It’s amazing what happens when you start being nice to people.
[tag]ICANN[/tag] has just been given a far cheque for $190,000 from – get this – a number of [tag]CENTR[/tag] members i.e. the people that run Europe’s country-code top level domains, for helping them make their lives easier.
There are 10 countries behind it: most significantly Germany, which has exchanged letters with ICANN but still refuses to officially join ICANN’s ccNSO organisation. The money has been building up for a few years under the name the “Internet Infrastructure Improvement Account”. The fund was basically a way to point out to ICANN two things:
- You can stick your IANA delays and attempts to pressure us into contracts up your arse, and;
- We do have money and we are willing to give you money if you stop playing games
ICANN has largely stopped playing those games (it must be said more through forced pragmatism than any new-found love of ccTLD owners), but most importantly it got in David Conrad to run IANA, and then Mr Conrad brokered the eIANA deal (which is still a bit foggy).
What does this mean? It means that countries across the globe will be able to make vital high-level infrastructural changes to their country’s Internet without having to run everything through a couple of people in Los Angeles.
The countries like this. And they want to help. So they have handed over $190,000 to help fund their help. Now ain’t that nice?
David Conrad
September 19, 2006 at 11:45 pmHi,
Just to clarify, as IANA is the receipient of contributed software, I think it more correct to say the eIANA deal was primarily brokered by Andrzej Bartosiewicz of NASK and Paul Kane. IANA is deeply grateful for the efforts they and the folks at CENTR have undertaken to help improve IANA’s services to the ccTLD community and we look forward to working with interested parties as we role out the eIANA services in the near future.
Regards,
-drc
Kieren
September 20, 2006 at 7:13 amWell, that’s very good of you not to take the credit, David.
For clarification, as I understand the history of eIANA: Paul Kane made a presentation to, I think, the GAC at ICANN’s Luxembourg meeting in July 2005 where ICANN and IANA were less than enamoured, mostly for political reasons.
IANA, under Doug Barton, who left the job immediately afterwards, had used Luxembourg to launch some secure Web form for IANA changes which was widely mocked by ccTLD owners.
Andrzej Bartosiewicz – who as Poland’s ccTLD technical man had written most the code behind eIANA – then embarked on a series of presentations at CENTR (put on the agenda by Paul Kane) and ICANN across the globe pushing the idea: Moscow in Sep 05, Amsterdam in Nov 05 and then ICANN Vancouver in Nov 05.
But then the process stalled. My understanding was that it was you (David Conrad) that persuaded others in ICANN that eIANA should be pushed through, the only remaining sticking point then being a licence fee or the software, which ICANN refused to pay.
At ICANN Marrakech in July this year, Andrzej agreed to lift the fee and ICANN agreed to take eIANA on. Although there was also an unexplained delay of a week in this news coming out.
That’s my understanding of eIANA’s history. I’m happy to be picked up on any points.
Kieren
Kim Davies
September 20, 2006 at 2:55 pmI’d say the history is far less simplistic. 🙂
The history of “eIANA” is longer and more tortured than that account. CENTR in particular was working on it prior to July 2005, and it had been a recurring theme well before. It is true that, actually, the demonstration in June 2005 in Trondheim when the tool was presented as a vastly different implementation of something promised in 2003 really spurred the effort to write something better.
On a specific point, I think the programming lead on eIANA was Patrycja Wegrzynowicz.
Suffice it to say, despite however one wishes to view the past, we are working constructively with the various parties with an aim of deploying the system in a way that aligns with the requirements of the task. I’d also say IANA has greatly improved its performance and consistency in handling root requests in the intervening period, and has already begun realising some of the goals the eIANA project aimed to indirectly achieve.
kim
Kieren
September 20, 2006 at 4:12 pmAh well there you go, I knew I was right to stay ambiguous about eIANA’s history in the original post 🙂 I might send Paul and Andrzej emails asking for the full history and then post it.
But yes, I think the $190,000 is a very good indication that bygones may soon become bygones with the IANA issue. And you, Kim, and David desire alot of credit for diffusing the situation.
You’ll have to delight in the anti-climax that the less people talk about IANA, the better the job it is doing.
Kieren