Cyber Conflicts: Internet Governance

Internet is fairly static, and it's standardized in that anybody can start their own Internet, it's autonomous, we can all run the Internet. There is one factor however which requires a lot of governance and that is the Internet addressing scheme and The Domain Name System. So what happens in the internet addresses? We have a limited number of internet addresses that need to be allocated around the globe to everybody. And secondly, we have associated with internet names, domain names which are alphanumeric names that are easy to remember and they need to be mapped onto each other. So both of these are global entities. We have one single directory which is governed across the globe. And that's where a lot of the governance is required and this is managed by an organization called ICANN. Now the question is what is ICANN? ICANN is a not for profit, public benefit organization which was started in 1998. It operates the Internet's domain name system. It also coordinates allocation and assignment of the unique identifiers on the Internet, that is the IP addresses. It accredits the high level domain names. Registrars and help facilitate the volunteers who are dedicated to keeping the internet secure, stable and interoperable.

ICANN promotes competition in the domain name space and helps develop the internet policy.

Before ICANN came along, we had its predecessor the job of administering the domain system was performed by one individual, his name was John Postel. Was a computer science researcher at a University of Southern California and he had been in involvement in the creation of the ARPANET, which was a predecessor to the modern Internet.

Now he acted under the authority of the Internet, a signed, members authority founded again a decade ago in 1988. This was a group contractually obligated to the US Department of Defense to manage allocation of IP addresses and the domain name system.

 

But as the internet grew, the growth of the internet let the U.S Department of Commerce to publish a paper which seeks establishing a private organization to take over the duties of managing and assigning internet addresses, and this was partly because of its growth and partly because of international pressure.

It also wanted to bring the global community into the process by establishing a board of directors from around the world.

And ICANN was formed consequently in 1998, and assigned the primary policy responsibility to two existing organizations. That is the address support policy, which is the regional internet registry, an organization that manages the allocation and registration of internet numbers or IP addresses in each region of the globe. And second was the policies of support policy which was I.E.T.F. Internet Engineering Task Force. This is an organization that develops and promotes voluntary internet standards such as the T.C.P.I.P. And I.C.A.N.N. can reserve the policy formation regarding the domain name support to itself in 1999.

The IANA was brought into ICANN and still acts as the manager for the root zone of the global Domain Name System.

Since its formation ICANN has maintained partnership for the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the management of the internet domains' name systems. While I can operate fairly independently of the Department of Commerce, in 2006 a memorandum of understanding was signed between the two organizations that grants the US Department of Farmers unilateral oversight over some ICANN operations and this is a contentious issue.

  

While ICANN is a global organization with open governance, a key component of the internet remains, controlled by the US government and that come from the legacy of the ARPANET. The US Department of Commerce retains under control over the authoritative DNS roots on which is the master list of authoritative domain name servers.

These 13 servers are the master list of all registered domain names. The reason other countries are concerned about this is because the fear that in case of a conflict, if the US controls the domain name servers or the root zone, they may be able to disrupt the Internet service or to twist it in its own favor so that Internet works for the US and it fails for everybody else.

And earlier plans to move the authoritative root zone, controlled directly to ICANN was scrapped in 2005.