Ira Magaziner, the Clinton administration's Net guru, is on the eve of unveiling his plan for turning over the domain name system to a nonprofit organization -- a process that could begin sometime next week.
While the initial "green paper" release of his plan was the source of much criticism and debate by some groups in the domain name world, current revisions seem to have forged the strongest consensus yet.
"Right now, it's just entering into clearance processes here in the administration, where agencies have to review it and sign off on it," Magaziner said. "That would mean, assuming there's no major problem, [it will come out] sometime next week, probably the middle to end of next week."
But, he said, they won't know an exact date until it goes through these clearance processes.
"Once it goes out publicly, we'll start trying to implement it," said Magaziner. "And some of that has to come from the private sector, and some of that will be stuff we have to do."
Part of Magaziner's vision is to create a new, nonprofit organization to handle three functions central to the DNS: managing IP addresses; managing the root server network that coordinates domain addressing; and maintaining addressing protocols. The new organization will use staff from the current Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA); some are calling this yet-to-be-named organization "IANA 2."
"This is kind of a sigh of relief," said Alan Hanson, chairman of the Geneva-based Internet Council of Registrars (CORE). While the group recently voiced vehement criticism of Magaziner's plan, Hanson said that things are looking up.
"We're kind of back to the position that we were in in late December of '97, but with a little more battle damage," said Hanson. Essentially, according to Hanson, the current plan to handle the DNS is not much different from what's been publicly stated -- after forming IANA 2 (or whatever the organization is eventually called), the government will keep out of it.
"They don't need to inject themselves into the micromanagement of the DNS in order to make their stated claim of allowing the self-governance in the Internet," Hanson said. "It looks like they made that decision to step away from the management issues regarding the DNS, and allow this new IANA to form up and take the reins on these issues."
Some speculate that a number of new top-level domains will be created in this transition period, but it remains to be seen what will happen to Network Solutions Inc., current stewards of the InterNIC and registrars of the popular .com, .org, and .net top-level domains.
"We have no knowledge or confirmation of the timing [of Magaziner's policy], or what will be contained" in it, said Cheryl Regan, spokeswoman for the company.
"It's my understanding too that we have not been in discussions with the White House, and we are not really at liberty to be in touch with them," she said. "Any discussions we would have would be on the record, and would have to be published. So there have not been any discussions of late between us that I'm aware of."
The company had recently announced that, in anticipation of losing its monopoly on domain-name registration, it plans to offer Yahoo-like Web directory services.
"All I have at this point are rumors," said Karl Denninger, president of MCSNet and founder of alternative top-level domain providers eDNS. "Which is all that anybody has at this point -- anybody who's telling you otherwise is not being honest, because I don't believe that anybody at this particular point is privy to that except [Magaziner]."
But from what he knows from talks with Magaziner, Denninger is optimistic.
"What I think we're going to see is a governance structure that takes shape over the next several months, including IANA 2, that recognizes, codifies, and strengthens the public trust aspects of those organizations," he said.
Denninger said the groups currently responsible for handling the Net's technical addressing issues, including IANA and the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), have not been open enough in their operations or accountable enough to the population they serve.
"There can't be any hint that this is an old boy's club, or a country club," Denninger said. "There's a lot of that going on right now, and there has been for years -- with IANA, ARIN, with all these organizations. There's a 'member's only' way of looking at things. If you go to ARIN's members Web site, they've actually got a treehouse as their logo. You click on the treehouse, and there's a ladder that goes up it. And this is exactly the kind of thing that I think is inappropriate."
Still, not everyone is as hopeful about Magaziner's work.
"I don't know what to expect," said John Gilmore, a trustee of the Internet Society. "In December, Mr. Magaziner went around and talked with all the factions, and each of them came away thinking that he'd be supporting them in his plan. That's political skill. But then his plan was actually focused on keeping the Network Solutions monopoly healthy."
"We're crossing our fingers; we don't know what Ira is going to come up with -- we certainly have been disappointed in the past, where what we thought we heard from him was not materialized," said Hanson. But he also said that CORE is very hopeful about what is transpiring.
"I think the ruling is going to change the landscape, there's no question about it," affirmed Denninger. "It's going to delineate responsibilities that people are not going to want to have. But that's a good thing -- it's about time that this was done."
