Re: Is the IANA a function performed by ICANN ?

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004, JFC (Jefsey) Morfin wrote:

> My understanding was that IANA is a neutral, independent, technical 
> authority
> "the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a function performed by 
> ICANN".
There is a significant lack of clarity in these matters.

ICANN has a number of legal arrangements with the US Dept of Commerce and 
its subagencies.  The most relevant to IANA is a sole-source purchase 
order that comes from the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration 
(a sub-agency of the DoC) under which NOAA is purchasing an essentially 
undefined thing called the IANA function and ICANN is providing that thing 
for zero dollars.
Usually in a purchase order the flow of deliverables runs towards the 
purchasor.  In this case nothing particularly tangible flows towards the 
NOAA, but there does seem to be a rather cloudy delegation of authority 
from NOAA to ICANN.  In addition there is the oft-asked and never answered 
question of whether NOAA (or NTIA, another sub-agency of the Dept of 
Commerce) has such authority to delegate in the first place.  (The GAO did 
examine that question and found the authority to be lacking.)
In any event, what commeth via purchase order can goeth via the lapse of 
that purchase order.  Unless there is some unwritten accord, ICANN has no 
guarantee that it will continue to be able to act as the uncompeted, 
sole-source provider of the IANA function.
The IANA function as practiced by ICANN appears to have at several 
distinct parts:
1) The operation of the L root server.  I have never heard one bad 
word about ICANN's performance with respect to the L server  As far 
as I can tell, the hands on those knobs are very competent.
2) The assignment and recordation of "protocol numbers".  This is the 
classical Numbers Czar function.  Again, this seems to be competently 
handled, although I have heard complaints that processing of number 
assignments is taking too long.  And I have had my own concern that this 
function is really something that more properly belongs under the IETF's 
umbrella.
3) ccTLD assignment authority.  This is the controversial function.  This 
is a job that requires IANA to decide who gets to act as the internet 
presence of each sovereign nation (that is, each sovereign nation except 
the US - US dealt with the .us TLD outside of ICANN and despite ICANN.)
Yes, there are competing theories of whether a ccTLD is a direct aspect of 
sovreignty or is merely a database key that happens to be isomorphic with, 
but not dependent upon, the existance of soverign states.  My own sense is 
that the latter theory is not flying well among the collective governments 
of the world.
ICANN does not keep time cards, or at least it didn't when I last checked. 
And there is a great intermingling of tasks among the ICANN/IANA staff. 
These two aspects combine to make it very difficult to assign a 
quantitiative cost or level-of-effort number to IANA as a whole and much 
less to the distinct IANA tasks.
However, by observation it appears that the bulk of the cost, and trouble, 
of IANA is in item #3.
I have had concern that ICANN, or rather IANA, is being used as a pawn by 
political factions in a number of countries.  ICANN's redelegations are 
often based on fairly thin bodies of evidence and are supported often by 
some rather questionable assertions (e.g. a letter relinquishing a ccTLD 
that was on an otherwise blank sheet of paper without letterhead and over 
the unverified signature of someone claiming to be the long lost contact.)
During my term I never felt that ICANN or IANA had the staff expertise to 
be able to swim in those shark infested waters.  However, my sense is that 
with the advent of current president and other staff changes that ICANN, 
oops, IANA, is perhaps better equipped for this now than it was 18 months 
ago.  But the question is still present: Might not the question of who is 
the most rightful operator of a ccTLD be better handled by existing 
organizations that are much more sophisticated in matters pertaining to 
who is the rightful sovereign power of a nation?
                --karl--







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