[DT-F] Design Team F kickoff

[David Conrad]

Milton,

> There is no possibility that IANA or ICANN will assume the RZM function in the
> near term. NTIA has deliberately reserved that from the transition and it is
> politically sensitive in Washington.

While I agree there is no possibility ICANN will assume the RZM function (I
don't think is remotely feasible politically, but that might just be me), I
thought NTIA made it clear that the RZM function was a part of a parallel
transition:

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/other-publication/2014/iana-functions-and-related-ro
ot-zone-management-transition-questions-and-answ

"Q. What impact does this announcement have on the cooperative agreement
with Verisign?

A. Aspects of the IANA functions contract are inextricably intertwined with
the VeriSign cooperative agreement (i.e., authoritative root zone file
management), which would require that NTIA coordinate a related and parallel
transition in these responsibilities."

>  If there is movement of the IANA department into a legally separate affiliate
> with a board that is independent of ICANN, the thought of PT-IANA assuming the
> RZM functions is not so scary.

Sorry, you lost me.  If I understand Jordan's concern, the worry is about
concentrating operational control in a single entity.  I understand and
personally agree with that concern.  But what would it matter if the single
entity is ICANN or "a legally separate affiliate with a board that is
independent of ICANN"?  In either case, wouldn't a single entity have
complete power/responsibility for generating the root zone?

> It might be good to catalogue the benefits and drawbacks of separating the RZM
> from the IANA function as part of the output of this group. If we understand
> and articulate better the purpose of the separation, our proposed framework
> might be better able to understand the requirements.

Agreed.  From my perspective, the primary benefit of separating functional
components is to facilitate "two person rule" controls, making it much
harder for either accidental or malicious changes to be made to the root
zone (such changes would require collusion of two independent parties).  The
primary downside is increased complexity with all that implies to cost,
security, stability, etc.

What that functional decomposition should be is likely a topic for a
different set of people and a whole lot more time.

Regards,
-drc



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/cwg-dtf/attachments/20150408/2c9ac510/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 4673 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/cwg-dtf/attachments/20150408/2c9ac510/smime-0001.p7s>