ICANN|ARCHIVES

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Rick started performing “IANA functions” in 2007 after escaping from Washington DC where he was Director Global IT Policy at the US Department of State. While there he spent much of his time working to ensure policymakers and other stakeholders understood the technology and philosophy behind the Internet and other information technologies (e.g., VoIP, WiFi, WiMax, open source software, IPv6, Internet censorship) writing position papers and leading the occasional delegation. In return he was indoctrinated into the process of policymaking and international negotiation, learning more than he wanted to know about various acronymatic processes, issues, agencies and organizations (including Internet Governance, Internet censorship, ITU, IETF, WSIS, NGN, APEC, OECD, IMO, IMSO, ITSO, .iq, CFIUS, OFAC, ITAR/DTRA, cable landing licenses, ICANN, NSTAC, DTI, USCG, NTIA, FCC, OSTP, DHS, NIST, USTR, OSD, VOA).

For the other 20+ years in the networking business Rick created and was CEO at a number of small startups including one acquired by Microsoft for its NAT/firewall technology. The rest of the time he spent on developing protocols and products behind other acronyms such as UUCP, MEP2, MHS, X.25, Bisync, TCP/IP, DECNET, IPX, ISDN, H.323, and yes, DNS. This overlapped with many years of digital and probabilistic signal processing work resulting in a EE PhD from MIT. Before all that, RF hardware design. Currently, as DNSSEC program manager, Rick has helped architect and engineer IANA’s DNSSEC signing system; and develop and coordinate ICANN’s position on DNSSEC for the domain names it is responsible for and for signing the root. He is also responsible for other nascent Internet security infrastructure efforts such as RPKI.