Memorandum of Understanding ICANN Address Supporting
Organization
Second Draft, 6 October, 1999
(1) Purpose and Scope
(a) The Address Supporting
Organization (ASO) is a consensus-based advisory body within the ICANN
framework.
(b) The ASO will establish a
"Address Council" and host an annual open meeting (the "General Assembly").
(c) The purpose of this
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is to establish a set of principles that
ICANN and the regional IP address registries (RIRs) who have signed below
(the Signing RIRs) will use in forming and operating the ASO. Additional
RIRs may join in signing the MOU after they have been approved by ICANN.
(2) Composition and Action of
Address Council.
(a) Selection. Each RIR
signatory of the MOU will select three [3] individuals to the Address
Council using the following process:
(i) Each RIR will annually
issue a public call for nominees to the Address Council at least 90 days
before the RIR's policy meeting. Any individual can submit a nomination to
the RIR.
(ii) The due date for this
call shall be 30 days before the meeting.
(iii) The nominees must be
individuals.
(iv) A list of all nominees
who agree to run for the Address Council must be posted on the RIR's web
page at least 15 days before the meeting along with a statement from each
nominee who wishes to make one.
(v) Selection of the RIR's
members of the Address Council will be made via an open and transparent
procedure. The individuals selected for the Address Council must not be
staff members of any RIR.
(b) Term. The term of Address
Council members will be 3 years. The initial Address Council members
selected within each region will have staggered terms of 1, 2 and 3 years.
The process by which these initial members are selected must also determine
in an open and transparent manner, the assignment of terms to each of the
initial members.
(c) Removal. Any RIR may
remove one of its Address Council members during his or her term, if by an
open and transparent process, it is determined that that member should for
any reason no longer serve on the Address Council.
(d) Action by Address Council.
Unless otherwise specified in this MOU, all actions of the Address Council
shall be taken by majority vote of the total number of members. Action may
be taken at any meeting of the Address Council, which may be by telephone
conference in which all participants can hear all others. Meetings of the
Address Council may be called by request of any three members of the Address
Council, with prior written notice to each of the other members; prior
written notice shall be sent at least 45 days before physical meetings or
fifteen (15) days before telephonic or other electronic meetings. In order
to conduct business at any meeting of the Address Council, at least a quorum
of members must be present; a quorum shall be present when at least a
majority of the members of the Address Council are present, and when such
members represent at least 2/3rds of the Signing RIRs.
(e) Web Site. The Address
Council will arrange for the establishment and maintenance of a Web site
devoted to ASO activities and news (the ICANN/ASO Web Site).
(f) Secretary. The Address
Council will have a Secretary to coordinate administrative matters relating
to the ASO and Address Council. The Secretary's term of office shall be one
year. The position of Secretary will rotate among the Signing RIRs, with the
initial Secretary to be selected by the APNIC, and subsequent Secretaries to
be appointed by a randomly selected Signing RIR that has not appointed the
Secretary in the current rotation.
(g) No Compensation. Neither
the Secretary, nor any Address Council member or designated ICANN Board
member shall be entitled to any compensation or reimbursement of expenses
from the ASO. The ASO shall not be required to obtain insurance coverage
for, or to indemnify, the members of the Address Council or persons acting
in any other capacity by or for the ASO.
(h) Observers from emerging
registries. ICANN may designate an individual representing an RIR in
formation to participate as an observer on the Address Council in order to
ease the transition of such new RIR into the ASO. Any such observers will be
able to participate as AC members, but will not have the right to vote.
(4) ICANN Directors.
(a) The Address Council will
appoint Directors to the ICANN Board of Directors in accordance with the
By-laws of ICANN, for such terms as are specified by such By-laws. ICANN
will notify the Address Council of any vacancies on the ICANN Board which
may be filled by the Address Council.
(b) Ninety days prior to the
General Assembly meeting, ICANN and the Address Council will conduct an open
call for nominations for any potentially open ASO seats on the ICANN board.
The list of nominees generated by this call will be posted on the ICANN/ASO
web site and retained until the next General Assembly meeting and will be
included in the list of individuals that the Address Council will consider
to fill any openings which arise in the ASO seats on the ICANN board. In
addition, each RIR signatory to the MOU is entitled to nominate candidates
by procedures of its own choosing. ICANN will notify the Address Council
when there are any open positions in the ASO seats on the ICANN board. The
Address Council will then select the ASO appointees to the ICANN board from
among the list of nominees generated by the open call and the nominees put
forth by the RIR signatories by a means of its own choosing. An Address
Council member who has accepted a nomination for the ICANN Board cannot vote
or otherwise participate in the AC's election process.
(c) No more than 1
ASO-appointed Director may come from the same geographic region, as defined
in the ICANN by-laws.
(d) No ASO-appointed Director
may serve simultaneously on the Address Council.
(e) The Directors appointed by
the Address Council will not represent the ASO on the Board, but will
function as full Directors of ICANN. (By-laws, Art. V, Sec. 8)
(5) Duties of the Address
Council.
(a) Advisory Role. The Address
Council will advise the Board of ICANN on matters referred to the Address
Council by the ICANN Board.
(b) Policy Development. The
ICANN bylaws assign to the ASO the responsibility for the development of
global policies relating to the following areas:
(i) Definition of global
policies for the distribution and registration of Internet address space
(currently IPv4 and IPv6);
(ii) Definition of global
policies for the distribution and registration of identifiers used in
Internet inter-domain routing (currently BGP autonomous system numbers);
and
(iii) Definition of global
policies concerning the part of the DNS name space which is derived from
the Internet address space and the inter-domain routing identifiers
(currently in-addr.arpa and ip6.int). The ASO advises ICANN on the
operation of the DNS root name servers with regard to the subset of the
DNS name space mentioned above. Specifically this responsibility is
limited to the above and does not extend to the business practices or
local policies of the RIRs except as needed to ensure that the RIRs meet
the criteria for ICANN approved RIRs. The RIRs are responsible to their
own members and in most cases this must be their prime responsibility.
Normally, proposals for global policies within the area of the ASO's
responsibility will be developed within the RIRs and forwarded to the
Address Council for their consideration. In special circumstances the
ICANN board can forward a request to develop a new global policy or to
review an existing global policy within the area of the ASO's
responsibility to the Address Council. In addition the Address Council may
accept, for consideration, proposals for changes to global IP address
policy from any interested individual or entity. In all cases when the
Address Council reviews a proposal for new global policies or a proposed
modification to existing policies in this area it will first solicit the
opinions of all of the RIR signatories of the MOU and of the public. The
Address Council will weigh the results of these solicitations in its
deliberations to determine if it will approve the proposal. At least two
thirds of the members of the Address Council must support a proposal for
the proposal to be accepted and forwarded to the ICANN board for its
consideration. In any case where the ICANN board has requested that the
Address Council develop a new policy within the area of the ASO's
responsibility, the Address Council will forward that request to the RIR
signatories of the MOU. The RIRs will then be given a reasonable time to
propose policies to address the request from ICANN. Any resulting policy
will be evaluated as described above. If an RIR decides, after reviewing
the request, that the request is unreasonable, it can report that opinion
to the Address Council. If the Address Council, after reviewing the
responses, decides that the request is unreasonable or inadvisable, it can
report that opinion to the ICANN board along with the reasons that the
Address Council reached that conclusion.
(6) Annual Open Meeting (General
Assembly)
(a) The Address Council will
periodically host an open meeting ("General Assembly") to promote discussion
and receive input regarding the work of the ASO.
(b) A General Assembly meeting
will be held at least once per year, and will permit open participation by
all interested individuals.
(c) Each General Assembly
meeting will be held in conjunction with an open policy meeting held by a
Signing RIR, with an effort to hold no two [2] consecutive General Assembly
meetings in the same geographic region.
(7) Open Proceedings and
Documents.
(a) Communications between
ICANN and the ASO. All formal communications between ICANN and the ASO will
be made public on the ASO web site.
(b) All discussions regarding
ASO policy formation will be conducted on or reported on a publicly-archived
mailing list accessible through the ASO web site. The schedule for the ASO
meetings will be posted 90 days in advance of the meeting date. The agenda
for the Address Council and General Assembly meetings will be posted on the
ASO web site at least 30 days before the meetings. The minutes from all ASO
meetings will be publicly posted on the ASO web site within 30 days of the
meeting. In the unlikely event that the policy formation discussions involve
confidential commercial data that was presented in an address allocation
process the above disclosures must be done in a way to protect the
confidentially of that data.
(8) Relationship between
individual RIRs and ICANN.
Nothing in this MOU is to be read as giving the ASO or the Address
Council any role in the contracts between individual RIRs and ICANN.
(9) Review of MOU.
The MOU signatories will periodically review the results and consequences
of their cooperation under the MOU. When appropriate, the signatories will
consider the need for improvements in the MOU and make suitable proposals
for modifying and updating the arrangements and scope of the MOU. The first
such review will be conducted prior to ICANN's Annual Meeting in 2000.
Should any difference of opinion arise during the term of this MOU regarding
the interpretation of this MOU the conditions prevailing prior thereto shall
be maintained.
(10) Regional IP Address
Registries
The initial signatories to this MOU shall include ICANN and the Signing
RIRs who have signed below. ICANN will develop requirements and policies for
the approval of additional RIRs. This MOU assumes that these requirements
will include at least:
(a) That the proposed RIR
has demonstrated the broad support of the Internet service providers
(ISPs) in its proposed region of coverage.
(b) That the region of
coverage meets the scale to be defined by ICANN considering the need to
avoid global address space fragmentation.
(c) That the proposed RIR's
membership includes a significant percentage of the ISPs within the RIR's
region of coverage which would get their address assignments from the
proposed RIR.
(d) That the proposed RIR
has clearly defined procedures open to all interested parties for the
development of its own IP address assignment policies and for the IP
address assignment policies that the RIR might recommend to the Address
Council for consideration as global policies.
(e) That these policies
include holding at least one annual policy development meeting open to all
interested parties.
(f) That the proposed RIR
has clearly defined procedures for its policy development process that are
open to all interested parties and that ensure fair representation of
constituents within the region of coverage.
(g) That the proposed RIR
has demonstrable capability to effectively implement the RIR global
policies referred to in section 5b of this MOU for the proposed RIR's
entire region of coverage. The MOU also assumes that the RIRs have to
continue to meet these requirements.
(11) General.
This MOU does not constitute any of the parties as a partner, joint
venture, agent, principal or franchisee of any other party. The waiver of
any provision of this MOU on any occasion shall not constitute a waiver for
purposes of any other occasion. No party may transfer or assign any
interest, right or obligation arising under this MOU without the prior
written consent of each other party to this MOU.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, this
Memorandum of Understanding is executed this XX day of XXXX 1999 by the
undersigned, acting through their duly authorized representatives:
INTERNET CORPORATION FOR
ASSIGNED NAMES AND NUMBERS
By:
(signature)
Name:
Title:
APNIC
By:
(signature)
Name:
Title:
ARIN
By: (signature)
Name:
Title:
RIPE NCC
By: (signature)
Name:
Title:
See also:
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