[ih] IANA

[Dave CROCKER]

Vint Cerf wrote:
> you seem to leave out a two year period when the community tried to
> self organize. An Ah Hoc committee was formed but did not converge
> entirely. As I recall, Jon initiated discussion about 1996 on the matter
> of institutionalizing IANA functions in part because USC was unwilling
> to provide legal protection for potential controversies over rights to
> register particular domain names, etc. The attempt to self-organize
> led to a proposed Geneva-based entity but this ignited a firestorm
> among some members of Congress (who somehow thought that
> the US still "controlled" the Internet) and led to Ira Magaziner's
> involvement with the support of (or maybe at the request of?)
> then President Bill Clinton.

Small quibble:  The IAHC work, itself, actually converged quite well.

My own view was that there was very substantial industry support for its 
proposal, and very substantial organizing effort towards its implementation, 
with CORE as the prime exemplar. Since Jon supported it and since the root 
server operators were explicit that they simply took direction from Jon, the 
proposal would have gone live, absent governmental intervention.

However there also was a very well-organized industry lobbying effort against 
it, including major companies with professional lobbying skills.  Ultimately, 
the only reason it was not implemented was that Magaziner vetoed it.

A point that is typically confused, including in Craig Simon's generally 
diligent and detailed thesis, is that the IAHC's scope was strictly limited to 
new gTLDs and never, ever had anything to do with the larger matters of the root 
or IANA continuity or authority.  The IAHC model was simple: Authority rested 
with IANA. (Don Heath at ISOC was the only member of the IAHC who remained 
confused about this.

That some of us contemporaneously commented on that larger matter is a different 
matter, mostly having to do with clarifying the authority /under which/ the IAHC 
was operating.

(Small side note:  Folks should look at the specific recommendations in the IAHC 
proposal and consider how many of them eventually were implemented...)


>> 1997, prompted by Ira Magaziner, Clinton administration commits to
>> privitization in its 'Framework for Global Electronic Commerce'
>> 1998, January, US Department of Commerce Green Paper 'A Proposal to
>> Improve the Technical Management of Internet Names and Addresses'
>> proposes a private, not for profit corporation to coordinate DNS
>> 1998, US Department of Commerce publishes statement of policy on
>> Internet names and addresses and announces the beginning of a
>> transition of DNS functions to the new corporation, following a period
>> of further study and consultation.

 From an historical standpoint, although this was perhaps a side-effect rather 
than a goal, I believe that the Green Paper officially terminated IANA's 
long-standing authority to do it's job (on its own.)




> Vint Cerf wrote:
>> Jake, when did Jon come to SRI? Did the NIC maintain the host.txt file 
>> initially (that sounds right to me)?

This matches my recollection.  SRI's doing the host table pre-dated Jon's 
arrival at SRI, but he then took the task with him when he moved down to ISI.

Did the SRI task pre-date even Jake's involvement?

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net