A casualty arose from the Domain Name System (DNS) hearings before Congress last week - Jon Postel, leader of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).
Postel, who testified on Thursday, came under attack for being a one-man operation by naysayers of a proposed plan before the House Science Subcommittee on Basic Research.
Postel's critics claimed it was time that IANA become institutionalized and that Postel relinquish control over assignments of domain names and IP addresses.
A plan by the International Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC), a joint effort by IANA and the Internet Society (ISOC), calls for the entrance of competition into the DNS registration process - a move that would strip away the so-called monopoly currently held by Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Under the plan, an oversight committee would be created to oversee the competing registrars. In addition, all changes in rules, according to the plan's charter, would be approved by IANA and ISOC, meaning Postel and ISOC President and CEO Don Heath.
Critics challenged that this would allow Postel and Heath to remain in control of the registration process. Postel called it a "bootstrapping process."
"Once the Policy Oversight Committee is staffed up, we will give up control. At the appropriate time, when everything is running smoothly," Postel said. "I don't want to be in charge of this forever."
Responding to critics of the proposed plan, Postel said he and Heath are willing to consult with people that have objections, including corporations and organizations that feel they were left out of the process. He said he believes it to be "a small set of people that got their egos bruised."
"This plan was not cooked up in a back room somewhere. It took a lot of planning over three months," he said, adding no one has come forward with any concerns that have not already been considered.
"The sticking points that they are coming up with, we would be willing to modify," Postel said. Those include the process of determining members for the POC, the names of new generic top-level domains, and the procedures for dispute resolution.
"We have a timetable of contracts that are ending and milestone dates, so we are moving forward," Postel said of the IAHC plan. Already, he said, a Council of Registrars has been established to sign up interested registrars. He said this body, which will include Internet service providers and global corporations, would be self-governing, sharing information and a database of domain names.
Congress, in the meantime, has urged the Clinton administration to pare down proposals it received during a six-week request for comments in the spring and present a plan to the committee. Postel said he is confident the IAHC plan will be the victorious one.
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