Country code Top Level Domain-names - ccTLD - history
in the making
ccTLD-ICANN Meeting
in Geneva, 19 February 2001
Elisabeth Porteneuve
Disclaimer:
This
document conveys some personal opinions and thoughts of its author. Information
gathered here comes from more than twenty years of personal work on making
international networking happen, from various documents still available on
line, as well as from discussions with many Internet colleagues.
The Internet has
been developing for years without being perceived, initially as a collaborative
work between research and education communities. The business world started to
mention Internet when the projection of its economical impact became to be
significant. The political world started to mention commercially deployed
Internet when discovering its extraordinary capability of communication in the
global village, transforming every aspect of life. The major date from business
perspective is the US Congress decision in 1992 giving the National Science
Foundation the statutory authority to allow commercial activity on the NSFNET,
which subsequently led to the NSF agreement with the Network Solutions, Inc.
and the annual fees for domain names registration and maintenance.
The first country
code TLD has been registered in 1985, the whole list of ISO 3166-1 2-letter
codes has been exhausted before the US Government issue its White Paper in June
1998. The registration of ccTLD was very slow at its initial stage, when
correlated to the connectivity deployment towards new countries.
The deployment in
1990’s is still recorded on Larry Landweber site, starting from
September 1991 map
ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/connectivity_table/version_2 and ending with June 1997
ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/connectivity_table/version_16 the later indicating NUMBER OF ENTITIES WITH
INTERNATIONAL NETWORK CONNECTIVITY = 195
NUMBER
OF ENTITIES WITHOUT INTERNATIONAL NETWORK CONNECTIVITY = 42
The NSF-NSI
agreement initiating payment for domain names under .com/.org/.net arrived in
the end of 1992. When Jon Postel published its RFC1591 describing TLD system in
March 1994, already 111 ccTLD has been recorded in the Internic database. The
distribution indicated in the table below is extracted from
http://www.wwtld.org/aboutcctld/history/wwtld1999/ccTLDs-created.html. The list of ccTLDs in chronological order of Top Level
Domain creation at the Internic is provided in http://www.wwtld.org/aboutcctld/history/wwtld1999/ccTLDs-by-date.html.
YYYY Nb
ccTLDs created Total
1985
3 3
1986
7 10
1987
9 19
1988 9 28
1989
8 36
1990
11 47
1991
22 69
1992
17 86
1993
23 109
1994
22 131
1995
29 160
1996
31 191
1997
47 238
1998
2 240
Since the NSF-NSI
agreement, the economic success of the NSI started. Between 1995 and 1997 the
nominal registration fee of US $35 has been increased by a tax of US $15 per
domain name, which was to be deposited in the Intellectual Infrastructure Fund.
The total benefit of 23 million dollars, gathered alike from US and non-US
customers at IIF has been subsequently used for the Internet 2 project.
The NSI economic
success, the increasing popularity of domain names, and the complete lack of
competition in their registration could not last. Eventually a very long
process of understanding of Internet jungle, discovery of some of its absolute
powers islands, analysis, and clarification started.
The White Paper
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/6_5_98dns.htm published by the US
Government in June 1998 was aimed to solve the immediate problems related to
the NSI registration monopoly and to the intellectual property problems related
to the domain names. This document is strongly oriented towards gTLD problems,
the ccTLD name is mentioned twice.
First, in a brief
description of the domain name space: “More than 200 national, or country-code,
TLDs (ccTLDs) are administered by their corresponding governments or by private
entities with the appropriate national government's acquiescence. A small set
of gTLDs do not carry any national identifier, but denote the intended function
of that portion of the domain space.”
Second, in a
description of transition of leadership for DNS management to the private
sector: “Of course, national governments now have, and will continue to have,
authority to manage or establish policy for their own ccTLDs.”
Let’s go back to
the pioneers of Internet. When the first ccTLDs were created in the mid of
1980’s, every task was deployed by scientist and engineers, at no cost. The
translation of a domain name into an IP address used by transmission protocols
was anything but facility to remember. Whereas the NSF-NSI agreement created a
first commercial registry for .com/.org/.net in 1993, it took several years
more to transform the initial ccTLD structures attached to Universities or
research labs into legal entities, mostly into not for profit incorporated
registries: Nominet .uk in 1996, AFNIC .fr and Denic .de in 1997 are among the
first ones. At the end of the year 2000 this process of transformation within
the old ccTLD group is far from being terminated, often it is in the
understanding and study phase. Only a few tens of the old ccTLDs got already a
legal structure in their countries. In the meantime, many of ccTLDs recorded in
the Internic database by IANA in 1996-1997, when the rush for gold started,
have been set up as commercial registries, competing with the .com/.org/.net on
the international market. Some of these ccTLDs are using the country-code
umbrella as protection from the global rules being established within ICANN and
related to the .com/.org/.net. It allows them to take only a part of ICANN
established obligations (usually the UDRP procedures concerning the domain
names disputes are endorsed), but to escape from an open competition,
registrars agreements, escrow of database and mandatory whois information. Some
of these ccTLDs are located outside of the corresponding ISO 3166-1 countries
or territories, and are questioned by the appropriate national government's
whilst claiming to the world the defense and dedication to the local
population. It shall be noted that a scarce number of ccTLDs are indeed helping
in politically difficult situation, or at least thinking to do so. As a general
it is unknown which country, if any, get corporate and revenue taxes paid by
truly off shore registries collecting money worldwide, especially from companies
taking care of their intellectual property patrimonies. Another phenomena
appeared recently, such as marketing some ISO 3166 country names under other
identity. Apparently it is enticing to market .mn for Minnesota, or .la for Los
Angeles, odds are if the population living in these countries know about it and
endorse their national names diverted this way, or if it is rather perceived as
a new form of colonization via Internet.
Whereas almost
one year was necessary to set up the new ICANN and simultaneously prepare the
NSI contract, it was curiously assumed by both USG and ICANN that 242 ccTLD
international contracts with ICANN would happen without effort. Quite
unrealistic assumption, when one take into account the large heterogeneous
international group and the open hostility of some ccTLD managers very
comfortable in the old undefined situation.
The old IANA was
not an ideal body. The old IANA was one man show, doing whatever he felt
appropriate (and certainly as honestly as he could and as long as pressure was
not too strong). But it is worth to note that there was no transparency, no
place to discuss or challenge some dictatorial decisions. We may guess that the language advantage was
of decisive importance (a contrario -- if there were no advantage of IANA
decisions in 1996-1997 to native English speakers, the ratio of questionable
delegations to native English speakers and to non-native English speakers would
be similar). Jon Postel was sometime abused. Four known IANA’s mistakes happen
with .je, .gg, .im and .ac (four UK territories - Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of
Man, Ascension Island), taken from ISO3166 reserved list. Subsequently the ISO
Maintenance Agency suppressed the publication of ISO reserved codes on its web
site.
When the USG
issued the White Paper issued in June 1998, calling for a legal international
entity, the very large international Internet community welcomed it wholeheartedly.
From the ccTLD perspective ICANN is a well defined framework allowing for a
better communication, an open, transparent and well recorded ccTLD-relate
information, a mandatory geographic diversity and hopefully language diversity.
The translation of important rules, documents or request for proposals into
several languages, is the only way to have the Internet knowledge shared, well
understood. It is a preamble to allow for an open worldwide competition of the
private sector related to Internet management, preventing the “digital divide”
or the “re-colonization” in the Internet space.
Several ccTLD
members deployed much energy and enthusiasm in the in the ICANN Bylaws
definition and in the DNSO definition. It was sometimes driven by the
generosity, sometimes by an individual interests or vanity, never easy in the
jungle of various and complex contradictions. The DNSO
Formation Concepts were achieved with an apparent strong ccTLD support, in Madonna-like
style in Singapore, 4 March 1999, cf. http://www.icann.org/dnso-formation.html
.
The ccTLD set up in Berlin, after a painful
noisy meeting with plenty of unknown speakers, was submitted
to the ICANN Board on 25 May 1999, cf. http://www.wwtld.org/aboutcctld/history/wwtld1999/const-principlesV4.html
. Subsequently the ccTLD elections to the Names Council in August 1999
did not respect the geographic diversity requirement in ICANN Bylaws, and
degenerated later on into permanent conflict situation with ICANN staff,
sustained by one or two European ccTLD leaders.
The outcome of
September 1999 DNSO elections to the ICANN Board gave two important lessons to
the ccTLD group. First one, that the ccTLD leadership shall be collectively
build up and shared between individuals from various geographic regions to
achieve the group strength (which will simultaneously fulfill ICANN Bylaws
criteria). Second, that it may happen that the DNSO Constituencies design (in
which the ccTLDs had a big say, therefore share the responsibility) will not
allow for a ccTLD candidate to get elected to the ICANN Board when facing the
strong coalition of gTLD, Registrars, IP, Business and ISP interests.
In 2000 the ccTLD
group started to work on its own structure, with tremendous difficulties from
some of its elected leaders, not resigning, not participating, and dead-locking
any positive action. Despite that bad faith the group succeeded to set up an
Interim Secretariat, to gather some funds, to organize meetings, to bring back
to life its web site. To draft Articles of Association, to work on Best
Practices, study funding model, rise enthusiasm for documents translation into
various languages, and rise an overall participation. In September 2000 the new
ccTLD delegates were elected to the Names Council.
Whilst the ccTLD
group have been facing its internal problems, it missed to assume its own
responsibility and work on a possible relationship with ICANN as well as on
deciding of its ICANN funding model. The ICANN staff added some more burdens to
the ccTLD difficulties. First of all, the presidential Task Force on Finances
in 1999, with 3 delegates selected by ICANN CEO and President, did approve the
ccTLD share of 35% of ICANN Budget, approximately 1.5 million USD per annum.
This amount of money imposed on ccTLD was unrealistic, as evidenced by the
actual total contributions of ccTLD to budget to date (900 thousand USD). The
year 2000 ICANN Budget discussion proved to be a complete misunderstanding
between ccTLD and ICANN, for few basic reasons. ICANN considered for granted
than the 3 representatives randomly selected by ICANN CEO and President may
commit on behalf of the group. ICANN considered for granted the ccTLD
willingness to pay for nothing, no service, no staff dedicated to IANA function
and IANA database, no information, no formal relationship. ICANN turned away
the ccTLD consensus-appointed representatives from the face-to-face budget
meeting in Cairo. Such a disastrous record is now graven in the ccTLD memory.
In 2001 the ccTLD NC delegates issued a communique
http://www.wwtld.org/communique/20010121.ICANNbudget-communique.html
in advance to the
discussions on the ICANN budget for new fiscal year requesting for the complete
reconsideration of budget shares.
For 2 years 90%
of ICANN funds has come from the DNSO Constituencies, and only from three of
them: Registrars, gTLD, ccTLD, whilst the remaining four do not fund ICANN at
all: Business, ISPCP, IPC and NCDNH. Please bear in mind, that according to the
ccTLD experience in DNSO election to the ICANN Board, the ccTLD Constituency, while
requested for 1.5 million USD per annum, has no chance to be represented face
to coalitions from Registrars, gTLD, Business, ISPCP, IPC.
The ccTLD
Constituency called ICANN to explore new allocations to its budget, to
equilibrate a share of contribution between Domain Names and IP Addresses, and
from not contributing groups of interest within the DNSO.
Furthermore the
ccTLD does not consider fair to share US-lawyers burden related to inavoidables
disputes concerning new gTLDs or registrars
(but does understand perfectly than ICANN as a private company has to
defend itself, therefore colossal cost of Jones Day Reavis & Pogue). The
cost inherent to gTLDs or registrars shall be covered by them, according to any
scheme they may consider appropriate. The cost inherent to ccTLD shall be
covered by ccTLD. And there is certainly the cost of running an organization,
which shall be paid by all ICANN SO's.
1. Each ccTLD
manager is facing more and more obligations, which are an unwanted complicated
responsibility, a "string attached" to the initial "technical
package" of registration of domain names. Is it reasonable to expect to
escape such obligations as data protection, whois information, data escrow,
domain disputes ?
2. Estimate the
distribution of fair dues to ICANN among ccTLD members, based on some tangible
information related to domain names economical activity. There is a lot of
ccTLD (Europeans) not willing to provide any statistical information on their
activity, trying to forbid anybody in building up a financial scheme related to
a domain name number. It looks silly, but how to change it ?
3. To devise an
wwTLD organization, either as a ccSO or as an advisory committee to ICANN
4. Outreach and
awareness. Visit and bring to the group each and every ccTLD Registry.
Custodianship of IANA database, preserve all records from the past for the
future – ccwhois.org project
The CENTR folks
have been working on "contract for root service", assuming that there
is somewhere a contract between ICANN and "root operators". Last news
indicate that the 13 lonesome cowboys were now prepared to sign contracts with
ICANN as they would receive legal liability protection from ICANN. They do not
want payment for running the services at this time, but will continue as it is.
Two root servers ("j" and "l") are being scheduled to be
moved outside of the US (see the root list at the end). I do not like much this
situation, because it means that the root servers distribution in the world
will be dealt behind doors, and as usually, this apparently small technical
activity is of huge importance.
There is a very
high level of competencies in Europe in Ipv6 networking (the first Ipv6
European test bed has been deployed in the mid 1990’s, between 3 sites
including INRIA in France) and there is still no root server using Ipv6 in a
native way. It is important to have one of root servers installed on the
European continent.
cf. http://www.wwtld.org/ongoing/icannservices/20000715.RSSAC.Murai.html
see also http://www.icann.org/correspondence/root-map.gif
name org city
type url
a
InterNIC Herndon, VA, US com http://www.internic.org
b
ISI Marina del Rey, CA,
US edu http://www.isi.edu
c
PSInet Herndon, VA, US com http://www.psi.net
d
UMD College Park, MD,
US edu http://www.umd.edu
e
NASA Mt View, CA, US usg http://www.nasa.gov
f
ISC Palo Alto, CA, US com
http://www.isc.org
g
DISA Vienna, VA, US usg http://nic.mil
h
ARL Aberdeen, MD, US usg
http://www.arl.mil
i
NORDUnet Stockholm, SE int http://www.nordu.net
j
(TBD) (colo w/A) 0 http://www.iana.org
k
RIPE London, UK int http://www.ripe.net
l
(TBD) (colo w/B) 0 http://www.iana.org
m
WIDE Tokyo, JP int http://www.wide.ad.jp