My questions at the next Singapore meeting

["Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim" <rms46@oke.com>]

Hello:

These following will be my questions at next Singapore meeting:

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(1) The charter of IAB <http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1601.txt>
    ------------------------------------------------------------
    2.  The Role of the IAB:

        The IAB was chartered as a component of the Internet 
        Society in June of 1992. Its responsibilities under this 
        charter include:
        [...]
        (d) RFC Series and IANA

            The IAB is responsible for editorial management and 
            publication of the Request for Comments (RFC) document 
            series, and for administration of the various Internet 
            assigned numbers.
     -------------------------------------------------------------

>>>> Regardless on who was paying IANA; was/isn't it an IAB 
     activity? Please correct me if I am wrong.


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(2)  http://www.iana.org/faqs.html
     -------------------------------------------------------------
     2. Why is this necessary? 

     In the past, IANA's activity was supported by the United 
     States government. [...]

     3. Who gives you the authority to do this? 
  
     The United States government, as a custodian of the work 
     started by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and 
     now supported by National Science Foundation funding that 
     created the Internet and IANA, is providing guidelines for 
     an organization to carry out this work. The Internet community 
     is continuing to provide the authority.  
     --------------------------------------------------------------

>>>> In my understanding, the USG has provided the "funds", 
     however, the authority came from the "Internet Community" 
     (whatever that is). Please correct me if I am wrong or 
     not so correct!


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(3)  WhiteAlbum 
     <http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/6_5_98dns.htm>
     ---------------------------------------------------------------
     SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:Background:
     [...] 
     U.S. Role in DNS Development: 
     [...]
     After Dr. Postel moved from UCLA to the Information Sciences 
     Institute (ISI) at the University of Southern California (USC), 
     he continued to maintain the list of assigned Internet numbers 
     and names under contracts with DARPA. SRI International 
     continued to publish the lists. As the lists grew, DARPA 
     permitted Dr. Postel to delegate additional administrative 
     aspects of the list maintenance to SRI, under continuing 
     technical oversight. Dr. Postel, under the DARPA contracts, 
     also published a list of technical parameters that had been 
     assigned for use by protocol developers. Eventually these 
     functions collectively became known as the Internet Assigned 
     Numbers Authority (IANA). 
     [...]

     4) Protocol Assignment.

     The Internet protocol suite, as defined by the Internet 
     Engineering Task Force (IETF), contains many technical 
     parameters, including protocol numbers, port numbers, 
     autonomous system numbers, management information base 
     object identifiers and others. The common use of these 
     protocols by the Internet community requires that the 
     particular values used in these fields be assigned uniquely.
     Currently, IANA, under contract with DARPA, makes these 
     assignments and maintains a registry of the assigned values.
     ----------------------------------------------------------------

>>>> The "DARPA contract" rings a bell, however until now,
     it is not clear about what exactly the contract was.
     Is it possible to disclose those contracts for reducing
     equivocality?


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(4)  ICANN <http://www.icann.org/>
     -------------------------------------------------------------
     The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers 
     (ICANN) is the new non-profit corporation that was formed to 
     take over responsibility for the IP address space allocation, 
     protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management, 
     and root server system management functions now performed 
     under U.S. Government contract by IANA and other entities.
     -------------------------------------------------------------

>>>> As a consensus is not usually based on a top-down authority
     model, I can not understand on how ICANN can "take control" 
     over a consensus. In this current situation, only Microsoft
     (the IETF's T-Shirt sponsor) is capable to do that (control)
     by redirecting the root server factory set table of their O/S
     to wherever they want to. Moreover, what if the IETF (whatever 
     that is) ain't delegate the IPv6 address space to ICANN? Please 
     correct me if I am wrong.


best regards,

--
Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim --- http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/6825 ---
- Join us now and share the software;You'll be free, hackers (rms6)
- Hoarders may get piles of money, but cannot help their neighbors-