ISOC B. Carpenter
Internet Draft L. Landweber
November 1995 J. Postel
N. Trio
Proposal for an ISOC Role in DNS Name Space Management
Abstract
draft-isoc-dns-role-00.txt
This draft proposes that the Internet Society should take a formal
role in the oversight and licensing of competitive registries for the
international Internet name space, in support of the IANA and with
the assistance of the IAB.
Although this draft has been discussed in various bodies, it is not
final, it should not be regarded as a consensus document, and it is
presented for open debate in the Internet community.
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working
documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas,
and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as ``work in progress.''
To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the
``1id-abstracts.txt'' listing contained in the Internet- Drafts
Shadow Directories on ds.internic.net (US East Coast), nic.nordu.net
(Europe), ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast), or munnari.oz.au (Pacific
Rim).
Table of Contents:
Status of this Memo.............................................1
1. PROCESS......................................................2
2. INTRODUCTION.................................................2
3. THE PROPOSAL.................................................3
Security considerations.........................................7
Acknowledgements................................................7
Authors' Addresses..............................................7
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1. PROCESS
The intended process for the finalisation of this document is as
follows (with this version being Step 2):
1. Distribute early drafts to solicit comments from ISOC Trustees and
Advisory Council Officers, IAB, IESG.
2. Based on comments on early drafts, prepare an Internet Draft for
comment by the wider Internet community.
3. In parallel, organize a meeting to present the preliminary ISOC
plan and obtain further feedback. All stakeholders will be invited to
this meeting.
4. Also, in parallel, hold focused discussions with U.S. government
officials and other key individuals regarding the transition from the
current system.
5. Present the current details of the DNS plan at the Dallas IETF and
solicit further input. It is expected that there will be time for
IETF participants to review the Internet Draft prior to this meeting.
6. Based on all input received, describe final details in an
Informational RFC and present to ISOC BOT and the IAB for
ratification.
2. INTRODUCTION
The recent introduction of charging for commercial (.com) domain name
registration and an interest in fostering competition in this area
led to discussions as to the proper role of Government, and as to the
role that independent bodies such as the Internet Society (ISOC)
might play. Indeed, the ISOC is prepared to provide an independent,
neutral home for coordination of essential central elements of
Internet infrastructure. These include the root domain and selected
top-level domains of the domain name system.
Therefore, this document is the draft of a proposal, to all Internet
stakeholders, for increased ISOC involvement in the domain name
registration process. Its goal is to address concerns of the global
Internet community in the area of domain name registration and
support. Its eventual adoption will require consensus from the user
community and from stakeholders, including Internet service and
content providers, the CIX, relevant software and hardware
industries, relevant government agencies in the U.S. and elsewhere,
and multinational networking organizations. Assignment of names
within national domains will remain the responsibility of national
authorities, and hence is not included in this proposal.
The ISOC role would include setting policy, providing administrative
oversight, and directly managing the selection of domain name
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providers for non-national top level domains. It would not include
managing operational infrastructure or engaging in other activities
that are commonly included under the umbrella of "operations." These
will continue to be the responsibility of Internet Service Providers
and their representative organizations (e.g., the CIX). Examples of
operational activities in this context include, among others,
operation of routers and domain name servers, allocation of leaf
domain names subject to global policy, and the servicing of
customers.
With the rapid commercialization and globalization of the Internet,
it is important that responsibility for key central components of
Internet infrastructure evolve away from support and oversight by the
US government to an independent and international basis. ISOC is an
international, individual membership and organizational, membership
organization. The organizational membership provides support from a
broad range of businesses and other organizations involved in
significant components of the global Internet infrastructure. The
approximately 5,000 individual members include many key developers,
maintainers, managers, providers, supporters, and users of Internet
infrastructure. Individual members are located in over one hundred
countries. Because of its diverse individual and organizational
membership, ISOC represents a major segment of the Internet industry
and support structure throughout the world.
ISOC brings a knowledgeable community to this challenging problem
and, with support from the larger Internet community, it can provide
a framework for institutionalizing the Internet Assigned Numbers
Authority (IANA) and related functions on a scale suited to the
Internet as we expect it to be in the future.
3. THE PROPOSAL
1. The Internet Society will assume responsibility for the DNS name
space. This will include:
(a) determination of policies, procedures, processes, and standards
for the allocation of domain names in non-country-specific top level
domains such as "com," and other similar top level domains (e.g.,
corp, ltd or bus) that might be introduced by the IANA in the future.
Policies for the assignment of domain names within national domains
such as fr, us, or jp, will remain the responsibility of a party
designated by the IANA in agreement with national authorities.
(b) the selection, licensing, and oversight of Internet Name
Providers (INPs) who are delegated to assign names within a
designated portion of the DNS name space;
(c) dispute resolution;
(d) provision of a legal umbrella for the activity; and
(e) financial oversight and accountability for funds received and
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disbursed by the IANA, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), and
ISOC for this activity.
It should be emphasized that ISOC is not proposing to provide direct
operational services. It is merely offering to serve as a neutral
body which can help to foster competition by providing support in the
enumerated areas.
2. The IAB, acting through the IANA, will be designated as the ISOC
entity that will be responsible to act on behalf of ISOC in matters
relating to (a) and (b) above.
Determination of policies, procedures, processes, standards will be
done by an open process (such as normal IETF procedures), permitting
input and discussion by the full range of Internet stakeholders. Such
openness is an important pre-requisite to the universal acceptance of
IAB recommendations. When full developed, IAB recommendations will be
presented to the ISOC Board of Trustees for final ratification.
The IAB has been designated to be responsible for this task because
it is the oversight body for the IANA, the organization that
currently has responsibility for the Internet domain name space and
because of its role in the Internet standards process. It is a
constituent body of the Internet Society whose members are selected
by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and approved by the
ISOC Board of Trustees. Because of this, references to
responsibilities of the IAB should not be construed as limiting the
ultimate responsibility of the Internet Society for this activity.
3. The IANA will be delegated as the organization responsible for
implementing the policies, procedures, processes, and standards
specified by the IAB.
4. A goal of the DNS management activity will be to provide for an
efficient, flexible, stable, and low cost environment in which a
choice of different INPs will be available to customers. To
accomplish this, the IANA will license INPs who will be responsible
for allocating portions of the name space. To provide for
competition, new top level domains may be established or mechanisms
may be developed to share a single top level domain among multiple
INPs.
5. Each INP will be required to adhere to the policies, processes,
procedures, and standards as determined by the IAB and ratified by
the ISOC Board of Trustees. A failure to adhere to these policies,
processes, procedures, and standards may result in the revocation of
the license or other action. In this regard, it will be necessary to
architect the system in such a way as to allow for graceful
changeover between INPs in the event of a revocation as well as to
provide legal protection for the IANA/IAB/ISOC in the event of a
legal action.
6. INP licensees will pay an annual fee to ISOC. Funds raised will be
used to support the DNS name space management activity described in
this document. Fee structures will be set to generate only
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sufficient funds to cover DNS-related activities of IANA, IAB, ISOC
and will not fund programs or activities not connected with DNS name
space management. Examples of anticipated expense categories include
support staff, liability insurance for the IANA, IAB, and ISOC,
overhead items such as space and computing support, and travel. It
is an open issue whether support of root nameservers would be
included. An estimate of required license fees will be developed as
part of the continuing process of refining this proposal.
7. INPs will be allowed to determine their fees.
8. INPs will be required, where possible, to obtain liability
insurance and to, in their contract with ISOC, hold ISOC and its
designated representatives harmless for their actions. It will be
important for INPs to have an awareness of the legal issues related
to this activity and for them to have the infrastructure and
financial resources to both participate in the dispute resolution
process described below (see 9) and to defend themselves in cases
where legal action is initiated.
ISOC will also obtain liability insurance to cover its designated
representatives and will also endeavor, through the specification and
establishment of fair and open processes and dispute resolution
mechanisms, to minimize the likelihood of legal action.
One area to be addressed concerns how to deal with issues that arise
when an INP is either unable or unwilling to continue to provide
DNS-related services. Among the questions to be resolved are the
maintenance and transfer of data and the transfer of responsibility
to a new INP.
9. The purpose of this section is to propose a mechanism to resolve
disputes in managing the DNS. The aim is to, as much as possible,
solve conflicts outside the formal legal process. The mechanism is
similar to those of many organizations and is based on an arbitration
mechanism.
(a) all "owners" of DNS names agree to place disputes before an
arbitration panel, a DNSAP, and to accept its decisions as binding.
(b) all parties agree that the DNSAP and its members will be held non
liable for any of its lawful activities under this mechanism and will
waive access to internal DNSAP communications.
(c) members of a specific DNSAP will be drawn from a panel of senior
people from a variety of fields including technology, law and
business who agree to serve without pay. The specific members will
need to assure themselves and the DNSAP Administrator that they have
no conflict of interest in the case being considered.
(d) all pleadings will be done via electronic communications: email,
web presentation etc.
(e) except in extremely complex cases as decided by the DNSAP
Administrator, the panel will only meet electronically.
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(f) decisions of the panel will be made as promptly as possible and
the report will be issued to the parties involved as well as the
DNSAP Administrator.
(g) decisions will be made available to a court with jurisdiction in
the event of any further action on the part of the complaining party.
10. The IAB will provide liaison, as appropriate, in this area with
national governments, international organizations, Internet Service
Providers, and industry and educational organizations and
associations.
11. ISOC recognizes that while the DNS name space is international,
the U.S. government has played an important role in the development
of the Internet. ISOC will work closely with U.S. government
officials to effect a smooth transition, free of financial risks,
from the current administrative structure to the one described above.
12. This proposal does not initially deal with other categories of
central support such as Internet addresses assignment, IPv6 address
assignment, MIME-type registration, or RFC support. All of these are
areas for further study.
13 It is recognized that this proposal extends the scope of
activities of the ISOC and of the IAB and the IANA in particular.
Dedicated staff support for these new activities is known to be
essential and indeed will be the main cost leading to the need for
license fees.
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Security considerations
None.
Acknowledgements
Constructive comments have been received from many members of the
ISOC Board, IAB and IESG.
Authors' Addresses
Brian E. Carpenter
IAB Chair
Group Leader, Communications Systems Phone: +41 22 767-4967
Computing and Networks Division Fax: +41 22 767-7155
CERN
European Laboratory for Particle Physics Email: brian@dxcoms.cern.ch
1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland
Larry Landweber
ISOC President
Computer Sciences Dept.
University of Wisconsin
1210 W. Dayton St. Phone; +1 608 263 7442
Madison, WI 53706, USA. Email: lhl@cs.wisc.edu
Jon Postel
IANA Phone: 310-822-1511
USC/Information Sciences Institute Fax: 310-823-6714
4676 Admiralty Way
Marina del Rey, CA 90292 Email: Postel@ISI.EDU
Nicholas R. Trio
ISOC Advisory Council
IBM Internet Systems and Operations Phone: 914-945-1850
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center Email: nrt@watson.ibm.com
PO Box 218
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
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