Creating Tomorrow's Internet.
Founded in 1986, the Internet Engineering Task Force describes itself as "a
loosely self-organized group of people who contribute to the engineering and
evolution of Internet technologies specifications". The IETF is unusual in that
it is not a corporation and has no board of directors, no members, and no dues.
IETF's own internal analysis (RFC 3774 - IETF Problem Statement) has revealed
significant problems, including:
IETF governance contrasts substantially with the other two standards
organisations involved with Internet standards. ITU has the strongest governance
structure, being responsible eventually to member state representatives, and W3C
standards work is determined and prioritized by a member organization.
So in this respect, IETF is peculiar. And this peculiarity brings with it
certain problems because, in reality, few issues if any are purely technical and
have no policy repercussions. This is shown out in case studies outlined in the
Internet Analysis Report - 2004 where IETF of necessity has had to move outside
its technical mandate but has not been effective in doing so.
Two of the case studies, covering DNSSEC and IPv6, also indicate extremely long
time frames within IETF for protocol development and implementation. No-one can
attribute these long time frames to technical complexity alone. Poor
methodologies, volunteerism, under-resourcing, unprofessional behaviour and
management issues have all contributed to delays, according to the IETF Problem
Working Group.
IETF's decisions to address its problems in an open forum are to be applauded,
as are its attempts to engage a wide global audience of engineers in its
consensus based decision making structures. However, IETF is a classic
technocracy. While it appears to be reasonably capable of managing the day to
day concerns as regards maintenance of standards, it does not have the capacity
to tackle major tasks or major change. To solve these problems, IETF would need
to
To an outsider, The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) appears to
have all the efficiency and capacity to get things done that ICANN appears not
to have. However, that perception may well be illusory; and anyone who has been
involved in development of standards such as X.400 could point to equally
problematic issues in ITU.
It should be remembered that, at the time IETF was established in 1986,
telecommunications companies were not major players in the emerging Internet.
They became more involved from 1990 on, as a commercial Internet got underway.
It should also be remembered that in the 1970s the US telecommunications giant,
AT&T, could not see a business case for involvement in the Internet. This
perhaps is the most telling criticism of the staid and solid elder statesman
that ITU is - it may find it difficult to be nimble or innovative in seeing
future directions.
ITU, like IETF, is undergoing considerable internally driven reform to try to
better cope with the demands of a rapidly changing communications technology
landscape. There would appear to be room for some of the strengths of ITU to be
better utilised alongside those of IETF and ICANN in the future, particularly as
telephony and Internet based applications continue to converge.
W3C is the third "standards body", and effectively addresses issues with the
World Wide Web architecture. It separated from IETF in 1994 as it believed IETF
to be incapable of dealing with its particular range of issues.
It is important to realize that ICANN doesn't control everything in Internet technical co-ordination. An interesting history associated with the early growth of the Internet led to a number of quite independent structures being established. These include:
ICANN has a series of relationships with these separate bodies which it is
attempting to formalise.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) exists in its
current form largely because the US Government wanted it to be so.
Its structure is an evolving reactive mechanism. Anyone analysing its current
structure without regard for the history of how it came to be would have to
regard ICANN as
The initial proposal for a body to administer the domain name system
suggested establishment under Swiss law. However at the beginning of October
1998 the US Government's National Telecommunications and Information
Administration (NTIA) responded to this proposal by announcing the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN). It would operate under an
agreement with the NTIA with oversight by the US congress. The new body was
asked to ensure competition in delivery of domain name services. Thus ICANN
became a corporation under US law, with a contract to operate from the US
government, despite concerns of many stakeholders.
ICANN claims its mission to be technical co-ordination. (ICANN website).
However, because of the eccentricities and incomplete nature of Internet
governance structures, ICANN has consistently worked in areas that cannot be
regarded as technical co-ordination.
For instance, in 1999 it succeeded in establishing a Uniform Dispute Resolutions
Policy (UDRP) for the top level domains; hardly a technical co-ordination task,
but certainly a useful one for development of the new media.
Similarly eccentric is the role of ICANN in creating a competitive environment
in DNS, part of its contract with US Department of Commerce. This would normally
be seen as a regulatory body's responsibilities, not a technical co-ordination
task.
Public policy matters where ICANN is active include intellectual property issues
and security. Public policy matters where ICANN is not active include spam and
consumer protection. Once again, the logic of involvement and non-involvement is
not easy to follow.
Perhaps partially as a result of this mission confusion, ICANN does not handle
public policy well or effectively. An example of this was its recent attempts to
gain widespread public input in to the WHOIS database and privacy issues.
The problem with ICANN, and with IETF, is one of defining scope within a
schema that effectively manages all needs of the 21st century Internet. No such
schema exists, and that is why bodies such as ICANN and IETF are continually
operating in areas outside of their level of competence in order to keep things
afloat.
If there is a problem in Internet governance, it is the gaps between the
competencies of existence governance bodies and the needs of Internet industry,
governmental, and community users. As user needs in a broad sense do not come
within the range of concern of any particular Internet governance body, it is
inevitable that mistakes are being made and crucial issues are not being
addressed.