It is a long wait that many had almost given up any hope, believing it would never happen; but from October 1, 2016, the Internet gets its full freedom, full independence of sorts, from the United States’ total control and dominance.
On October 1, 2016, the US government’s ultimate authority on the way the internet locates its content since the network was created will indeed cease! For billions across the world, it is a huge sigh of relief, as the control will be vested in a non-profit organisation.
Just to refresh memories: finding anything on the internet works like this: When you enter domain such as www.ittelecomdigest.com in a browser, you get our home page. But for that to happen, the address Ittelecomdigest.com address will be translated into a format that is understandable by the computers around the world hooked to the internet that delivered the home page to you. That format is known as an IP address.
This process of resolving domain-names to IP addresses is critical to the way the web, and the internet as a whole, works. One US government department or another has had the final say over this process since the internet was created.
The role hitherto falls to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is part of the department of commerce.
However, the NTIA has signed off on the final step in handing over its responsibility for the domain-name system to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit based in California. And,
Technically, this means the NTIA is not renew its contract with ICANN beginning this October 1. The contract had been in place with the domain-name authority at ICANN since 1998, and it’s this contract (which is a zero-cost one, meaning no money changes hands) that grants the US government authority over the system.
The handover is not expected to change anything much though for the 3.5 billion people connected to the internet because US control has been largely administrative: it doesn’t get involved on a day-to-day basis.
So, starting on October 1, the multi-stakeholder group ICANN will begin watching over the DNS, changing DNS. The DNS is basically a directory for internet-connected devices that helps translate domain names to numerical IP addresses.
DNS is a foundational piece of the internet, and the US has had a strong say in its supervision for the past 18 years. The transition of DNS to ICANN’s supervision has been in the works for a few years, first being proposed in 2014, but it was only recently that the NTIA finally signed off on the agreement.
This transition, relative to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), won’t be a huge change from the way things have been run. According to an NTIA blogpost on the transition, the NTIA initially partnered with ICANN in 1998 to begin moving DNS management to the private sector, and the NTIA’s stewardship was supposed to temporary. However, it does have implications for how DNS is perceived internationally.
“This is important because there has always been a bit of nervousness from the rest of the global community of one entity having considerable power. The United States has been very fair with that power and responsibility, with the exception of the US blocking .xxx at ICANN based on prudish American values and political manoeuvring,” said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist for the Centre for Democracy & Technology.
NTIA Administrator Lawrence E. Strickling said the agency had informed ICANN that “barring any significant impediment,” NTIA intends to allow the IANA functions contract it has with ICANN to expire as of Oct. 1. Strickling is also assistant secretary for communications and information.
ICANN had said Public Technical Identifiers, a non-profit public benefit corporation, had been incorporated in California, to eventually run the IANA functions under contract from ICAAN, after the transition was complete.