Newsmaker: Root servers: The real Net power

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We look into the future and hope that this new forum will let us participate fully. If that is so it should be a success.

What would happen if the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) decided to approve a new top-level domain--say .xxx--and the Bush administration decided to veto it?
Pawlik: In that case, I don't know what the root server operators would do. Likely they would publish whatever is approved by ICANN. There is a difference between the content and the publication. We're only publishers of the root zone file. We take it from IANA (a function of ICANN) and we publish it.

Let's say the Bush administration accuses Syria of fostering terrorism and decides to invade. And it demands that ICANN remove Syria's .sy domain from the Internet. What would you do?
Pawlik: I don't believe that the U.S. government would be that stupid. Seriously, this has never come up. But I am quite certain that the Internet community at large would not like that decision and I'm not sure it would be carried through.

It seems that you don't have that much interaction with ICANN.
Pawlik: That's what we're saying all along. We interface with ICANN or IANA on a very small slice of the cake that ICANN represents. On our slice of the cake we're quite happy. It works, not always in the most efficient manner. But we only interface with them two, three, four times a year.

We had our operational problems with IANA in the past and we're looking forward to an even more efficient interface with them. We're saying we do support ICANN. We've been saying over the last few years that we critically support them. They can improve.

What do you think of U.N. and ITU oversight of the root servers?
Pawlik: How would they do that? I cannot see them doing that. I cannot see a likely practical way they would do that. If all the governments of the world would agree that the root servers should be operated by the ITU, that would be likely. I don't see that happening.

What's your budget?
Pawlik: The RIPE NCC budget is 11 million euros. That's covered by slightly more than 4,100 members in our service region. Our members are mostly ISPs and businesses. We're a membership organization and we charge membership fees (based in part on the amount of address space that you've been allocated over time).

How much IPv4 address space is left?
Pawlik: We're seeing that we have about 25 percent of the IPv4 address space left globally. If you look at the statistics, (you'll see) that address space was given out very freely during the early years. We are allocating very efficiently nowadays.

How long will it last?
Pawlik: I'm not making any predictions. That would be wrong. But numbers obtained from various sources say 2008, 2012.

We do see an increase in IPv6 address space requests. The ISPs see that it's less expensive to change now than it will be in 10 years.

What percentage of root server connections come from IPv6 computers?
Pawlik: I don't know the number off the top of my head; it's still miniscule.

Are there political implications of having early Internet adopters like Stanford and MIT awarded huge chunks of scarce IPv4 address space?
Pawlik: v6 will solve the problem. But I don't think there are any such problems. China now gets loads of address space based on the policies of today.

It always comes up and it's just not an issue. Of course if you look at it from another point of view, saying that I want to have every person on the earth have a mobile or a $100 laptop on the Internet, then clearly there are not enough IPv4 addresses in the world. That is the reason that many Asian countries are pushing very strongly for the change to IPv6.

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[Mister C]

What to do?

Granted, putting the Internet under UN control may not be the best idea given their past record. On the other hand many US administrations have shown that they are just as self serving and willing to propagandize government agencies to promote their own ideological agenda. All things considered the US has done a pretty fair job (primarily due to economic concerns) of keeping the Internet open. The question is, how do we keep it that way?