Proposal to Transition the Stewardship of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Functions from the
U.S. Commerce Department’s National
Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to the Global Multistakeholder Community
July 2015
IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal Page 2 of 199
Table of Contents
IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal Page 3 of 199
Executive
Summary
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On March 14, 2014, the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and
Information Administration (NTIA) announced its intent to transition the stewardship of key Internet functions to the global multistakeholder community.
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NTIA asked the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to convene global stakeholders to develop a proposal to replace
NTIA’s current stewardship role over the Internet Assigned
Numbers Authority (IANA) functions.
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As a result of community discussions, the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG)
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was formed in July 2014 to coordinate the transition planning process. The ICG is comprised of 30 individuals representing 13 communities, and includes direct and indirect stakeholders. These representatives were selected by their respective communities.
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The ICG took note of guidance from the Internet Architecture Board (IAB)
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pointing out the division of IANA functions and customer communities into three categories related to domain names, number resources, and protocol parameters. The ICG therefore chose to ground the proposal development process in the three communities with direct operational or service relationships with the IANA functions operator,
reflecting the fact that the policy and oversight responsibilities for the three functions resides in these three separate communities (and has for decades).
The thre
e “operational communities” (OCs) are: the domain names community (organized around ICANN’s supporting organizations and
advisory committees); the number resources community (organized around the regional address registries); and the protocol parameters community (organized around the Internet Engineering Task Force).
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The ICG was tasked to help assure that the proposals met the articulated NTIA requirements and were supported by broad community consensus. The ICG developed a request for proposals (RFP)
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that was provided to each of the communities setting forth these conditions and the need to have open, inclusive processes. Each of the communities then used their own processes to develop a response to the RFP for transitioning their part of the IANA functions, and submitted their response to the ICG. This document contains the RFP responses from each of the three operational communities.
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The domain names community proposed to form a new, separate legal entity, Post-Transition IANA (PTI), as an affiliate (subsidiary) of ICANN that would become the IANA functions operator in contract with ICANN. The legal jurisdiction in which ICANN resides is to remain unchanged. The proposal includes the creation of a Customer Standing Committee (CSC) responsible for monitori
ng the operator’s
performance according to the contractual
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http://www.ntia.doc.gov/press-release/2014/ntia-announces-intent-transition-key-internet-domain-name-functions
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