The US is losing control of the DNS system, which it has maintained since the birth of the internet. Last week, on August 16, the US National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) announced that it is ready to relinquish control of the Internet domain name system (DNS) to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit organization.
Few people know that the Internet was developed in the US, as part of a military research program funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), now known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The US has since maintained control over the entire domain system. The system is the infrastructure that translates server IP numbers into easy-to-remember names like “secnews.gr”.
In 1998, the US decided to give some control of the DNS system to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), the division of a newly formed private non-profit organization ICANN, based in Los Angeles.
ICANN has since assumed the role of the public face of the DNS system, but NTIA, which is part of the US Department of Commerce, retains an important role in decisions made at ICANN and IANA.
When the US decided to cede control to IANA, under pressure from other countries, they stated that they would eventually allow ICANN to have full control over the Internet domain system. Other countries, as well as private companies, can join ICANN, based on their role in the Internet infrastructure. The decisions made by the organization will be informed by the opinions of all its members.
The US managed to have complete control for 14 years and of course would not have given it up if in 2012, many nations asked the UN to form a management body and force the US to hand over control of the DNS infrastructure.
Two years later, in 2014, the US officially announced that it would hand over the DNS system to ICANN, rather than the UN Commission. That same year, the US also asked ICANN for a detailed proposal on how to transition management from NTIA.
Last week, NTIA approved the transition plan that will begin to be implemented on October 1, 2016. This will make ICANN the only organization with a decisive role in the global DNS infrastructure.
