Randy Bush on Recent ICANN Proposals

Jodrell writes: "Randy Bush, internet architect and co-chair of the IETF's working group on DNS, has some interesting thoughts on the recent proposals to re-organise ICANN. Randy makes some interesting points about the likely result of allowing Government control into the DNSO, and on the current bloated condition of ICANN."

Comments

Randy's most telling point

[Amazing Quantum Man]

one computer scientist used to do this as a part time job. how much of a mountain can we make of a molehill?

To paraphrase Simon&Garfunkel:

Where have you gone Jon Postel?
The networks turn their lonely eyes to you.
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson?
Jon Postel has left and gone away...

The important point...

[pergamon]

...is that ICANN is there to serve the Internet, not control it.

Get active.

[Raindeer]

I would encourage anyone who is interested in this matter to become active themselves. There are so many issues related to the internet that encourage active participation by anyone who is interested and has something useful to say. If you can, go to RIPE, ARIN, APNIC or IETF-meetings. These organisations also have active mailinglists where your opinion (if intelligent) is valued.

I had the pleasure of going to two RIPE meetings and had the joy of seeing the RIPE-community decide the new rules on the distrubution of IPv6 space both for Local Internet Registries as well as Internet eXchange Points. (/32 and /48 for each, respectively.) And it feels cool to be able to say that I was able to raise my hand for the vote on some of these issues.

Furthermore, Esther Dyson asks the internet community to get involved into the ICANN debate and to pledge to join ICANN-at-Large. You can find that here:

http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/inter es ting-people/200202/msg00241.html

Re:Governments have no business there

[Zeinfeld]

Everything we do is either run, controled, engineered by our governments. DNS used to be run be voluteers, later by the big ISP's. Wouldn't companies/organisations like AlterNIC have more followers when people's freedom was on the line (ie: when DNS was run/dictated by governments).

The problem is that it is not only governments who can abuse power. Individuals and corporations show they can do that just as effectively all the time. The ITU (part of the UN) has overseen plenty of critical registration processes without abusing their power. I would rather have them in charge than a wholy owned subsidiary of Enron (e.g. the US Congress).

Randy is right that ICANN could be done cheaper, there is no need to hold every meeting in somewhere like Ghana. The UN does just fine holding most meetings in NYC or Geneva. ICANN holds almost every meeting in a place with third tier air connections.

Randy is wrong (as he often is) in believing that the DNS root can remain an amateur effort. It is now critical infrastructure and needs to be supported as such. At the moment we get by because we don't need 13 way fault tolerance. The level of infrastructure attacks against the root is rising and at some time we will need at least five high reliability nodes on ultra fat pipes (multiple OC48)

Randy is also wrong about the prospects for funds comming from governments. It is not unlikely that the EU and Japan can be persuaded to tip in some cash. But ICANN has to look like a government agency in its spending habits, not like a dotcom startup.