September 6, 1998

Recently, there has been a rush to find a way to change significant aspects of the Internet. The claim is that there is a controversy that must be resolved about what should be the future of the Domain Name System.

It is important to examine this claim and to try to figure out if there is any real problem with regard to the Domain Name System (DNS) that has to be solved.

The Internet is a scientific and technical achievement of great magnitude. Fundamental to its development was the discovery of a new way of looking at computer science.

1. The early developers of the ARPANET, the progenitor of the Internet, viewed the computer as a communication device rather than only as an arithmetic engine. This new view, which came from research conducted by those in academic computer science, made the building of the ARPANET possible.
2. Any changes in the administration of key aspects of the Internet need to be guided by a scientific perspective and principles, not by political or commercial pressures. It is most important to keep in mind that scientific methods are open and cooperative.

Examining the development of the Internet, an essential problem that becomes evident is that the Internet has become international, but the systems that allow there to be an Internet are under the administration and control of one nation. These include control over the allocation of domain names, over the allocation of IP addresses, over the assignment of protocol numbers and services, as well as control over the root server system and the protocols and standards development process related to the Internet. These are currently under the control and administration of the U.S. Government or contractors to it.

Instead of the U.S. Government offering a proposal to solve the problem of how to share the administration of the DNS, which includes central points of control of the Internet, it is supporting and encouraging the creation of a new private entity that will take over and control the Domain Name System. This private entity will magnify many thousands fold the commercial and political pressures and prevent solving the genuine problem of having an internationally shared protection and administration of the DNS, including the root server system, IP number allocations, Internet protocols, etc.

Giving these functions over to a private entity will make it possible for these functions to be changed and for the Internet to be broken up into competing root servers, etc. It is the DNS whose key characteristic is to make the network of networks one Internet rather than competing networks with competing root server systems, etc.

What is needed is a way to protect the technology of the Internet from commercial and political pressures, so as to create a means of sharing administration of the key DNS functions and the root server system.

The private organization that the U.S. Government is asking to be formed is the opposite of protecting the Internet. It is encouraging the take over by a private, non accountable corporate entity of the key Internet functions and of this International public resource.

In light of this situation, it is important to draft a proposal which will help to establish a set of principles and recommendations on how to create an international cooperative collaboration to administer and protect these key functions of the Internet from commercial and political pressures. This draft is offered as a beginning of this process.

The first essential requirement is that the U.S. Government stop the process it is involved in, including the International Forum on the White Paper (IFWP) whose objective is to create a private organization to be given the key Domain Name System including the root server system by September 30, 1998.

The second essential requirement is that the U.S. Government create a research project or institute (which can be in conjunction with universities, appropriate research institutes, etc.) The goal of this project or institute is to sponsor and have carried out the research to solve the problem of what should be the future of the DNS and its component parts including the root server system. The U.S. should invite the collaboration (including funding, setting up similar research projects, etc.) of any country interested in participating in this research. The researchers from the different nations will work collaboratively.

A collaborative international research group will undertake the following:

• Identify and describe the functions of the DNS system that need to be maintained. (The RFC's or other documents that will help in this need to be gathered and references to them made available to those interested.)

• Look first at the Internet and then at how the DNS system and root server system is serving the diverse communities and users of the Internet, which include among others the scientific community, the education community, the librarians, the technical community, Governments (National as well as local), the university community, the art and cultural communities, nonprofit organizations, the medical community, the communications functions of the business community, and most importantly the users whoever they be, of the Internet.

• Maintain an online means of input into their work and of reporting on what they are doing.(This should include as many of the open processes used in the development of Usenet and the ARPANET as possible, including appropriate Usenet newsgroups, mailing lists, RFC's etc.)

• Produce a proposal at the end of a specified finite period of time. The proposal should include:

  • an accurate history of how the Internet developed and how the Domain Name System developed and why.

  • a discussion of the vision for the future of the Internet that their proposal is part of. This should be based on input gathered from the users of the Internet, and from research of the history and development of the Internet.

  • a description of the role the Domain Name System plays in the administration and control of the Internet, how it is functioning, what problems have developed with it.

  • a proposal for its further administration, describing how the proposal will provide for the continuation of the functions and control hitherto provided by U.S. Government agencies like NSF and DARPA. Also, problems for the further administrations should be clearly identified and proposals made for how to begin an open process for examining the problems and solving them.

  • a description of the problems and pressures that they see that can be a danger for the DNS administration. Also recommendations on how to protect the DNS administration from succumbing to those pressures. (For example from pressures that are political or commercial.) In the early days of Internet development in the U.S. there was an acceptable use policy (AUP) that protected the Internet and the scientific and technical community from the pressures from political and commercial entities. Also in the U.S., Government funding of a sizeable number of people who were the computer science community also protected those people from commercial and political pressures.

  • a way for the proposal to be distributed widely online, and the public not online should also have a way to have access to it. It should be made available to people around the world who are part of or interested in the future development of the Internet. Perhaps help with such distribution can come from international organizations like the ITU, from the Internet Society, the IETF, etc.

  • comment on what has been learned from the process of doing collaborative work to create the proposal. It should identify as much as possible the problems that developed in their collaborative efforts. Identifying the problems will help clarify what work has to be done to solve them.

  • It will be necessary to agree to some way to keep this group of researchers free from commercial and political pressures -- government funding of the researchers is one possible way and maybe they can be working under an agreed upon Acceptable Use Policy for their work and funding.

1. See Michael Hauben, "Behind the Net: The Untold Story of the ARPANET and Computer Science", in "Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet", IEEE CS Press, 1997, p. 109. See also "Internet, nouvelle utopie humaniste?" by Bernard Lang, Pierre Weis and Veronique Viguie Donzeau-Gouge, "Le Monde", September 26, 1997, as it describes how computer science is a new kind of science and not well understood by many. The authors write: "L'informatique est tout a la fois une science, une technologie et un ensemble d'outils....Dans sa pratique actuelle, l'introduction de l'informatique a l'ecole, et malheureusement souvent a la'universite, est critiquable parce qu'elle entretient la confusion entre ces trois composantes."
2. Ibid.