US Postpones Domain Name System Handover At Least A Year, Maybe Four 19/08/2015 by William New, Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)The United States Department of Commerce office planning to relinquish national control over a remaining key component of the internet domain name system has said it will take at least until September 2016, putting off the transition that had been targeted for next month. At issue is the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which plays a critical role in any changes made to the global domain name system. In a 17 August blog post by NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling, the National Telecommunication and Information Administration (NTIA) hailed the “tremendous work” toward the transition so far. But he said: “When we announced our intent in March 2014 to complete the privatization of the DNS, we noted that the base period of our contract with ICANN to perform technical functions related to the DNS, known as the IANA functions, expired on September 30, 2015. However, it has become increasingly apparent over the last few months that the community needs time to complete its work, have the plan reviewed by the U.S. Government and then implement it if it is approved.” “Accordingly,” wrote Strickling, “in May we asked the groups developing the transition documents how long it would take to finish and implement their proposals. After factoring in time for public comment, U.S. Government evaluation and implementation of the proposals, the community estimated it could take until at least September 2016 to complete this process. In response to their feedback, we informed Congress on Friday that we plan to extend our IANA contract with ICANN for one year to September 30, 2016. Beyond 2016, we have options to extend the contract for up to three additional years if needed.” It might be noted that the successor to the Obama administration will be elected in November 2016, perhaps putting some uncertainty on the plan after next year. Strickling said the one-year extension “will provide the community with the time it needs to finish its work. The groups are already far along in planning the IANA transition and are currently taking comments on their IANA transition proposals. As we indicated in a recent Federal Register notice, we encourage all interested stakeholders to engage and weigh in on the proposals.” He also described efforts toward the implementation phase of the IANA stewardship transition, including NTIA’s request to Verisign and ICANN to “submit a proposal detailing how best to remove NTIA’s administrative role associated with root zone management.” They prepared a proposal that “outlines a technical plan and testing regime for phasing out the largely clerical role NTIA currently plays in this process,” Strickling said. ICANN is the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees technical aspects of the domain name system. Verisign is the US private sector internet security company that manages the dominant .com extension. It has a unique trusted role in the editing and distributing of the internet root zone file after authorisation from NTIA. Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window) Related William New may be reached at wnew@ip-watch.ch."US Postpones Domain Name System Handover At Least A Year, Maybe Four" by Intellectual Property Watch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.