ICANN 55 was held in Marrakech, Morocco, from 5 to 10 March 2016, with 2,272 delegates attending.
The IANA Stewardship Transition was the dominant topic of the meeting, and by the end of ICANN 55, the ICANN Board had agreed to approve the complete IANA Stewardship Transition plan for submission to the U.S. Government.
For the Internet number community, progress on the proposed Service Level Agreement (SLA) between ICANN and the RIRs was also a focus, with the final text of the SLA also agreed during ICANN 55 (to be published this week).
APNIC activities included:
- Paul Wilson participated in the Joint Meeting of the ICANN Board and the ASO/NRO. During the meeting, he emphasized that the SLA was the accountability mechanism between ICANN and the RIRs, of equal importance as the CCWG proposal. He proposed that the SLA should be executed in lockstep with changes to the ICANN Bylaws, as part of the documented transition plan
- APNIC staff met with members of the ICANN Board, as well as representatives from ICANN, the U.S. government’s National Telecommunications & Information Association (NTIA), IETF and other RIRs throughout the week to discuss the SLA and other aspects of the implementation
- Paul represented the NRO at the official media conference following the ICANN Board’s decision to approve and submit the IANA stewardship transition plan to the U.S. government
- Paul and Craig Ng participated with other RIR representatives in the GAC Public Safety Working Group (PSWG). The PSWG comprises international government civil/criminal law enforcement representatives, consumer protection officials and other public safety representatives. This time, the PSWG and the RIRs jointly organized a workshop about IP addresses and Whois. The presentations by RIRs focused on contractual and policy obligations and whois accuracy
- Geoff Huston participated in several meetings of the ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC). Geoff has been an SSAC member since 2015
- Geoff gave two presentations at the DNSSEC Workshop, drawing on APNIC Labs research – DNS Root Zone Key Signing Key Rollover and ECDSA P-256 support in DNSSEC-validating Resolvers
- APNIC signed a Memorandum of Understanding with CNNIC (the China Internet Network Information Center) for cooperative work on RPKI, Internet resource statistics, training, and other activities
Very happy to work together with Paul and best wishes for our collaborations https://t.co/6OWK2l0hN9
— Xiaodong Lee (@Xiaodong_Lee) March 10, 2016
- Paul met with members of the India delegation, including the Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, to discuss Internet developments in India including its Smart Cities project
- Paul met with VNNIC representatives to discuss APNIC training and other potential joint activities
- Paul met with representatives from the Cyberspace Administration of China to discuss arrangements for the 2016 World Internet Conference, Wuzhen
- Paul met with new ICANN CEO, Göran Marby, and invited him to attend APNIC 42 in Dhaka.
Update: Since the end of ICANN 55, the ICANN Board has forwarded the approved IANA transition documents (including the ICG’s IANA Stewardship Transition plan, and the CCWG’s Proposal for improving ICANN Accountability) to the US government for consideration. It is expected that the decision will take some 90 days, and be announced during June 2016.
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