The US is losing control of the DNS system, which it has held since the birth of the internet. Last week on August 16, the US National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) announced that it was ready to relinquish control of the Internet. domain name system (DNS) και του 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 Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), now known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The United States has since maintained control over its entire system domains. The system is the infrastructure that translates the IP numbers of the servers into names that are easy to remember like “iguru.gr”.
1998, the US has decided to give part of the DNS system control to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), the Los Angeles-based private ICANN private nonprofit organization.
Since then, ICANN has allegedly assumed the role of a DNS public figure, but NTIA, which is part of the US Department of Commerce, has an important role to play in decisions taken by ICANN and IANA.
When the US decided to cede control to IANA, under the pressure of the other states, said they would eventually allow ICANN to have full control over the Internet's domain system. Other countries, as well as private companies, can join ICANN based on their role in Internet infrastructure. In the decisions made by the organization all members will be consulted.
The US managed to have full control over 14 years and of course would not deliver it if 2012, many nations asked the UN to form a management organization and force the US to surrender control over the DNS infrastructure.
Two years later, 2014, the US officially announced that it would deliver the DNS system to ICANN and not to the United Nations Commission. In the same year, the US also asked ICANN for a detailed proposal on how the NTIA management transition will take place.
In the week we passed, NTIA approved the transition plan to be implemented by 1 in October of 2016. Thus, ICANN will be the only organization with a decisive role in the global DNS infrastructure.
