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RSSAC Caucus

The Caucus of DNS and root server system experts will be responsible for the essential work of the RSSAC. More information about the Caucus – including its purpose, principles, and procedures – can be reviewed here [PDF, 72 KB]. The public archive of the RSSAC Caucus mailing list can be explored here.

On 10 July 2014, the RSSAC appointed the initial members of the Caucus. The public Statement of Interest for every Caucus member may be viewed here.

  • Afifa Abbas
  • Joe Abley
  • Mohamed Abuabed
  • Alejandro Acosta
  • Ashish Agarwal
  • Anupam Agrawal
  • Yoshitaka Aharen
  • Yazid M. Akanho
  • Jaap Akkerhuis
  • Malick Alassane
  • Nicolas Antoniello
  • Tim April
  • John Augenstein
  • Mohammad Abdul Awal
  • Mohit Batra
  • Ray Bellis
  • Ramanou Biaou
  • Jack Biesiadecki
  • Rao Naveed Bin Rais
  • Marc Blanchet
  • John Bond
  • Anand Buddhdev
  • Robert Carolina
  • Brett Carr
  • Michael Casadevall
  • Harish Chowdhary
  • Bruce Crabill
  • John Crain
  • Stephen Crocker
  • João Damas
  • Kim Davies
  • Peter DeVries
  • Paul de Weerd
  • Brian Dickson
  • Paul Ebersman
  • Mohamed Elnour Abdelhafez Fadul
  • Hafiz Farooq
  • Michael Frauenhoffer
  • Kazunori Fujiwara
  • Abdalmonem Galila
  • Oscar Fernando Giudice
  • Shailesh Gupta
  • Wes Hardaker
  • John Heidemann
  • Kevin Hildebrand
  • Paul Hoffman
  • Hans Petter Holen
  • Hiro Hotta
  • Shumon Huque
  • Ali Hussain
  • Geoff Huston
  • Chris Ishisoko
  • Gaurav Kansal
  • Daniel Karrenberg
  • Howard Kash
  • Akira Kato
  • Shane Kerr
  • Muhammad Farhan Khan
  • Hank Kilmer
  • Mallory Knodel
  • Mark Kosters
  • Dimitrii Kovalenko
  • Suresh Krishnaswamy
  • Warren Kumari
  • Pan Lanlan
  • Matt Larson
  • Dave Lawrence
  • Lars-Johan Liman
  • Baojun Liu
  • Di Ma
  • Daniel Mahoney
  • Terry Manderson
  • Jim Martin
  • Peter Martin
  • George Michaelson
  • Daniel Migault
  • Russ Mundy
  • Jun Murai
  • Moritz Müller
  • Ignatius Nkrumah
  • Wataru Ohgai
  • James Olorundare
  • Abdulkarim Oloyede
  • Razvan Oprea
  • Jeff Osborn
  • Benno Overeinder
  • Colin Petrie
  • Zaher Qassrawi
  • Amir Qayyum
  • Anand Raje
  • Kaveh Ranjbar
  • Kenneth Renard
  • Karl Reuss
  • Joey Salazar
  • Hugo Salgado
  • Shinta Sato
  • Barbara Schleckser
  • Yuji Sekiya
  • Arturo Servin
  • Sofia Silva Berenguer
  • Tripti Sinha
  • Linjian Song
  • William Sotomayor
  • Ryan Stephenson
  • Robert Story
  • Ondrej Sury
  • Mahdi Taghizadeh
  • Peter Thomassen
  • Willem Toorop
  • Sachchidanand Upadhyay
  • Brad Verd
  • Mauricio Vergara Ereche
  • Paul Vixie
  • Wei Wang
  • Matt Weinberg
  • Erum Welling
  • Duane Wessels
  • Suzanne Woolf
  • Zhiwei Yan
  • Dessalegn Yehuala

Meetings

The RSSAC Caucus meets periodically in person at IETF meetings and ICANN meetings. Minutes from these meetings can be reviewed here.

Work Parties

This page provides an overview of work parties in the RSSAC Caucus, including a description of the effort and its current status.

Project Workspace

The RSSAC Caucus maintains a project workspace for software and data projects relevant to the work of the RSSAC Caucus.

IETF Travel Funding

The RSSAC Caucus provides limited travel support funding to even-numbered IETF meetings. Information about this program can be found here.

Membership Committee

In November 2013, the RSSAC formed the Membership Committee to oversee the process of admitting new Caucus members. The Membership Committee currently consists of:

  • Shailesh Gupta, Member
  • Dave Lawrence, Member
  • Jeff Osborn, Chair
  • Ken Renard, Ex Officio Member

How to Join

To apply for membership in the RSSAC Caucus, interested applicants should either

The Statement of Interest should include:

  • Name
  • Affiliation and current position
  • Relevant qualifications
  • Motivation for membership in the RSSAC Caucus
  • Indication of availability
  • Formal roles (if any) and interests in the work of RSSAC
  • Links where appropriate

By submitting your personal data, you agree that your personal data will be processed in accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy ), and agree to abide by the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos).

Points of Consideration

The RSSAC Caucus Membership Committee considers the following points when reviewing applicants. Please include details in your statement of interest about how your qualifications and experiences best align with at least some of these desired points. It is not required that an applicant have experience in ALL of these areas.

DNS Community Experience

  • Participation in various community workshops and meetings, including but not limited to: ICANN meetings, relevant IETF working groups, DNS-OARC workshops
  • Participation in relevant mailing lists

Internet Governance Experience

  • DNS-related
  • Infrastructure
  • Legal
  • Security and privacy
  • Standards and protocols

DNS Knowledge

  • Operational experience running DNS infrastructure
  • Help with a DNS-related internet draft
  • Participation in the development of DNS server software or hardware
  • Specific understanding of the root server ecosystem
  • DNS protocol knowledge

Commitment to Participate

  • Availability to attend or dial in to at least one RSSAC Caucus meeting per year
  • Willingness to join and participate in an RSSAC Caucus working group

Criteria for Continued Membership:

  • Participation in an RSSAC Caucus meeting in the past two years
  • Continued desire to be on the RSSAC Caucus

Note: RSSAC understands that some DNS experts may want to remain as RSSAC Caucus members to regularly get updates about the RSSAC and RSSAC Caucus even though they do not actively participate in the RSSAC Caucus work. While the points of consideration to join RSSAC Caucus remain unchanged, RSSAC may allow such RSSAC Caucus members to remain on the RSSAC Caucus mailing list as "mailing list only" participants or observers.

RSSAC Caucus Observers

Individuals may request to join the RSSAC Caucus Mailing list as Observers. Observers may monitor the mailing list discussions in real time and view RSSAC Caucus meetings, but do not have posting privileges to the RSSAC Caucus mailing list nor may they participate in discussions during an RSSAC Caucus meeting. Interested individuals should either

  • fill out this application form, or

  • download this MS Word document, complete it, and submit the Statement of Interest to the RSSAC Caucus Membership Committee at rssac-membership@icann.org.

The Observer Statement of Interest should include:

  • Name

  • Email address

  • Affiliation and current position

  • Your goal of becoming an RSSAC Caucus Observer

  • Links where appropriate

By submitting your personal data, you agree that your personal data will be processed in accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy ), and agree to abide by the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos).

Application Review Timeline:

  • Applications received by the 7th of a certain month can be reviewed by the membership committee for presentation to the RSSAC at its meeting on the first Tuesday of the following month as per the following timeline:
Statement of Interest (SOI) Submission Deadline RSSAC Caucus Membership Committee Meeting RSSAC Meeting
By the 7th of a given month 2nd Thursday of the month First Tuesday of the following month

Note: This table is for informational purposes only. Timing of the RSSAC Meetings and the RSSAC Caucus Membership Committee Meetings may change due to ICANN Public Meetings or other events.

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Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."