Details are sketchy, but from what we can gather the presentation by Jon Postel, the director of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) meeting in Chicago Wednesday night was something of an IANA love- in. Postel was presenting the third draft of his plans for the entity to replace the work done by IANA and the other bodies involved in running the internet domain name system, which we detailed yesterday (08/27/98). In explaining the draft – which Postel hopes will be the last – he mentioned that he has compiled a board to approve nominations to the board of directors of the new entity, but did not say this would include. He also urged the approving audience to send written endorsements to IANA of the third draft, which presumably can then be presented to the US government as evidence of widespread support among the internet community for the IANA plan. Many reports in the technology media in the past few days have portrayed the IANA plan as reflecting the consensus in the internet community at large, but it appears that nothing could be further from the truth. While he is admired for his technical abilities and work over the years to maintain and expand the DNS, the closed approach adopted by Postel in developing his plan has irked many in the community, including Network Solutions Inc, which runs the InterNic part of the DNS until its contract is up on September 30, the same day IANA’s ends. However, the US government is expected to provide funding after that date to maintain the system until the new entity is ready to take over. After Postel’s presentation was met with widespread approval, someone in the audience got up and asked how many people had actually read the third draft – about one quarter apparently raised their hands. In addition, the Internet Architecture Board (which oversees the IETF, approves the appointment of the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) members and provides technical oversight to the IESG) proposed putting out a position statement saying that it endorsed the plan under the understanding that the IETF and the IAB is the protocol council in the new entity (the other two councils will look after naming and IP address allocation). Some in the audience balked at this and a week’s consultation period was agreed before any move is taken.
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