[dns-wg] retiring old ccTLDs

This prompted by the minutes, but it isn't a comment about the minutes:

At 21:20 +0200 10/11/06, Peter Koch wrote:
...
>please find below the draft minutes of last week's two DNS WG sessions.
...
>    ICANN/IANA Update
>    (John Crain, ICANN)
>    <http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-53/presentations/icann_dns_wg.pdf>
>
>    Questions:
>    Rob Blokzijl asked why there was a move to retire old ccTLDs.
>    He could see no technical reason to do this. John agreed that there was
>    no compelling reason. He added that the question remained about whether
>    this should be done. Rob pointed out that current guidelines preclude
>    reuse of ISO3166 country codes for a period of five years. New guidelines
>    will change this to 50 years. Carsten Schiefner commented that .cs was
>    reused recently. Previously it was the code for Czechoslovakia; it was
>    then used for Serbia and Montenegro.

I think there is a reason to retire ccTLDs.  Perhaps it is not 
technical, but, if the ccTLDs are granted according to ISO3166, then 
straying from ISO3166 as it retires country codes means that IANA 
would have to have a policy and process for determining when to 
stray.  I think we are protected from having to deal with politics if 
we have a strict policy of following ISO3166 (plus whatever 
exceptions we've already grandfathered-in).

Once a country code is pulled from ISO3166, if there is a plan for 
phasing it out (I don't think it is appropriate to debate a plan here 
as this is an IANA matter) that's what any IANA plan should match. 
I.e., how long until we yank them from the root zone?  At what point 
should an on-going registry refuse to list an NS record in a retired 
country code domain?

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Edward Lewis                                                +1-571-434-5468
NeuStar

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