Re: <nettime> 'IANA' to revoke .su ccTLD?

[Ronda Hauben <ronda@ais.org>]

Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@yahoo.com> on Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 
wrote:

>Voicing dissent against visible "enemy" attracts attention, promotes 
>action and justified anger by public/followers. I propose that 
>the "enemy" here is a false one, and all this commotion just serves 
>as a security valve to let the steam out, steam that could be harnessed 
>to deal with real problems....

While I see dissent as helpful, rather than a security valve, I agree
that the effort should be to identify the real problem and to determine
what can be done to solve it.

>The real issue is how to sidestep the current DNS with its root servers
>controlled by people that didn't quite managed to become politicians, but
>thanks to this internet thingie got some sort of power anyways.

I disagree that the real issue is the current DNS with its root servers.

I have just written an article about the nature of the infrastructure
of the Internet that is in danger of being handed over to ICANN by 
the U.S. Department of Commerce.

In the article I explain:

"(....)The least critical aspect of this infrastructure is the DNS.
The Internet could function using IP numbers in place of the
names, just as telephone addressing is in general by numbers,
rather than names. But the IP numbers and protocols are
critical to the functioning of the Internet."

>From "The Internet and Its Governance: Where Should We Look for 
Models?"

Article url: http://www.circleid.com/articles/2545.asp


Unfortunately, the real issue is *not* how to sidestep the current DNS 
with its root servers controlled by people that didn't quite managed 
to become politicians, but thanks to this internet thingie got some sort 
of power anyways.

The *real issue* as I understand it is that the IP numbers are critical
for the tcp/ip protocol and those have been put into ICANN's hands.
The IP numbers must be unique for the messages to have a destination
on the Internet.

Also the protocol process is critical as the protocols make it possible
for communication to occur. ICANN is also being put in charge of the 
protocol process.

There needs to be some means of creating a form to protect these
critical aspects of the Internet's infrastructure. (Port numbers
are also an issue, and are something that the old IANA handled,
and perhaps someone on this list can say a bit about their significance.
Here it seems just a matter of keeping track of them but also this
is an important technical function that is part of the Internet's
technical infrastructure.)

>There are several ongoing sidestepping efforts. The feat is quite doable
>technically, what is missing is evangelisation. In the past alternate roots
>were just attempts by wannabees to create TLDs without ICANN's blessing and
>oiling and then make some money. Only distributed solutions have chance to make
>ICANN irrelevant without becoming one. That is worth investing time in. And
>many do.

I agree that distributed solutions to the Domain Name problem are
possible and probably the future. In my research about the history
of the international collaboration that created the tcp/ip protocol
suite, I came across the fact that early on the University College London
(UCL) had its own form of domain name system, and the US had its
form of system, and the early tcp/ip development were not affected
by the fact that these were different systems for naming.

I am working on a draft of a paper on the early international collaboration
that made the development of tcp/ip possible.  I hope to be able to 
make the paper available for comment shortly.

Ronda
ronda@ais.org

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120

http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers

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