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ICANN Board Transmits IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal and Enhancing ICANN Accountability Recommendations to NTIA

On 10 March 2016, on behalf of the ICANN multistakeholder community, the ICANN Board transmitted a plan developed by the international Internet community that, if approved, will lead to global stewardship of some key technical Internet functions -- the IANA functions.

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Overview

Welcome to the NTIA IANA Functions' Stewardship Transition microsite, a comprehensive destination for discussion, contribution, and collaboration related to the NTIA's announcement and request of 14 March 2014.

As convener of the process to develop a transition proposal, ICANN has made available the tools and resources to facilitate the discussion and capture the views and comments of the global multistakeholder community.

This microsite will serve as a resource and information-sharing platform for all interested parties, as well as a tool for the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) to keep global stakeholders updated on all developments.

Background

Shortly after the NTIA Announcement of 14 March 2014, ICANN launched a multistakeholder process and discussion to gather community views and input on the principles and mechanisms for the transitioning of NTIA's stewardship of the IANA functions.

Following a month-long call for input on the community-driven draft proposal, on 6 June, ICANN posted the Process to Develop the Proposal and Next Steps.

Then following a call for names, the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) was formed comprised of individuals selected by each represented community. These 30 individuals represent 13 communities of both direct and indirect stakeholders who together will deliver a proposal to the NTIA recommending a transition plan of NTIA’s stewardship of IANA functions to the Internet community, consistent with the key principles outlined in the NTIA March 14 announcement. The ICG will conduct itself transparently, consult with a broad range of stakeholders and ensure that its final recommendations support the security and stability of the IANA functions.

To follow the developments of the ICG click the Coordination Group tab.


Development of Community Proposals

Domain Names (CWG-Stewardship)


Numbering Resources (CRISP Team)


Protocol Parameters (IANAPLAN Working Group)

Transition Resources

ICANN has produced a collection of resources - including video, audio, infographics, and other documents - to help the community participate in the process.

Update on ICG Face-To-Face Meeting in L.A., California | 18-19 September 2015

Introduction to the IANA Functions

Hear Patrik Fältström, Vice Chair of the ICG, describe ICG activities this week at ICANN54

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."