"One challenge for Locke", says Network World, "is appointing a
forward-thinking, tech-savvy leader for the National Telecommunications
and Information Administration (NTIA), which is the arm of Commerce
that handles most Internet infrastructure-related issues."
"The most important thing for transition is for the new leadership to
get a handle of the core functions of NTIA, which include authorizing
changes to the DNS authoritative root and overseeing the entire NTIA,
ICANN, VeriSign triangle," says John Kneuer, a former NTIA
administrator for President George W. Bush who operates a public policy
advisory group in Washington D.C. and whom the article quotes
extensively.
"'Responsibility for the DNS along with spectrum management for
critical government functions are the most important things that NTIA
does," Kneuer told Network World.
"Kneuer says the new Commerce leadership team needs to understand the
consensus-based process that NTIA and ICANN use to operate the DNS.
"NTIA must 'continue the role that the U.S. government has played as a
back-stop for ICANN to make sure that ICANN is transparent, fully
functional and responsive to all constituent voices,' Kneuer says.
'It's going to be important for NTIA to keep an appropriate focus on
these core functions when there are going to be a lot of competing
issues.'
The article then goes on to list "five issues related to Internet
infrastructure that Locke will need to address as soon as he takes
office." These are:
1. Signing the DNS Root Zone
The deployment of DNSSEC, which "prevents hackers from hijacking Web
traffic and redirecting it to bogus sites", is awaiting Commerce
Department approval for deployment on the root zone. The deployment can
only be authorised by the Commerce Department "across the 13 server
clusters that carry the DNS root zone data, which is at the pinnacle of
the DNS hierarchy. These server clusters resolve requests from the
top-level domains, which in turn handle DNS queries for names
registered in those domains."
2. ICANN Relationship
The article discusses whether ICANN should be free of US government
oversight, something ICANN favours. Support for independence comes from
many internet engineers while "some conservative think tanks and
technology industry executives favour continued Commerce Department
oversight."
3. New Top-Level Domains
Support comes for the introduction of new gTLDs from VeriSign but is
question by Kneur. "They are now undergoing the sorts of analysis on
the impacts for security and stability on the core routers. They are
asking some of the questions that one would have thought would have
been asked and answered by this point in the process," Kneuer says. He
adds that ICANN's gTLD plan "does not stand out as a sterling example"
of ICANN being a competent, functional organization ready to be
independent of U.S. government control.
4. Promoting IPv6
IPv6 will be a big issue for ICANN, the Commerce Department and the
entire U.S. government and Kneur suggests the Department of Commerce
encourage U.S. industry to adopt best practices in cybersecurity by
sharing its experiences with emerging technologies such as IPv6.
5. Spectrum for First Responders
To read this Network World report in full, see:
www.networkworld.com/news/2009/022609-commerce-secretary-internet-emergencies.html