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Customer Standing Committee (CSC)

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Status of CSC

1 October 2016: The Committee is now active.

Overview

Under the now expired IANA functions contract, NTIA provided operational oversight of the IANA naming function. In the ICG proposal, the domain names community required that a CSC be formed to replace this oversight and ensure the continued satisfactory performance of the IANA naming function for the direct customers of the naming services.

The CSC monitors PTI’s performance of the IANA naming function by analyzing performance reports on a monthly basis and publishing its findings. It is authorized to undertake remedial action to address poor performance, and if performance issues are not remedied, the CSC is authorized to escalate the performance issues to the ccNSO and GNSO for consideration. Additionally, the CSC may recommend changes to the naming Service Level Expectations as well as enhancements to the provision of the IANA naming services.

On May 27, 2016, the ICANN Board approved new ICANN Bylaws that require the establishment the CSC to these specifications.

On June 1, 2016, ICANN sent a request to the Supporting Organizations, Advisory Committees and Registry Stakeholder Group (RySG) to initiate their respective processes to appoint candidates to serve on the CSC.

On August 10, 2016, the ccNSO and GNSO councils approved the inaugural CSC membership composition.

Inaugural CSC Composition

Members:

ccNSO	Byron Holland and Jay Daley
RySG	Elaine Pruis and Kal Feher

Liaisons:

ALAC	Mohamed El Bashir
GNSO	Non-Registry: James Gannon
RSSAC	Lars-Johan Liman
SSAC	Jeff Bedser
PTI	Elise Gerich
GAC	Elise Lindeberg

Relevant Links

CSC Public Mail List Archive

CSC Request for Appointment

CSC Charter FAQ

CSC Charter Clarification

CSC Scope and Responsibilities

CSC Candidates Qualifications

IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) Proposal

RySG's CSC Selection Process Document

RySG's CSC Expression of Interest Form

Guideline: ccNSO Actions Respecting the CSC

Joint ccNSO-GNSO Statement on CSC Members and Liaisons

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."