* In this issue: White Paper, Participation, & Contact Updates

1. White Paper - On June 5, 1998, the US government issued the much anticipated "White Paper", discussing development of the Internet and the necessity for formal governance in regards to operation and coordination of the root servers, coordination of IP addressing, protocol assigning, and domain name development and coordination.

These tasks will be the responsibility of a new not-for-profit organization, created and supported by the Internet community.  As you may know, many of these responsibilties are already under the care of IANA, and the "White Paper" has recognized this, and thus, requests that the new organization include the personnel and expertise of the current IANA.

Furthermore, it is our desire that IANA will develop into this new organization.  The current IANA has the necessary expertise as well as solid support from the Internet community to evolve into this new organization.  However, your support and input is also needed in this process.  Please visit our new website for a more thorough overview of
our vision and more information on this subject.

            http://www.iana.org

If you have comments, please send them to comments@iana.org
 

2. Participation

One of the best ways to be involved and participate in this new process is to join a regional organization or association of country code administrators.  We are encouraging regional groups of administrators to team up and voice their concerns and opinions in this process.  Currently, there are two organizations created, CENTR (for Europe administrators) and APCCTLD (for Asia Pacific administrators), and IANA would like to encourage the creation of more regional associations among the TLD administrators.  We envision these organizations as important participants in the new IANA.

Specifically, TLD administrators should be participating in the formation of a Domain Names Council.  Tentative plans suggest there will be councils in four areas: names, addresses, protocols, and user and industry.  When details of this Council are available, you will be notified via this list.  In the interim, please send your comments to comments@iana.org.

We cannot stress enough the importance of your participation in this process and your participation in the new IANA.

For more information on the involvement of CENTR or APCCTLD, contact:

            CENTR      Boudewijn Nederkoorn     <Boudewijn.Nederkoorn@surfnet.nl>

            APCCTLD  http://www.apng.org/apcctld/
 

3. Contact updates

The new IANA web site contains a contact template which should be sent to iana@iana.org in order to update any contact information.  Much of  our contact information is out of date, so we ask you to please send in a template ASAP in order to update our records.

Thank you.