Inet Revolutio2.4 Part 4

COOK Network Consultants, 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA ITU and IETF in Agreement on ENUM Administration Letter from ITU To ICANN Blocks .tel gTLD Applications As Competition to ENUM -- Administration Modeled on Neutral Tier 1 Database Holder of Pointers to Records of Provisioned Services lobbying. Editor’s Note: The ENUM process has should turn to: taken some significant further steps towards On Novemeber 1, 2000 in a letter <http:// implementation since the publication (in mid Title : Liaison to IETF/ISOC on www.icann.org/tlds/correspondence/itu-re- October) of our December issue that con- ENUM sponse-01nov00.htm> to Mike Roberts, tained the ENUM interview with Richard Author(s) : R. Blane Yoshio Utsumi, the ITU Secretary General Shockey of Neustar. In this brief article we Filename : draft-itu-sg2-liason- told Roberts to back off and not to inaugu- highlight the most recent developments. The enum-01.txt rate any names that would compete in any material that follows is based on conversa- Pages : 7 way with e164.arpa. After various para- tions with Shockey. Date : 08-Nov-00 graphs of diplomatic circumlocution the letter concluded: “As I am sure you are aware, According to Shockey, “communications Abstract: Working Party 1/2, of the Interna- the E.164 international public telecommu- between the IETF as a professional engineer- tional Telecommunication Union P Telecom- nication numbering plan is a politically sig- ing organization with the ITU Study groups munication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) nificant numbering resource with direct im- which are trying to solve engineering prob- held a meeting of its collaborators in Berlin plications of national sovereignty. It is sub- lems is in fact excellent and on going on any Germany 19-26 October 2000. The agenda ject to a multitude of national approaches, number of fronts. However problems tend of the meeting contained several contribu- regulatory provisions, and, in some cases, to come when you have to deal with the ITU tions regarding RFC 2916: ‘E.164 Number multilateral treaty provisions. Considering Secretariat which is the organizations politi- and DNS’ from the Internet Engineering this, governments should be given the op- cal side and has its own view of the world.” Task Force’s (IETF) ENUM Working Group portunity to fully reflect upon how their par- - more specifically, the method for adminis- ticular numbering resource responsibilities “What happened in Berlin with the SG2 tering and maintaining the E.164-based re- relate to DNS-based telephony resources.” meeting with the IETF that concluded on sources in the Domain Name System (DNS) October 26 was in my judgement a raging as related to the ENUM protocol. Conse- “In this regard, the ITU is working with the success. What happened was a recognition quently, in addition to the WP1/2 collabora- IETF to progress a careful exploration of by the ITU that its E164 standard is a good tors, there were several members of the IETF these complicated issues in the context of thing and that ENUM itself can be modeled present to assist with the discussion of is- its joint work concerning the ENUM proto- along the lines of E164 in a successful man- sues contained in the aforementioned con- col. As there are still considerable areas of ner that does not compromise the security tributions coordination work needed at this time, until and stability of the Public Switched Tele- there is an opportunity to further explore the phone Network. And that furthermore that A URL for this Internet-Draft is: http:// issues within the context of joint work un- ENUM also can be deployed in a way that www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-itu-sg2- derway and with national governments; it is deliberately respects the rights and preroga- liason-enum-01.txt the view of ITU that it would be premature tives of nation states involving telephone for ICANN to grant any E.164-related TLD numbering.” Shockey continued: “It is important that your application as this may jeopardize these co- readers understand that these developments operative activities or prejudice future DNS IETF and ITU in have been driven by the IETF, ITU and DoC IP Telephony addressing requirements.” independent of ICANN.” From various con- Agreement on ENUM versations with knowledgeable sources we In other words a strong warning not to do have been assured that ICANN has been told anything to harm the usability of the e164 On November 1 a document entitled “Liai- what to do and so far has complied. First numbering scheme that had been picked for son to IETF/ISOC on ENUM” and authored with the written instructions form John ENUM. The letter was in early another by the ITU-T Working Party 1/2, in Berlin, Klensin on behalf of the IAB to Mike Rob- warning shot across ICANN’s bow that that between 19 - 26 October 2000 was published erts to insert e164.arpa into the ICANN root the IETF and ITU not ICANN would write on the IETF Announce list and ENUM in September. The second step occurred in the rules for an ENUM implementing TLD. working group list. The document conveys October when four different organizations The result is that with the full support of the the understanding by ITU Study Group 2 of put forward gTLD proposals to ICANN for IETF and ITU ICANN has formally been how it agreed to implement E164.arpa in .tel or variations on the same. told by the secretary general of the ITU in meetings with the IETF in Berlin between strong diplomatic language to back off and th th October 19 and 26 . Shockey added: “As The implementation of the .tels would es- not approve any of the four dot tel poposals. th of November 10 there had been no com- sentially duplicate the functionality of Therefore, in view of the IETF’s declara- plaints on either the ENUM or the IETF dis- ENUM. Such implementation would leave tion in the spring of 2000 that .arpa was a cuss list. This is usually taken to mean con- registrants for ENUM services with domains gTLD to be used by the IETF for infrastruc- sensus. Therefore it looks as though at this that could, according to ICANN’s own rules, ture purposes, it seems reasonable to look at point the path is clear to proceed towards be hi jacked since ICANN owned the name E164.arpa as ordered into the ICANN root implementation.” and not the customer. This move clashed by John Klensin and Karen Rose in Septem- head on with the path taken by the IETF and ber as a new TLD that is not under ICANN’s For the Liason document itself readers ITU on ENUM. The ENUM folk did their control. 192 The COOK Report on Internet Light, IP, and Gig E - Annual Report February 2001 On November 10 ICANN staff released its there to certify that person x has two things. out of ICANN’s hands. In other words the evaluation of the new TLDs. What the docu- The first is authority over phone number y. administrative model just described has been ment had to say about the .tel applications The second is the entity that this person has structured to remove it form the ICANN showed that ICANN had gotten the ITU selected to do the actual service provision- control and place it into the hands of a regu- message. “Based on application of the Au- ing. lator responsible to democratically con- gust 15 Criteria, the evaluation team believes trolled government who will give the owner Now tier two ENUM services are to be pro- phone number full control of services at- that none of the four proposals in the tele- tached to such a number. Policy is to be set phony-related group should be selected at vided by the owner of the phone number. If that owner is a large entity like a corpora- by the regulator as a part of the political pro- this time. Each of the four proposals appears cess within each national numbering system. not to have adequately addressed require- tion or a university, it may designate its own telecommunications people to provide the Everything else is administrative. New ments for stable, authoritative coordination policy involving the ownership of a number with the PSTN numbering system, particu- services. However not everyone will really want to do this nor will everyone be techni- and the control of a resource record cannot larly when dynamic-routing considerations be set without the regulator’s approval. are taken into account. (Of the four, Group cally capable of doing it. Therefore it is as- Other policies may be set by the tier 2 pro- One, Number.tel, and Pulver/Peek/Marschel sumed that companies will spring up to pro- visioning entities just so long as national are of particular concern in this area.) vide these services for a fee to individuals, policy on ownership and control is not over- organizations and small business. The ad- turned. In addition, the Group One Registry, ministrative system will be set so that the Number.tel and Pulver/Peek/Marschel pro- Tier 1 entity will be the sole trusted provider In the United States it is expected that the posals would do little to address unmet of data base pointers to the legitimate own- locus of policy will be either the Department needs. Moreover, if a TLD were established ers of numbers and the services they have of Commerce or the Federal Communica- in which the service available at URLs was authorized for them. tions Commission. An early decision of the defined by the TLD rather than the prefix, new administration will be to authorize ei- this would likely increase confusion regard- From a social and economic point of view ther agency to issue an RFC for private sec- ing URL naming conventions.

Load more