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By Brenda Zulu
The Internet Service Providers Association of Zambia (ISPAZ) has supported the application by the Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority (ZICTA) for the re-delegation of the .zm domain name from ZAMNET Limited, the current administrator to ZICTA.
In a letter addressed to IANA Root Management on 15th July 2013 made available to the Africa Interactive Media (AIM), ISPAZ says they have been involved in the consultations for the 3R model that has been adopted in the management of the domain name system.
Samson Longwe, Chairman of ISPAZ says they are in receipt of a draft Domain Name Registration rules as well as the Dispute Resolution Rules which detail amongst others things how names will be added or removed and how disputes will be resolved.
“We are largely in agreement with the proposed rules. We are confident that ZICTA has the requisite technical, administrative and financial competence to administer the country code domain as is evidenced by its successful migration of all domain names onto the Cocca Automated Registry.
Longwe pointed out that ZICTA and ZAMNET Limited were running parallel registries.
“The redelegation was prompted by the desire of our members to have an administrators that is independent of the ISP operators. We believe that this application is in the best interest of not only the local internet community but also the global community.
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a department of ICANN responsible for coordinating some of the key elements that keep the Internet running smoothly. Whilst the Internet is renowned for being a worldwide network free from central coordination, there is a technical need for some key parts of the Internet to be globally coordinated, and this coordination role is undertaken by IANA.
Specifically, IANA allocates and maintains unique codes and numbering systems that are used in the technical standards (“protocols”) that drive the Internet.
IANA’s various activities include Domain Names as IANA manages the DNS Root, the .int and .arpa domains, and an IDN practices resource. They are also involved in Number Resources, IANA coordinates the global pool of IP and AS numbers, providing them to Regional Internet Registries. IANA also manages Protocol Assignments Internet protocols’ numbering systems
IANA is one of the Internet’s oldest institutions, with its activities dating back to the 1970s. Today it is a set of services provided by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, an internationally-organised non-profit organisation set up by the Internet community to help coordinate IANA’s areas of responsibilities.
The IANA team is responsible for the operational aspects of coordinating the Internet’s unique identifiers and maintaining the trust of the community to provide these services in an unbiased, responsible and effective manner.
IANA’s Policy
IANA aims not to directly set policy by which it operates, instead implementing agreed policies and principles in a neutral and responsible manner. Using the policy setting forums provided by ICANN, policy development for domain name operations and IP addressing is arrived at by many different stakeholders. ICANN has a structure of supporting organisations that contribute to deciding how ICANN runs, and in turn how IANA develops. The development of Internet protocols, which often dictate how protocol assignments should be managed, are arrived at within the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Engineering Steering Group, and the Internet Architecture Board.
To improve its operations, IANA is actively involved in outreach too. As well as in ICANN forums, IANA participates in meetings and discussions with TLD operators, Regional Internet Registries, and other relevant communities. The Authority provides a manned helpdesk at IETF meetings to allow one-to-one interaction with its largest community of users – protocol developers.
