[Ssr2-review] Action Item 80b: Responses to questions

[Jennifer Bryce]

Dear all,

Re: Tracker item 80b: “Provide responses to questions from SSR1 briefings (Ops + Finance)”.

Please see below for responses to outstanding questions. Note we are still seeking clarification from the Review Team (requested via email<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/ssr2-review/2017-August/000576.html>, 30 August) to question 2.

The complete list of questions and answers, along with a link to the briefing materials, can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15g9bz4h57wC9LmNltKLarLRGhJdztnCBzDGtWmBs8q0/edit?usp=sharing


  1.  To what extent do you work with the relevant standards bodies (UNICODE and the IETF) over the issues with the use of IDNs and longer label TLDs?

Staff from the ICANN organization commonly participate in both IETF and UNICODE meetings. In the context of Universal Acceptance, as the community commonly refers to the issues described in this question, the ICANN Community created the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) which is supported by the ICANN organization. The UASG has its mission to raise awareness and facilitate resolution of Universal Acceptance issues. The ICANN organization is committed to support the efforts of the community through the UASG.


  1.  There are many challenges in IDN WHOIS lookups.  How do we get an accurate IDN WHOIS database for the Incident Handling process?

Question requires clarification from Review Team.


  1.  Can GDD comment on the failures of both SLAM and EBERO where they apply to RSP failure scenarios?

Per the Base Registry Agreement<https://newgtlds.icann.org/sites/default/files/agreements/agreement-approved-31jul17-en.html>, the EBERO process is defined in the Registry Transition Processes<https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/transition-processes-2013-04-22-en>, one of the main objectives of the EBERO program is to minimize impact on registrants and gTLD users.

As of 25 August 2017, we have seen 32 cases in which a service of a gTLD reached one of the emergency thresholds. Of those, 10 cases occurred pre-sunrise, 8 during sunrise, 5 before general availability, and 9 during general availability. The 32 cases involved a total of 211.7k active names at the second level at the time of the cases. The top-five cases in term of registrations that reached emergency thresholds had 211k active domains at the time of cases. Four of those cases happened in 2017.

In all of the cases since 2015 the registry operators received compliance notices requiring an explanation of the issue, a root cause analysis and actions required to ensure the same issue would not be repeated. During the emergency, the ICANN organization was in contact with the affected registry/registry service provider to understand the problem at hand. The ICANN organization made a determination that it was going to be faster and had less impact on security and stability to let the current registry/registry service provider to fix the underlying issue than to execute the EBERO transition. Therefore, considering the impact to registrants and users, it was determined the best course of action to not execute an EBERO transition on those cases.


  1.  Implementation of EBERO testing took 3 years from implementation of the first new gTLD delegation. No security review of the EBEROs has ever taken place. What is the justification for that?

The Base Registry Agreement does not specify a review for the EBERO program and it does not require periodic testing. However, since the launch of the new gTLDs and the EBERO program, the ICANN organization has worked with its three EBERO providers to ensure the program is ready to act, should the need arise. Specifically, the EBERO contract requires annual inspection of each of the EBERO providers.

Additionally, the ICANN organization has worked with each of their EBERO providers to conduct a full EBERO exercise with a real TLD. These full EBERO exercises have taken advantage of gTLDs that have requested voluntary termination. The ICANN organization obtained consent from the registries to execute these exercises just before the TLD is removed from the root zone. These exercises involved executing the whole set of EBERO activities from the (simulated) failure of a TLD service, to full recovery of the TLD services in the EBERO, including the update of the root zone. Each of the exercises have been successful and provided validation of the readiness of the EBERO program.


  1.  Can Francisco brief us on both systems (EBERO and SLAM) from an SSR2 perspective (Rather than the SSR1 implementation perspective)?

The ICANN organization will be happy to answer other questions you may have to enable the work of SSR2.

--
Jennifer Bryce
Senior Reviews Coordinator
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

Email: jennifer.bryce at icann.org
Skype: jennifer.bryce.icann
www.icann.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/ssr2-review/attachments/20171006/7d67adbf/attachment.html>