[ncdnhc-discuss] ICANN, VRSN, ORG: please, let get real.

[Jefsey Morfin]

Gentlemen,
I feel I am in the Titanic kitchen discussing tomorrows menu. Why not to 
get real? Do we want to be remembered as the French dancing aristocrats of 
1789. Let face it, for months some disregard what I say as being wild. But 
here we are:

1. there still are 13 root server machines only - 10 in the USA, 6 on the 
East Coast. As during the COBOL glory period. With an average of one month 
time or more to get a ccTLD updated due to the procedures, and 60% of the 
requests for a 1490 entries in 89 K ASCII file resulting from user's typo 
from all over the world. With several advanced investigations over the 
planet to fix the many problems this situation leads into, with several 
architectural innovations at hand and rising Govs concerns.

2. for the second time the "wrong defined user name product" mammoth is 
laying off people, after buying back its stock and its registrars. This 
makes it to be in a poor shape to give away M$ 5 for .org, to lose the M$ 
18 of .org yearly revenues, to give back the M$ X .org renewals for the 10 
years to come it has collected. And a prey for an alliance with MS to 
develop its M$ 200 DNS rewrite plan to try to control the DNS.

3. the managers of the international data network system's sub-network 
"Internet" - connected in 1984 and not redesigned since then, in spite of 
its growth - have made so many usual sophomore mistakes in managing their 
system that they say they cannot make it anymore.

They start understanding under hardship some basic network management rules 
: you do not manage different layers under the same organization, you never 
sell a network to its users but to who needs it to be used, you do not use 
a management style which does not match the network architecture, you 
cannot curb a networkusership but you serve it, a network is not a 
technical system but a social structure, whatever the source code permits 
will be attempted and will develop if there is an opportunity, a need or 
some fun; competitve innovation will never wait for your authorization, 
nature proceeds in surviving its many own failures, etc....

In fact they have not understood that their system has switched from a 
private interconnected system with a membership controlled through its DNS 
by a Czar, to a worldwide interconnecting system to be served by net 
keepers and open to everyone.


Now, we are in an critical situation. Actually we are in an emergency 
situation if we do not understand and accept that we are in a critical 
situation.

Is there a way out, a part from a worldwide economy collapse ?

Point 1. Do I over do it?  Please understand that this is what we are 
talking about if VRSN goes into disarray, if the ICANN is not properly 
reset or closed and if the NSDAQ goes down. The Internet is consensus. 
Consensuses stabilize on a mutual community trust. Only a few trust the 
ICANN right now. Managing 30.000.000 DNs is not a small thing: whatever way 
VRSN is organized it has working structures operated by people. When you 
start laying off people, the best people lose faith and trust,  and they 
start looking for a better job as familiy stability comes before employer 
survival. NASDAQ lives on trust.

Point 2. The only solution we have IMHO is :

1. to accept that we are in a general critical situation, so we stop 
babbling and we think very clearly.

2. to accept that the problem is not with the ICANN but with the world 
society. So let stop flattering our own egoes about our own vision of the 
ICANN and let make a real common outreach effort to let decision makers to 
understand it.

3. accept that the world society's problem is to understand and to code its 
network (global) organization. Laws, economy, international structures, 
etc... This should be made clear though a GAC declaration (as the only 
existing structure for Govs). The preparation of the world submits on the 
information society would be a good occasion. So we have a social frame and 
a time frame.

4. within that time frame we can only make it with existing structures. The 
only existing structure is the ITU/T.

Pros:
a) ITU/T is segmented by layers, which will fit the first and main 
requirement: to manage different layers separately if one does not want to 
sterilize at huge costs and die. .
b) the ITU/T is open to everyone who feel concerned.

Con:
a) the ITU/T, as an international structure, is nation oriented, while the 
TCP/IP networks are multinational by essence.
b) the ITU/T is operators oriented: the TCP/IP distributed architecture 
makes every participant to be technically an operator. We would overwhelm 
the ITU/T with thousands small membes.

The only solution is to multinationalize the ITU/T, at a "network system" 
level.

This means that the ITU/T is to participate on a peer to peer basis with 
the other large conceptual systems in :
- hardware : physical addressing),
- software : architecture and protocols
- brainware : naming plans and semantic
concertation committees, chaired on a rotational basis (to structurally 
protect from any take over), gathering on a natural stabilization scheme 
who ever think necessary to participate and supported by an ITU/T 
specialized secretariat of a very few individuals.

The purpose of these committees is to permit its participants to 
cross-fertilize, to help them individually decide non conflicting 
strategies, in common and network participants best interests.

This can be set-up quickly and then trimmed upon experience later on, since 
no structural commitment will have been taken. The target could be to carve 
an organization in the stone in Tunis 2005.

A non negligible advantage is that it does not submit any decision to ITU/T 
vote, what should help the USA to accept it.

5. societal issues can only be addressed through an "International Network 
Campus" where all the so called "mission creep" we experience will gather 
and use the same concertation system. Everyone interested in each "creep" 
will be welcome (and there will be many more in the years to come). The 
target will probably to develop "netiquettes" :  i.e. community correct 
thinking) helping participants to develop in harmony on a worldwide basis, 
and Govs to enact national laws making a common international sense.

6. once that societal and technical working frames are established we can 
figure out where the Internet "sub-network" and its partners fit in.

- if to survive, the ICANN (or it ssuccessors) is well prepared with 
established experience and structures to participate into these committees:

1)  ASO for the Universal Network Addressing Concertation Committee.
2)  PSO for the Universal Network Architecture and Protocols Concertation 
Committee.
3)  the DNSO for the Universal Network Namespace Concertation Committee.
4)  the @large for the societal aspects - or to get it replaced once for 
all by the ISOC

- natural relations will establish, stabilize and develop among committee 
participants : ITU/T and their members, Legacy, IP registries, IETF, 
ccTLDs, USG, EEC, China, Open Systems, Intlnet  and Newnet, Real Names and 
AOL, and the ISSN ISBN likes, etc  to the benefit of the users and of the 
revamped registries/registrars.

7. We have to accept that many ICANN problems come DNS and therefore from 
the ACPA and territory creep. Territory creep being addressed as per above, 
DN will ba adressed in correcting the ACPA probably though an Internet Act.

A DN is NOT anything else than a mnemonic pointer to the IP address of a 
network privately owned resource (a "cyber domain": site, equipment, 
etc..). The only duty of a DN is to correctly and stably point to that IP. 
Every other issues are with the so called domain. One cannot transfer a DN 
without the domain ownership (ask Mike Roberts if I could buy "ucla.edu"). 
This when corrected will drastically clean the situation and ... kill VRSN.

This is why we have to stop these chit chat about .org and new TLDs, and 
WLS. We have to openly discuss with Stratton Sclavos and the DoC on how to 
clean the mess and if, when and how .org is to be divested and how to 
subsidize Verisign while it reconverts itself, the way we may dwindle the 
"Registrars Industry" into something survivable, etc. The probably necessay 
Internet Act should also address the organization (ICANN?) and the budget 
of the ARPA inherited Internet/Govnet systems, of its relations with the 
other TCP/IP networks system managers and of a fair redistrubution of the 
IP Blocks (if the US do not IP to be a major negative issue in Geneva 2003 
and Tunis 2005).

jfc