[cooperation-wg] consensus on the NTIA-IANA proposal

On 5 Jun 2014, at 11:35, Daniel Karrenberg <daniel.karrenberg at ripe.net> wrote:

> Unfortunate choice of words. I assume what was intended was something
> like "RIPE and RIPE NCC are not interested in the oversight of
> maintenance of the DNS root zone."

While I'm not going to put words in your mouth Daniel, it seems likely that the DNS WG part of RIPE may well disagree with the above. :-) Of course they may or may not choose to voice those opinions outside the DNS WG through fora like CENTR or the ccNSO. I suppose it also depends on the definition and meaning of "oversight of maintenance". YMMV.

This is why I suggested at the mike in Warsaw that preparing a Plan B would be prudent. It would be great for RIPE and the NCC to get consensus and speak with one voice on the NTIA's proposal. I hope that is achieved. However I feel the community could be too diffuse and may well have contradictory views and priorities on what should happen to IANA if/when NTIA cuts the strings.

We experienced the difficulties of managing consensus in the DNS WG a few years ago. It was hard work to get a consensus statement from the WG (and then RIPE) on the root zone signing proposal. At first glance that should have been straightforward but it turned out some WG members held mutually exclusive positions on the topic. That consensus statement eventually emerged just before the deadline for comments. For a while it looked as if no statement would come at all.

Focusing here on the IANA-RIR relationship might help. OTOH it may mean comments on other key aspects of NTIA oversight of the IANA function get missed or have no platform to be heard. So I'm not sure if we should be ruling these thing in or out of scope at the moment.