Final Proposal for the IANA Stewardship Transition
March 31, 2016
After nearly two years of work and valuable contributions by the three Internet operational communities, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (IANA) submitted to the U.S. government a proposal that, if approved, will lead to global leadership of the IANA functions.
According to the proposal finally agreed in Marrakech during the ICANN 55 meeting, the U.S. government would no longer be responsible for stewardship of a set of key administrative functions related to the Internet —including management of the global Internet number resource reserves (IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and Autonomous System Numbers)— and replace them with community-based stewardship mechanisms.
Developed by the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG), the new structure is based on the contributions made during almost 24 months by the three operational communities, including the Internet numbers community (those with an interest in global Internet number resource management).
Input from the numbers community was integrated by CRISP (Consolidated RIR IANA Stewardship Proposal Team), a group consisting of members from each of the regions corresponding to the five Regional Internet Registries (LACNIC, ARIN, AFRINIC, APNIC, RIPE).
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Negotiations allowed developing a final proposal to replace the IANA functions stewardship with a multistakeholder, community-based, non-government entity, managed independently and transparently.
The proposal includes stewardship mechanisms for the IANA functions related to Internet number resources as developed by the numbers community.
These mechanisms include a Service Level Agreement between the RIRs (as custodians of these functions) and ICANN (as the entity responsible for their management).