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The Role of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)
The Internet Society supports the role of the IANA and shares the sentiments expressed in the message below.
In the current dynamic Internet environment, resulting especially from the potential for new top level domain names, it is important to understand the role of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).
The IANA activities include assigning the unique parameters for protocols (such as TCP port numbers, or ARP hardware types), managing the IP address space, and managing domain names.
Through the course of development of the Internet, IANA has historically played a central role in the management of the Domain Name System (DNS) to support and implement the community consensus about the appropriate overall structure of the system.
The IANA has managed the root of the DNS to promote stability and robustness. This role is primarily one of making minor technical decisions about the location of root nameservers, the qualifications of applicants to manage country code top level domains, and evaluating any additions to the established generic top level domains which are proposed by the community.
This role is documented in various RFCs over time and in the working relationships between the IANA, the US Government, the Internet Society, and the Internic. These relationships may be summarized as follows:
The IANA has been supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for many years. The National Science Foundation (NSF) recognized the role of the IANA in its Cooperative Agreement that established the Internic. The Federal Networking Council (FNC) has also recognized the role of the IANA.The Internet Society (ISOC) recognizes the role of the IANA, and explicitly provides for the coordination of the IANA activities with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) through the ex-officio participation of the IANA in the Internet Architecture Board (IAB).
The Internic and the IANA have a well established pattern of consultation and cooperation on top level domain matters.
In particular, this role of the IANA and the cooperation between the IANA and the Internic are described more specifically as follows:
The IANA is the name for the function for the allocation and assignment of various identifiers needed for the operation of the Internet, which function was assigned by DARPA to the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) of the University of Southern California pursuant to contracts between DARPA and ISI. Under the DARPA contracts, ISI (through the IANA function) has the discretionary authority to delegate portions of this function, and has delegated that portion of the responsibility concerning some aspects of numeric network and autonomous system identifiers to an Internet Numbers Registry (IR), previously performed by SRI International and currently performed by NSI. See RFC 1174 and Section H.1., NSF Solicitation for Network Information Services Manager for NSFnet and the NREN ("ISI (as the IANA) ha[s] delegated to the DISA NIC (currently NSI) the registration of users for the Internet").ISI and NSI have cooperated to develop the Internet infrastructure through a system of "root servers" whose network routing functions are dependent upon central coordination at the IANA/IR level. See RFC 1174, Section 1.3 ("It is proposed to retain the centralized IANA and IR functions").
Thus, while some appear to have attempted to confuse the issue of DNS management by focusing on who has "authority" over operation of the root zone, this issue is a red herring and ultimately contributes nothing to the development of the Internet. Simply stated, IANA and NSI (as operator of the Internic) have maintained a consultative and cooperative relationship in the management of the DNS, as was expected and indeed required under the NSF/NSI Cooperative Agreement. IANA fully expects this cooperation to continue and would be astounded if NSI were to adopt any policy or take any action inconsistent with this principle.
