Netnod welcomes globalisation of IANA
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is part of the US Department of Commerce, announced last Friday that they intend to transition the IANA functions to the global multistakeholder community:
"As the first step, NTIA is asking the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to convene global stakeholders to develop a proposal to transition the current role played by NTIA in the coordination of the Internet’s domain name system (DNS)."
"This is a historical event and an important step towards a truly global, bottom-up and transparent governance model of the Internet", says Netnod CEO Kurt Erik Lindqvist. He continues "This development strengthens the legitimacy of these functions and builds on inclusive governance models that have proven to work."
ICANN currently has a contract with the NTIA to carry out the IANA functions, which include administrating changes to the authoritative DNS root zone. This is the database that contains the list of all DNS top-level domains, such as .com, .net, .org etc. Netnod, being the operator of one of the thirteen DNS root servers, i.root-servers.net, plays a vital role in the basic functioning of the DNS, in that the root name servers publish the root zone file to other DNS servers and clients on the Internet.
While ICANN has had a contractual agreement with the US government from the start, the transition to a more global arrangement was envisaged from the very early beginnings of ICANN. With the announcement of this transition, NTIA has now tasked ICANN to work together with the affected technical organisations to propose a transition plan that is multistakeholder and open in nature and that maintains the security, stability, and resiliency of the Internet DNS.
Netnod commends the NTIA for taking this important step and supports this globalisation process of these key Internet domain name functions. Netnod has always been a strong advocate of open, transparent, inclusive multistakeholder processes, and a supporter of the further globalisation of ICANN, as well as the specific IANA functions within ICANN.
We look forward to our continued cooperation with IANA and the other organisations within the Internet ecosystem. Netnod has always been, and will continue to be committed to a secure, stable, resilient, and well-functioning Internet.
Read the full announcement on the NTIA website.
About Netnod
Netnod is a non-profit, neutral and independent Internet infrastructure organisation based in Sweden. Netnod operates Internet exchange points (IXPs) in Sweden and Denmark.
Netnod also manages a variety of DNS services. Netnod provides anycast services to TLDs worldwide from more than 50 sites around the world.
Netnod is also the proud operator of i.root-servers.net, one of the 13 logical DNS root name servers in the world. This service is provided as a public service to the Internet community at-large, as part of Netnod’s goal to work for the Good of the Internet.