Net post office is in for radical change

Imagine what would happen if An Post decided to stop delivering letters, and hand the task over to a range of smaller, private organisations. In addition, the method of numbering houses would be transferred to a new addressing body. And let's say arguments ensued over how houses were numbered. Maybe some people would argue over the same address.

Transfer the whole scenario to the Internet, and you get a sense of what some fear might ensue if it starts to operate under a planned new arrangement where the management and delivery of data would be transferred to have the management and delivery of data under the Internet system transferred to some as yet unnamed, undecided bodies. Almost everybody agrees that this is a good thing. But people are worried that a 19-page US government White Paper which outlines how this might be done, leaves too much up in the air, to be decided at some future point.

To date, the US Government has been the main manager of the Internet. The Net has been operating under a complex system called the domain name system or DNS. The DNS is like a giant post office protocol sites on the Net are given a unique address, represented in both numbers (for computers to understand) and letters (because unless you're Stephen Hawking, it's probably easier for you to remember www.microsoft.com than 172.45.7.2).

The US government contracted out two of the key management roles for the Internet. A company called Network Solutions registers most of the popular top-level domain names, like .com. That means you directly or indirectly pay them $100 for the registration of your domain name for two years. That's been a nice little profit turner for them.

Another body, called the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, manages most of the top level domains for the government, overseeing the assignment of those numbered addresses, and making sure the system runs smoothly.

But as the Internet has grown more global, there has been some unhappiness that the control of the Internet rests so thoroughly in American hands, especially the US government's. The US government more or less agrees with this view it's tired of running what has become a massive global phenomenon, and has been planning a changeover. But the shape of the changeover has yet to be decided. No one knows how the Net post office will change, only that it will change radically.

The US Department of Commerce released a Green Paper at the end of January which laid out some precise guidelines for the change, and a huge squabble developed between lots of smaller Internet bodies over elements of the proposal. The big two were that the running of the Net still wasn't international enough, and that too many specific proposals had been made, without wide-enough consultation.

The US government then came out with the official Clinton policy document, the White Paper released earlier this month. That hasn't made the Internet folks all that happy either although many of the groups who were critical of the Green Paper are satisfied with the more global composition for the governing groups of the Net, they are critical of the paper's vagueness!. It proposes an over-arching, nonprofit governing corporation, ruled by a 15-member board, but how will it be chosen? How exactly will domain names be administered? Who will arbitrate in battles when two organisations claim the same Net domain name? The government says that that's the job of the Internet community to decide, filtered through the many global Internet organisations involved in policy decisions. In other words, the ones that have been fighting bitterly amongst themselves.

That seems a daunting prospect. The US government may yet have to show more mettle in bringing the groups together or refining some of the broad suggestions in the document. So here's a suggestion for Ira Magaziner, President Clinton's Internet policy adviser, who helped shape the White Paper and has been in Ireland this week. Give George Mitchell a call and see if he has a little free time on his hands.

Karlin Lillington is at klillington@irish-times.ie