[council] For discussion, One Director's private perspective

["Harold J. Feld" <hfeld@mediaaccess.org>]

Right before the Accra meeting, Karl Aurbach circulated a list of the 
functions he sees ICANN performing at present and his own ranking of 
most toleast critical.  I forward it to the list as another perspective 
to consider on ICANN functionality.

Karl Aurbach's List

1 Allocation of IP addresses

1.1 Is a very complex issue

1.1.1 it is a mix of technical and economic factors and there is very
little understanding of these issues outside of those who are directly
involved in the address allocation or routing systems of the Internet.

1.1.1.1 The economic ramifications are generally under appreciated.

1.2 The most basic goal is adherence to the principles of CIDR.

2 DNS Tasks

2.1 Hint file publication

2.2 Root zone entry admission and maintenance (i.e. who gets an entry in
the root zone and to where should the delegation records point.)

2.3 Periodic root zone file construction, distribution, disaster data
preservation.

2.4 Root server operation (direct or indirect)

2.5 Root server placement (involves question of "anycast" routing
technology.)

2.6 Root zone dissemination

2.7 Failure/error monitoring

2.8 Preservation of historical versions of zone files/delegations.

2.9 Huge open question: To what extent should ICANN reach into TLD
registration systems?

2.9.1 Most basic: escrow/data protection and recovery

2.9.2 Less basic: whois gathering and accuracy

2.9.3 Registry-registrar protocols

2.9.3.1 (Note, registry/registrar model is not only one possible.  E.g. it
is possible to represent domain name "ownership" by a digital certificate
[non-repudiation of transfers requires support from by a transfer agent
[who needs not know the subject matter of the certificate], much like a
"bearer bond".)

2.9.4 Least basic: DNS consumer rights, UDRP