Communiqué of the Governmental Advisory Committee
(15 November 2001)

Communiqué of the Governmental Advisory Committee
15 November 2001
Marina del Rey, California, USA

THURSDAY 15 November 2001: The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) met on 11 and 12 November 2001, in Marina del Rey. The attending GAC Members, which included representatives from national governments, distinct economies as recognised in international fora and multinational governmental and treaty organisations had useful discussions relating to the Internet.

Security and Stability of the Internet

The GAC recognizes that the events of September 11, were not only a serious attack on the values of democracy, but also impacted vital international communication infrastructure. The GAC welcomes ICANN’s initiative of devoting this meeting to Internet security matters. Accordingly, the GAC spent a considerable portion of their meeting discussing these issues and will work with ICANN to develop further strategies to ensure security and stability of the Internet naming and addressing system.

IPv6

The GAC welcomes the update received from the ICANN Board of Directors which recognized the importance of the ICANN’s roles in IPv6 deployment e.g. fair assignment policy of IPv6 address space, the mapping of names and IPv6 addresses in the DNS zone file and stable operation of zone file exchange over IPv6-based network.

The GAC strongly encourages ICANN to provide further updates to GAC and the community on the urgent issues of IPv6 deployment status, including the migration issues from IPv4 to IPv6. The GAC strongly supports the efforts of ICANN and related groups in smooth and safe deployment of IPv6.

At Large Membership

The GAC welcomed the presentations it received on the At Large issue and will consider it further at its next meeting.

The GAC also discussed other issues including the status of the reservation of country names in .INFO, Final Report of the Second WIPO Process, Internationalized domain names and the evaluation of new gTLDs. In addition, open sessions were conducted with the ICANN CEO/President and Board Members, and the ccTLD Constituency. The GAC also gratefully received a presentation from the US National Academy of Sciences about their study on Internet searching and DNS technologies.

The GAC notes its thanks to the Government of the United States of America and the sponsors for hosting this meeting.

The next face-to-face meeting of the GAC will be held in March 2002 in Accra to coincide with ICANN’s next round of meetings.

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