Fred, On 23/07/2020 18.45, Fred Baker wrote:
As requested by Paul Hoffman, I'm sharing the request that ICANN's Asia-Pacific team sent to the RSSAC, and the slides that I plan to share with that event. I recorded a presentation this morning, and ICANN's Asia team will add Mandarin subtitles to help our Chinese colleagues to follow the presentation. For the record, this presentation derives from the RSSAC Tutorial shared at ICANN meetings the past several years, and the discussion of the evolution work presented to the GAC about a year ago. There is nothing confidential about the information we are sharing, nor should any of it be a surprise. There is, however, some sensitivity around authority; I can, of course, speak to the RSSAC and to ISC's issues. Much of my point in this talk is that important parts are managed by the IANA, are enacted by the ICANN Board, or are deferred to the GWG; in a perfect world, these agencies would speak for themselves, but that would be a difficult dance. So I will identify the action and the actor, and that RSSAC is not authoritative (as in, "if you have detailed questions, you should really talk with them").
Thanks for sharing this. While clearing up misconceptions and getting everyone on the same page regarding terminology is helpful, ultimately I don't think it will resolve the fundamental issue of no root server being run by a Chinese organization. I feel that the Chinese government will only be happy after there is a root server operated completely by a Chinese organization (I can be completely wrong about this and am happy to be told otherwise, but years of seeing the same discussion have convinced me that this is the case). This can happen in one of four basic ways: 1. China takes over one or more of the existing root servers. 2. One or more new root servers is added and China runs at least one. 3. A separate set of root servers is created (similar to the Yeti project, but with an ICANN-signed root zone), which China running at least one. 4. China runs its own root servers completely independently of ICANN. Option #1 seems the hardest to execute politically. Option #2 seems the highest risk, give the amount of ossified code out there which assume 13 letters (I have some, definitely). Option #3 is probably the lowest risk, since it would leave the current root server system untouched. (I am biased given my involvement with the Yeti project.) Option #4 is clearly the least desirable for the Internet as a whole. I take the deployment of the New Model as a prerequisite for any real change, and look forward to that progressing. 🙂 Cheers, -- Shane