TLD Working Group

25 September 1997, 9.00 am

Park Plaza
Rokin 78
1012 KW Amsterdam
The Netherlands

Chair: Niall O'Reilly
Scribe: Niall Murphy

Agenda

The following Agenda had been circulated in advance.

1. Administrivia
   1.1 recognition of Scribe
   1.2 Agenda bashing

2. Matters arising from RIPE 27 BOF meeting
   2.1 adoption of minutes
   2.2 review of action list

3. Brief news
   (not covered by other agenda items)

4. Operational issues
   4.1 dis- and re-appearance of ES
   4.2 InterNIC TLD escalation procedure

5. Review & adopt Terms of Reference

6. Review Workplan
   overall framework
   material not covered by specific agenda items
   provisional priorities

   Coffee

7. nTLD issues
   documentation, harmonisation ...

8. IANA
   status, funding, support from nTLD registries ...

9. gTLD issues

10. AOB

11. Conclusions
    11.1 revisit workplan priorities
    11.2 summarize action list

    Close for lunch

Administrivia

The chairman, Niall O'Reilly welomed the participants.

Niall Murphy from the IE domain registry volunteered as scribe.

The chairman enquired how many representatives from national registries were present. Approximately 10 TLD registration entities were represented either directly or very closely.

No agenda bashing was deemed necessary.

Matters arising from RIPE 27 BOF meeting

The minutes of the RIPE 27 BOF meeting were adopted as a true and fair account of the meeting.

A review of the action list was undertaken, and the status of actions was noted as follows.

Brief news

Nothing was reported.

Operational issues

The disappearance of .ES was noted with concern, and the creation of an InterNIC nTLD escalation procedure noted with approval. Thanks were expressed to the RIPE NCC for some thoughtful diplomacy at the right time.

Terms of Reference

The draft Terms of Reference had been sent out on the mailing list shortly before the meeting. It was established that not many of the participants had seen and thought about the TOR document. The chairman led an oral review of the document. An amendment was suggested to the effect that the emerging registries and registries outside the (current) RIPE geographical area should be recognised as colleagues.

Frode Greisen pointed out that Appendix A was missing. It was recognised that this must be included.

A deadline for publication of amended TOR was set for 30 days from the end of the meeting.

The adoption of the amended TOR was proposed by Frode Greisen and seconded by Keith Mitchell.

Review Workplan

Since not enough of those present had seen the draft workplan, the participants read it through in the meeting before discussion began.

Patrik Fältström (PF) of the POC queried the issue of support for national character sets mentioned in the workplan. LJL suggested the deletion of it, but it was later pointed out that perhaps this support was not intended with reference to the DNS, but perhaps instead support of ancillary matters, eg: the RIPE database and whois.

Bernard Tuy also pointed out that the wording of the "supernational" clause was clumsy and misleading. NOR suggested the replacement phrase, "governmental and intergovernmental organisations".

PF suggested that the nTLD work prioritisation should of necessity start with the collection of information, and should NOT start with the discussion of what are the right and wrong ways of doing things, since that would end up with nothing being done. It would also be of most help to emerging registries.

NOR suggested the retitling of the item as documentation and standardization.

Willie Black said that from his perspective the key is to prioritize the items quickly and correctly. He emphasized that matters pertaining to the IANA need a high priority.

NOR suggested that people should vote on the prioritization of the items mentioned in the work plan. Paul Ridley (PR) distributed papers for this purpose and collated the results. He also suggested that the scope of the workplan items be limited, since in particular the IANA related items need more detail in order to actually achieve measurable results.

While the priorities were being established, NOR asked how best might the attainment of the goals be achieved. PR said the question of how this is done must be the driving force. He suggested setting up a project, which would be given a limited focus and a well defined list of tasks, so that its achievements could be reviewed at every RIPE meeting. This project might be established as an nTLD co-ordination activity, and kept inside the NCC for at least the first year. PR pointed out that if this project succeeded it would be relatively easy to spin it off as an independent organisation and expand the scope. If it failed however it could be quietly scrapped. Funding however would be taken care of by nTLD's not by the NCC. The size and scope etc. of this project was all up to the WG. The main issues were to get the project off the ground quickly, and to have it being seen as neutral.

NOR suggested that the WG and this support activity could have a similar relationship to that between the DB-WG and the RIPE-NCC database work, in the first place as a pilot project.

Berhard Stockman (BS) wanted to see some project proposals to clarify exactly what would be of benefit. He also suggested that the result could be very good, but the outcome would depend on the nTLD's, and that the reference group should not be composed of only the WG here but also the backers of the nTLD's.

PR suggested that was in the future and that it would be better to get the project off the ground first.

WB said that the real stakeholders were the actual nTLD's and that this committee was open to anyone -- therefore was worried this group decides what money is spent but is not accountable.

PR pointed out that ultimately RIPE activities are voted upon by RIPE contributers, and hence if something was objectionable it would get vetoed.

RIPE-NCC is to draft a project proposal, including initial budget for consideration by the community of "real stakeholders".

At this stage, the meeting broke for coffee.

After coffee NOR reported that the prioritisation of the workplan items had established the following:

• top priority: IANA and the stability of the "."
• next priority: standardisation and documentation
• other high priority: gTLD's

with no particular priority assignrd to the remaining concerns.

The meeting then heard a report from Nick Woods (NW), who runs a small company in the UK called Netsearchers (NS). This company works with large corporations and lawyers to protect the trademarks of their clients. Recently they have experienced an upsurge in demand to register domain names in foreign nations. They want to expedite this process by compiling a list of "foreign" registries plus their documentation (translated into English) under a number of headings.

A discussion followed. During this, a number of opinions were expressed -- some cautious, others favorable -- about this project. Rob Blokzijl expressed the feeling of the meeting by suggesting that the NS proposal should be noted and that progress be reported at the next meeting.

nTLD issues

Willie Black mentioned some changes in VAT regulations which would likely concern TLD registries in EU member-states. After some time, it was agreed that this could be discussed further by e-mail.

IANA

This item was extended to include stability of "the dot".

In the discussion, the main points were the following.

• A new structure is needed to support the functions of IANA.

• This structure should be properly legally constituted and engage the participation of the stakeholders. This idea had received support at RIPE 27.

• RIPE chairman was working to engage IANA in exploratory discussions in this direction.

• An international treaty organisation is too elaborate and slow an approach.

• Funding for IANA was now provided by the regional IP address registries. Restored US Government funding had not been drawn down.

• Well-defined work items which IANA actually performed should be kept in the responsibility of a well-defined entity. Those responsible for delegated work (address registries, TLD registries ...) should have a defined interface for participating in the new structure.

• Different governments were understood to have a variety of views of how IANA should be supported.

• Both nTLD and gTLD registries alike share an interest in stability of the dot.

It was decided to produce a paper proposing an organisational structure for supporting stability of "the dot". PR suggested that the NCC do document collation to aid quick resolution on this matter. A taskforce, consisting of Jim Dixon, Lars-Johan Liman, Niall O'Reilly, Paul Ridley, Marcel Schneider, and Bernhard Stockman was formed for this purpose.

Patrik Fältström and Christopher Wilkinson advised the participants of upcoming meetings for which they would find it useful to have a draft of the document available. The earliest of these was to take place on 9 October.

gTLD issues

Christopher Wilkinson described the OECD report, and commented that he felt that OECD appears to be suggesting a rather interventionist view to governments. He will attempt to make sure the OECD secretariat takes into account our 'discussions'.

Bernhard Stockman enquired as to whether people had seen the EU reply to the Dept. of Commerce enquiry. NOR thought so, but undertook to supply this to the list. CW pointed out that he needed comment on this before the end of the month. He also made the case for perhaps more cautious discussion than usual, since the mailing lists were so open.

Niall O'Reilly told the meeting that there were 2 requests for comment from the POC that were important to take note of in the context of the gTLD-MoU, and were available on the gTLD-MoU web site.

Paul Ridley brought attention to action item 5 from the Dublin BOF, concerning the European iPOC nominee. The meeting was advised that Jon Postel had followed up on this.

Patrik Fältström said that PAB list discussion was ongoing as to what exactly the powers of the PAB were, and that in his opinion the PAB seemed like it would be quite a strong body. He encouraged those present to comment on the POC requests for comment. NOR suggested that individual responses to these should be made by concerned registries.

AOB

Conclusions

• Terms of reference approved

• Workplan amended and prioritised

• Priorities:
  
  1. Stability of IANA and of root of name system
     
  2. Documentation and Standardisation
     
  3. gTLD's

New Actions

List of Participants