The latest ICANN meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico was varied and interesting and the key discussions included the following:

Country Code Names Supporting Organisation (ccNSO)

Lesley Cowley, our CEO, is a member of this organisation that is responsible for developing and recommending global policies relating to country-code top-level domains to ICANN’s Board. Lesley led a session on participation: only 60 of the 240 ccTLDs are members of the ccNSO, so they are looking for ways to engage the others and to make the community more representative of the global community. Following the debate, Lesley was appointed to chair a working group looking at participation.

WHOIS

There were no less than four GNSO meetings in one day on the issue of WHOIS. A joint GNSO and GAC also considered a different issue - new generic top-level domains. The new WHOIS Working Group had an all-day, intensive session reviewing a WHOIS world where a look-up would show a designated ‘operational point of contact’ instead of the registrant’s contact details. Huge progress was made, but knotty issues remain, including how law enforcement agencies from around the world could get quick access if personal data was shielded.

Internationalised Domain Names

Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) were again one of the big topics of discussion. Countries in the Far East were pushing for a fast track option to get IDNs implemented, but this was met with resistance and a full policy development process is likely to begin at the next ICANN meeting, which could possibly take a full two years.

Signing the root

There was continued debate about the management of signing the root, so that DNSSEC can be fully implemented in due course. Some countries remain unhappy that this might be an ICANN role, but there is no agreement on alternative ways that this could be achieved.. Again this debate has been running for some time and will continue to do so.

IPv6

The ongoing issue of a transition to Internet Protocol version six in order to provide for the Internet’s future expansion was covered, with remote participation through ICANN’s public participation web site. ICANN’s chief engineer described the issues he’d faced deploying IPv6, and the director of a local Puerto Rican ISP described how IPv6 allows customers to connect with an ever growing number of people and services. The panel agreed that while there are costs in implementing IPv6, it may be possible for them to be recouped through additional services. Jay Daley, our Director of IT recently commented in the press that the way that IP addresses are being allocated is holding back European businesses from migrating to IPv6.

This entry was posted in August, 2007.
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