After more than a year of work, the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) has announced its first draft IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal for public comment. The Proposal integrates the three separate proposals developed by the names, numbers and protocol parameters communities, with a detailed explanation of the interactions between them, and the workability of the proposal overall.
Comments can be provided via an online form or by emailing public-comments@ianacg.org until 8 September 2015 at 23:59 (UTC). Comments can be detailed, in answer to 12 specific questions; but simple statements of support can also be submitted.
More information can be found on the ICG’s public comment page; and ICG will also be hosting two identical webinars to discuss the proposal on 6 and 7 August 2015.
The Internet Number Community’s Proposal
The Internet Number Community’s Proposal was developed over six months during 2014, and submitted to the ICG by the Consolidated RIR IANA Stewardship Proposal (CRISP) Team in January 2015. As many will know, it consists of three main elements:
- ICANN continues as the IANA Functions Operator for the IANA Numbering Services;
- A Service Level Agreement (SLA) between ICANN and the RIRs would be used to ensure that the IANA functions continue to be performed to the Number Community’s requirements;
- An independent review panel, made up of representatives from each RIR community, periodically reviews ICANN’s performance in meeting these identified service levels.
The key priorities of the community, and conveyed by the CRISP proposal, were ensuring stability, security, reliability, quality of service and community empowerment. Finally, given our satisfaction with ICANN’s performance as IANA Numbering Functions Operator, there was no need for the proposal to introduce additional operational complexity.
More detail on the CRISP Proposal can be found in the following infographic.
Next Steps
The NRO Executive Council has been happy with the progress on the transition so far, and confident that the CRISP proposal reflects the will of the Internet Number Community. We hope that all viewpoints on the proposal have already been expressed, but we will of course monitor feedback on the ICG proposal.
In terms of implementation, the NRO has produced drafts of both the proposed IANA Services SLA, and Review Committee Charter, and received public comments on both. Second drafts of these documents will be published soon, and we hope to have both of them completed well before the implementation begins.
Following the current public comment period, the ICG will work on finalizing its proposal and intends to publish the final document in October 2015, during ICANN 54 in Dublin. The ICANN Board of Directors will then deliver this document to the NTIA for review, and for approval we except, during early 2016.
The End of a Long Journey
If this process goes as planned, then finally, some 16 years after if begin with ICANN’s formation, the IANA stewardship transition will be complete. When it happens that will certainly be a milestone to celebrate.
I do hope that throughout this remaining period, the APNIC and RIR communities will continue to stay informed, and provide their supportive response to the ICG proposal.
Footnote: You can join the NRO IANA Transfer Mailing List (ianaxfer@nro.net) to follow the Numbers Community discussions, and view updates which will continue to be published on www.nro.net.
The views expressed by the authors of this blog are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of APNIC. Please note a Code of Conduct applies to this blog.