Dear all,
Re: Tracker item 80b: “Provide responses to questions from SSR1 briefings (Ops + Finance)”.
Please see below for responses to outstanding questions. Note we are still seeking clarification from the Review Team (requested via
email, 30 August) to question 2.
The complete list of questions and answers, along with a link to the briefing materials, can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15g9bz4h57wC9LmNltKLarLRGhJdztnCBzDGtWmBs8q0/edit?usp=sharing
Staff from the ICANN organization commonly participate in both IETF and UNICODE meetings. In the context of Universal Acceptance, as the community commonly refers to the issues described in this question,
the ICANN Community created the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) which is supported by the ICANN organization. The UASG has its mission to raise awareness and facilitate resolution of Universal Acceptance issues. The ICANN organization is committed
to support the efforts of the community through the UASG.
Question requires clarification from Review Team.
Per the
Base Registry Agreement, the EBERO process is defined in the
Registry Transition Processes, one of the main objectives of the EBERO program is to minimize impact on registrants and gTLD users.
As of 25 August 2017, we have seen 32 cases in which a service of a gTLD reached one of the emergency thresholds. Of those, 10 cases occurred pre-sunrise, 8 during sunrise, 5 before general availability, and
9 during general availability. The 32 cases involved a total of 211.7k active names at the second level at the time of the cases. The top-five cases in term of registrations that reached emergency thresholds had 211k active domains at the time of cases. Four
of those cases happened in 2017.
In all of the cases since 2015 the registry operators received compliance notices requiring an explanation of the issue, a root cause analysis and actions required to ensure the same issue would not be repeated.
During the emergency, the ICANN organization was in contact with the affected registry/registry service provider to understand the problem at hand. The ICANN organization made a determination that it was going to be faster and had less impact on security and
stability to let the current registry/registry service provider to fix the underlying issue than to execute the EBERO transition. Therefore, considering the impact to registrants and users, it was determined the best course of action to not execute an EBERO
transition on those cases.
The Base Registry Agreement does not specify a review for the EBERO program and it does not require periodic testing. However, since the launch of the new gTLDs and the EBERO program, the ICANN organization
has worked with its three EBERO providers to ensure the program is ready to act, should the need arise. Specifically, the EBERO contract requires annual inspection of each of the EBERO providers.
Additionally, the ICANN organization has worked with each of their EBERO providers to conduct a full EBERO exercise with a real TLD. These full EBERO exercises have taken advantage of gTLDs that have requested
voluntary termination. The ICANN organization obtained consent from the registries to execute these exercises just before the TLD is removed from the root zone. These exercises involved executing the whole set of EBERO activities from the (simulated) failure
of a TLD service, to full recovery of the TLD services in the EBERO, including the update of the root zone. Each of the exercises have been successful and provided validation of the readiness of the EBERO program.
The ICANN organization will be happy to answer other questions you may have to enable the work of SSR2.
--
Jennifer Bryce
Senior Reviews Coordinator
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
Email: jennifer.bryce@icann.org
Skype: jennifer.bryce.icann
www.icann.org