US Federal gov't decides to solve DNS problem - rug pulled out from under NSF -

[Justin W. Newton]

Any comments on this?


>
>
>Clinton Administration Embraces DNS Tar Baby, Magaziner & OMB Responsible 
>
>Action Derails Agreement with Network Solutions & NSF to End 
>Co-operative Agreement on April 1 1997 
>
>Ill Considered Move Halts Formation of ARIN IP Registry
>
>Critics Say Action Deprives IANA of Opportunity for Legal Foundation of 
>Authority & Endangers Stability of the Internet by Putting IP Numbers at
>Risk
>
>[NOTE:  This is the public summary of the page one article for the MAY
>1997 Cook Report on Internet. We are releasing it to the internet before
>the weekend begins. We hope to publish the complete May issue before the
>end of the weekend.]
>
>Thanks to the meddling of hopefully well meaning folk - Ira Magaziner's
>Internet task force at the White House, and an inter agency task force
>centered at OMB, we are faced with a potentially dangerous situation for
>the Internet. It is no secret how badly the Domain Name System is about to
>become fouled up after a year and a half of squabbling among competing
>bodies. But what is not broadly understood is that NSI runs the IP
>registry for the Western hemisphere and feeds content to the "." dot
>servers for the world that are located at NSI  but owned by IANA. These
>are functions that there is no longer any legitimate reason for the US
>government to be involved with. But they are also so critical to the
>operation of the Internet that they must be moved very promptly to a
>separate and neutral body independent of NSI and one unable to be dragged
>"under" by the waves litigation now threatening everyone involved with
>Domain Name System.
>
>After talking with numerous sources familiar with the events of the last
>two months, we are convinced that policy coming from the White House has,
>inadvertently, put a stop to plans that had moved far enough along so that
>the above removal of ARIN's functions from NSI could have happened in a
>way that would benefit the world wide Internet community. Fall out from
>this action has meant a halt in plans under way that would have - very
>shortly - resulted in the establishment of an independent American
>Registry for Internet Numbers. The establishment of ARIN also means that
>for the first time the operations of the IANA could become
>institutionalized and gain a sounder international foundation
>
>Putting a hold on the establishment of ARIN renders the authority of IANA
>more liable to court challenge and leaves the payroll, database, and
>control of the IP number registry process in the hands of a commercial
>company (NSI) that does the original .com and other global top level
>domain name registry for the entire internet world wide. As someone
>closely involved with ARIN told us: "The real danger is that numbers are
>being subsidized by domain names, and domain names are about to become a
>disaster."
>
>While NSI has shown no signs that it cannot or should not be trusted, it
>is improbable that NSF oversight of NSI will extend beyond the current
>agreement whereas the need for NSI as a stabilized registry operation in
>an impending sea of change in the Domain Name arena will continue.
>
>Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that NSI will sooner or later be
>granted full independence from NSF oversight . When this happens leaving
>the power inherent in both the DNS and the ARIN functions in the hands of
>a single corporation would be unwise. Also, while one hopes the chances
>are small that anything serious will happen to the viability of Network
>Solutions, it's DNS database performance during the last half of March has
>been horrendous with major names that had already paid being removed from
>the root servers for non payment - something that has led to disruption of
>service for many entities involved. In the litigious atmosphere that
>surrounds this whole environment, Network Solutions will surely be a
>target. 
>
>In an exclusive interview on March 27 with Don Telage, President of NSI we
>were able to establish, with some degree of precision, that at the end of
>February, the National Science Foundation and Network Solutions had
>reached an agreement in principal to bring the NSF/NSI cooperative
>agreement to a conclusion a year early on April 1, 1997 and to establish
>and fund during a transition period the American Registry for Internet
>Numbers (ARIN) which would have been freed from NSI control on April 1,
>1997. Unfortunately, the administration move to find a fix for DNS
>(discussed later in our full article) caused all forward movement between
>NSI and NSF to cease on Monday March 3. Since then the situation has
>become much more difficult and the freeing of ARIN as part of a package
>deal that was acceptable to both sides at the beginning of March looks far
>less acceptable to to NSI now as a stand alone option. [Editor's note: we
>have here confirmation of the damage that the administration's ill advised
>meddling has done. We and, we hope the entire internet, will be watching
>closely to see what they do to fix the mess they have created.]
>
>ARIN will temporarily cover Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. The ARIN
>organizers are working with both areas to help them set up their own
>regional registries.  Then, under the auspices of IANA would be five
>registries, AfriNIC, ALyCNIC, APNIC, ARIN, and RIPE. Leaving IP
>registration for the western hemisphere and sub-Saharan Africa
>indefinitely under the aegis of NSI under the current stressful conditions
>does not make sense. If anything disastrous happened to impact the
>viability of NSI, IP registration and dot operation could be set up
>elsewhere within 48 to 72 hours - if the people and hardware were
>available. But during such a transition there would likely be substantial
>disruption of Internet service worldwide. Also, during such a move,
>assignment of new numbers would not take place and that process would take
>longer to get back to normal.
>
>In a conversation with a White House source on March 25 we found out the
>Administration has decided that the Federal government needs to study the
>DNS and solve a problem for the Internet community that it has been
>otherwise unable to solve for itself. Unfortunately it appears that
>Magaziner's group has been listening to the positions that Tony Rutkowski
>and the corporate lawyers of the Internet Law and Policy Forum have been
>promoting both on the network and off line. The source maintains that the
>inter-agency task force is unaware that in grabbing the DNS tar baby it
>also has grabbed and derailed - for the time being - ARIN.
>
>In derailing ARIN the group is undertaking actions that pose some risk to
>the stable operation of the internet world wide. That stability can be
>ensured only by the resumption of swift action to resume the establishment
>of ARIN and, in the face of a likely onslaught of DNS related lawsuits,
>and to create a Global Council of IP Registries, to internationalize the
>IANA, with members taken initially from the three regional registries;
>European (Ripe), the American (ARIN) and the Asian (APNIC) IP registries;
>and other regional registries added as they develop. 
>
>
>************************************************************************
>The COOK Report on Internet               For subsc. pricing & more than
>431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA     ten megabytes of free material
>(609) 882-2572 (phone & fax)              visit   http://pobox.com/cook/
>Internet: cook at cookreport.com             For NEW study: EVOLVING INTER-
>NET INFRASTRUCTURE, 222 page Handbook http://pobox.com/cook/evolving.html
>************************************************************************
>
>
>
>============================== ISP Mailing List
==============================
>Email ``unsubscribe'' to inet-access-request at earth.com to be removed.
>PLEASE READ THE FAQ ON http://www.amazing.com/internet/ BEFORE POSTING.
>
>

Justin Newton				
Network Architect					
Erol's Internet Services
ISP/C Director at Large