ICANN

Presentation

The ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) was founded in November 1998 on the initiative of the US government, in response to an increasing number of calls for greater internationalisation of Internet management. A delegation of authority was formalised in an agreement drawn up by the US Department of Commerce (MoU DoC-ICANN).

ICANN is a Californian not-for-profit company. It comprises several Supporting Organizations or SO, made up of a wide panel of Internet players (ccTLD or gTLD registries, intellectual property professionals, service and connectivity providers, commercial and non- commercial users, etc).

A few "critical" operational functions are delegated to ICANN. These relate essentially to the management of IANA operations prior to the work carried out by ICANN, and the supervision of root name server management (via the DNS Root Server System Advisory Committee - RSSAC).

The general meetings of ICANN are held three times a year, and alternate between the five geographical regions defined by ICANN : North America, Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia/Pacific. The language used for both exchanges and work is English.

ICANN is a forum that ensures that the international coordination (governance) required for the effective management of certain resources relating to naming and Web addressing is in place (delegation of top-level domain names, global distribution of IP addresses, deployment of certain protocols relating to DNS, etc).

Its role

ICANN enables:

• general regulation and coordination to be conducted;
• the IANA function to be regulated (TLD and IP blocks);
• the supervision of the root publication of domain names (RSSAC);
• new gTLDs to be introduced;
• the internationalisation and the promotion of multilinguism;
• the involvement of ccTLDs in the internationalisation process, with the aim of achieving a more stable Internet;
• changes to domain naming and associated services (IDN -International Domain Name-, ENUM, etc);
• intergovernmental relations (Governmental Advisory Committee - GAC).

Project promotion and specific initiatives by AFNIC

AFNIC actively participates in efforts to internationalise and coordinate the Internet at global level. It provides genuine support by running various services (AFNIC supports the creation of the ccNSO, the organisation that represents ccTLDs at ICANN; up until July 2003, it provided technical logistics for the secretariat of the DNSO, ICANN’s supporting organisation for the handling of naming issues; etc).
AFNIC also contributes significantly to ICANN's different working groups, with the aim of promoting naming quality, Internet stability and operational exchanges between ccTLD registries.

ICANN website

Calendar of CANN meetings