 23:12:11 UTC 2014

This discussion could benefit from a somewhat broader  and more substantive perspective.

(1) In the early ICANN days, before gTLD expansion became a reality, questions revolved around whether countries should or should not be in the root.  Jon Postel fervently did NOT want to be in a decision loop on this subject, and deferred to the UN postal code table for guidance.  ICANN's Board felt as Jon did; this was a subject on which the UN should/would have the final word.

In the entire existence of the DNS, there has never been an occasion in which Postel or ICANN entertained the notion of unilaterally adding or dropping a country's name servers from the root.  The UN holds sway in this area, and always has.  If there are genuine issues, they lie outside of ICANN.

(2) A related, but lesser, question arose when there were issues of the validity of a claim by an in-country entity that it fairly and equitably represented the interests of the country in question and should have its name servers entered in the root.  ICANN's response to this type of issue was to tell any warring parties to settle their differences, and oh by the way, get your governmental authorities to vouch for you.  An imperfect solution?  Yes, but certainly superior to an ICANN effort to pick a winner.  Again, if there are issues here, they lie outside of ICANN, and probably outside of Internet Governance as well.

(3) The next issue arose over the fairness and procedural adequacy of ICANN's process for granting entry to the root for new gTLDs.  This is well documented in the files and apart from the usual sore loser problem, the results were viewed as fair by the community, although ICANN was roundly criticized for limiting the number of new entries so severely.  Continuing debate over this issue lead ultimately to the long and involved process that is placing thousands of new entries in the root now.  Half a dozen years and thousands of pages of on-the-record deliberations later, we have extensive guidance which is being followed by ICANN to the best of its ability, with a lot of back benchers adding commentary daily.  Would yet another round of "consultation" improve things?   Not very likely.

(4) The day to day operations of the several hundred root servers are essentially lodged in the hands of the Internet technical community.  Over the years, no credible source has ever impugned the integrity or efficacy of any of the root operators or technical experts who have collaborated with them, as in the case of Anycast, etc.  Does it need oversight or governance?  I dearly hope not, for the sanity of everyone involved.

(5)  The "approval" of entries to the root, which is covered by a Cooperative Agreement (contract) between the Department of Commerce and Verisign, is an historical artifact that serves no useful purpose today but was, and perhaps still is, a matter of potentially complex legal dispute between Verisign and the U.S. Government if anyone chooses to challenge it, which is extremely unlikely.   The USG, as a founder, signatory, and Security Council member of the UN, would hardly act unilaterally to not fulfill a UN decision on what is a country entitled to a place in the root.  It is hard to see this as an IG issue except to very small minds.

(6)  As a forum for settling contentious issues arising in the evolution of the Internet, there have been calls since ICANN's inception for oversight and review.  The organization is drowning in second guessing.  Those who would propose a new layer of oversight should be obligated to identify the layer to be removed first.

I hope this adds a little substance to what can otherwise become an overly abstract debate.

- Mike

On Jan 17, 2014, at 11:47 AM, Ian Peter <ian.peter at ianpeter.com> wrote:

> Yes.
> 
> I think (and also taking into account Milton's comments) there are two elements
> 
> 1. a clear, accountable, consultative internal ICANN process for authorisation of changes
> 2. a secure, invoilable system to implement those changes
> 
> On (1) - Milton I share your concerns re GAC - but I think the reality might be that the path of least resistance towards changes from the current unilateral control situation here might be an agreed role for GAC as part of internal process of ICANN. Yes that needs to be negotiated carefully (and I believe without a veto right for GAC) but something in this direction might be acceptable to governments - and it is a hell of a lot easier than establishing some new international convention or super organisation or whatever. And one reason I like a simple internal procedure is that root zone changes are on the whole simple administrative procedures that do not warrant or need huge inter governmental agreements. For proponents of multistakeholderism - as long as we have a strong multistakeholder model for these authorisations within ICANN, there should be no controversy requiring special sessions of the United Nations or some unilateral oversight function or new decision making bodies or whatever.
> 
> On (2) I like Andrew's suggestion, and hope suggestions like this can be looked at thoroughly. I am sure there are other suggestions that could be looked at to add security to this part of the process. I think looking carefully at how we could improve this situation is an essential element of necessary reforms.
> 
> But again we are maybe jumping the gun and need to go back to clear requirements before figuring out the solutions...
> 
> Ian Peter
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ian Peter
> 
> -----Original Message----- From: Andrew Sullivan
> Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2014 1:52 AM
> To: discuss at 1net.org
> Subject: Re: [discuss] Options for root zone (was Re: Interesting article)
> 
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 08:17:26PM -0500, Suzanne Woolf wrote:
>> 
>> of oversight for the contents of the root zone is that the US
>> government (or, to generalize, any government) *can't* act in the
>> way described. This requirement has not been met to date.
> 
> Something along those lines became clear to me in an off-list
> discussion with someone else (someone whose technical judgement I
> respect a great deal), and it made me realise that we may be facing a
> case where people are trying to solve a problem with the technology in
> place rather than by stating the problem more generally.
> 
> The way Suzanne frames it above, this problem is not about multiple
> roots.  It is about a root zone provisioning regime that allows all
> and only the relevant players change control over what affects them.
> 
> We currently think of "the root zone" as a file (because we say "zone
> file"), but we could as easily conceive of some other provisioning
> system.  In that case, the provisioning system could be developed and
> tested in the open before all the relevant parties (roughly, all the
> operators of any zone actually in the root, plus whoever might be
> interested in root zone operations generally).  I'm imagining here a
> kind of rough consensus procedure, but something else might have to be
> devised; anyway, that's procedural politics and above my pay grade.
> 
> Once the code for this system is up and working, the provisioning
> system becomes a master database into which changes are submitted.
> The relevant parties (I guess in most cases, the root zone maintainer
> IANA functionary and the relevant zone operator) then each have to
> signal their approval of a change (including deletion) for it to take
> effect in the zone.   In order to cope with dangerous zones (I'm
> thinking particularly not ccTLDs here) that are abusing their
> position, we'd probably also need some sort of n of m provision under
> which a zone could be pulled from the root over the objections of one
> of the relevant parties.  N probably needs to be high :)
> 
> Root nameserver operators would fetch the data as they ever did,
> except that probably the "master DNS server" they'd talk to would just
> be this provisioning system (which presumably we'd teach to speak DNS
> zone transfer).  Most (if not all) of this technology is already
> pretty well-developed in the existing competitive registration market
> for many TLDs, so this wouldn't be a major undertaking.
> 
> The point here is that this kind of approach removes the control by
> the US, and it does it without any important effects on the basic DNS
> technology.  It does _not_ do any of the other things that partisans
> of "alternate roots" seem to want, but I've never been able to to be
> clear enough about what those requirements would be in order to have
> an idea of what you could do about it.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> A
> 
> -- 
> Andrew Sullivan
> ajs at anvilwalrusden.com
> 
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