Request for Information Called Possible Slap at ICANN
NTIA “market research” into potential contractors to handle technical coordination of the domain name and addressing system could signal the eventual shift of some Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions from ICANN, a longtime ICANN participant said Thurs. NTIA asked Tues. for indications of interest in tackling functions ICANN performs. With unhappiness growing in some quarters over ICANN’s work, there’s a “very real possibility” those functions could be handed to one or more organizations, said Bret Fausett, a lawyer in Duane Morris’s L.A. office. But ICANN called the move a formality of U.S. procurement law.
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NTIA is “exploring options” for contractors to perform 3 IANA functions, its request for information (RFI) said: (1) Coordinate assignment of technical protocol parameters used in Internet protocols. (2) Handle functions associated with root zone management, such as responding to requests for updates of country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) contacts. (3) Allocate blocks of IPv4 and IPv6 address space to regional registries and for special purposes such as multicast addressing or addresses for private networks.
The RFI “is a very well known and predictable part of an arcane govt. procurement law,” an ICANN spokesman told us: “ICANN’s not terribly exercised by it. As far as ICANN’s concerned, it’s business as usual.” It’s “just a request for information and not an announcement of the department’s intentions regarding the future of the IANA functions contract,” an NTIA spokesman said.
The govt. wants to know how would-be contractors propose to perform the 3 services and at what cost. They're now furnished free to the U.S. govt. NTIA asked respondents about existing relationships with the Internet engineering community, Internet standards-setting bodies, Regional Internet Registries, ccTLD operators, generic and sponsored TLD operators and national govts. associated with specific ccTLDs. Responses are due March 7.
This may not be the first time a new IANA contract has been awarded, but these days there’s growing dissatisfaction with ICANN’s performance, Fausett said in an interview. IANA services are supposed to be “pretty noncontroversial” -- ICANN’s management, however, has been anything but, he said. It’s long been accused of being “dilatory” in its performance and has failed to win ccTLD managers’ buy-in, creating headaches for the U.S. govt., Fausett said.
The RFI is “a potentially major development,” U. of Miami law Prof. Michael Froomkin said on ICANN Watch. It’s just a preliminary step now, “so much remains before anything happens,” he wrote: “It’s fun, though, to speculate as to who may want this role: the EU? the ITU? the Internet Architecture Board/Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)? VeriSign?”
Even if the govt. is open to finding alternative IANA contractors, that doesn’t mean it would agree to handing off to either the EU or the ITU, Fausett said. The RFI’s carving out 3 separate functions could mean IANA duties wouldn’t be bundled, he said. Fausett added he could imagine giving the administrative functions to, say, VeriSign or NeuStar, provided they had no discretion in whether to carry them out. The IETF has made clear it wants the protocol parameter assignment, which tracks protocols and port numbers in use to avoid software operational clashes over the Internet.