By Nick Patience

Yet another storm is brewing in the internet community, this time over plans by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to take control of the primary root server of the internet’s domain name system. At present, as it has for the past seven years, Network Solutions Inc operates the primary root server, known as ‘A’, as well as another of the network of 13, known as ‘H’. It does so through a contract from the US Department of Commerce which expires at the end of September 2000. There are no plans to renew the contract and instead, ICANN intends to run the server itself or through a contractor of its own. At the moment, NSI makes all the additions and deletions to the zone file that contains the data about all the internet’s domain names and then propagates them through the root server network.

Control of the root has been the subject of a few lawsuits in recent years and it appears that, although only NSI can update the zone file at present, it is doing so under the ultimate authority over its direction and maintenance. That point at least is agreed upon by ICANN, government and NSI officials that we have spoken to in recent days.

ICANN interim president Mike Roberts says moves are already afoot to change the balance of power in the root server network. The plan is, according to Roberts, to shift the primary root from A to L. He says there is a three-way approval process that needs to be completed before this can happen, involving the ICANN, the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and NSI, although, as we noted earlier, realistically the Commerce Department has the ultimate authority. The first two of those organizations are likely to be all for such a scheme, while the last of those will be against it.

ICANN has a root server advisory committee headed by Jun Murai, which apparently met twice last week to discuss this matter. No details about the meeting or who exactly attended have been forthcoming from ICANN thus far. Roberts says ICANN has assumed control of the L server operated by the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at the University of Southern California (USC), which also controls the B server and shares offices and staff with ICANN.

With one exception, none of the root server operators we contacted even replied to us and the one that did cited a nondisclosure agreement with ICANN as a reason for not saying anything. But NSI says that the operators of its two servers had not been contacted by ICANN about this matter up until the end of the day last Friday.

Recently ICANN, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is an agency of the NTIA, signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement. It is a project to develop ways to manage the root server system in the future. Becky Burr, the associate administrator at the NTIA, says NIST was brought in on the act because it has engineers and resources that the NTIA and ICANN do not have.

Roberts says ICANN is working to get the operators of the 13 root servers, some of whom are volunteers, to work together on a possible transition, although he says, perhaps with one eye on the potential for a split root, that the network can function with only about half of its servers running.

The key question is timing. If this does not happen before the end of NSI’s contract next year then it is fairly non- controversial, or at least as non-controversial as changing the control of the root can ever be. However, if ICANN and/or the NTIA is planning to do this before the end of its contract, then all hell could break loose, including the possibility of NSI establishing a rival root, although of course the company has not said as much publicly.

Roberts says the move will be more than a redirect, which was done as an experiment back in January 1998 by the late Jon Postel, who ran the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), ICANN’s predecessor. This would be both a change in

the authoritative server and a change in the maintenance routine – who does the additions and deletions – which is obviously a powerful position and one currently coveted by NSI.