Tag Archive for ICANN

| January 15, 2015
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Who Runs The Internet

Who Runs The InternetWhile no one “owns” the Internet (for now, despite republican plans) there are a handful of companies that control the Internet. Unless you are a techno-geek, these six organizations that control how the Internet works, most likely fly under your radar.

 

International Telecommunications Union

United Nations International Telecommunications UnionThe first organization that is actively trying to take over the functions of the Internet is the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The ITU in my and many other opinions an outdated, pointless throw-back to the days of the telegraph, with policies to match. I covered the last power grabs by the UN’s ITU here.

Internet Architecture Board

Next is the Internet Architecture Board (AIB). The IAB is the overseer of the technical evolution of the Internet. The IAB supervises the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which oversees the evolution of TCP/IP, and the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), which works on network technology.

Internet Architecture BoardThe IAB declared a major strategic move for the Internet. The Internet Architecture Board is calling for global encryption on the web (which I have covered many times from my Bach Seat) to become the norm across the Internet in a move to lock down the privacy and security of information exchange according to Dark Reading.

Internet Engineering Task Force

Internet Engineering Task Force

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) develops and promotes voluntary Internet standards. It is most well known for the standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It is an open standards organization, with no formal membership or membership requirements. All participants and managers are volunteers, though their work is usually funded by their employers or sponsors. The IETF is also well-known for its RFCs or Request for Comment documents like RFC RFC 1918 and RFC 873.

Internet Society

Internet SocietyAnother organization that shapes the Intertubes is ISOC. The Internet Society (which I am a member of) was formed in 1992 by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn. ISOC was formed to provide a corporate structure to support the Internet standards development process.

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is perhaps the most critical organization that helps run the Internet. ICANN coordinates the distribution of IP addresses and the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS). IP addresses are the numbers that are assigned to every computer on the Net to uniquely identify each device. There are two types of IP addresses, IPv4 and IPv6. The web has run out of IPv4 addresses (which I covered here and here) and is very slowly being replaced with IPv6 addresses. ICANN doles out these addresses.

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and NumbersICANN also manages the Domain Naming System (DNS) on the web that converts IP addresses to names. DNS makes it possible to remember www.google.com, which is easy for humans to remember instead of remembering https://web.archive.org/web/20150507211330/http://74.125.224.72/, which is easy for computers to deal with, to get to Google.

The U.S. government funds ICANN. They Feds have gotten heat from around the globe after Eric Snowden’s revaluations about global spying operations. The role of ICANN is changing.

Internet Service Providers

on rampThe only group that makes money on the Internet but does not help run the Internet (yet) are the Internet Service Providers (ISP). ISP’s control nearly everyone accesses it. The gatekeepers to the web are ATT (T), Comcast (CMCSA), Charter (CHTR) and Time Warner Cable (TWC) are the biggest names of ISP’s. ISP’s “perform” two key functions. First, they provide last-mile connections, that is the connection to your home or business to their offices, which we all over-pay for. Next, they provide back-haul or backbone services that move your email across the town or across the globe. The ISP’s also make money on these ISP-ISP connections.

Right now the FCC is considering the future of the Internet during its Net Neutrality decisions. If the ISP’s get their way, it is likely that homes and businesses will be required to pay the ISP’s more money to maintain the crappy service we already get.

 

Six shadowy organizations that run the Internet infographic

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Let’s add this up big business telecom money + millionaire politicians = the 1% screwing the rest of us. Get involved, save the Internet, get in touch with your alleged representatives and tell them NO MORE. 

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| February 12, 2013
Comments Off on UN Tries to Control the Internet Again

UN Tries to Control the Internet Again

UN Tries to Control the Internet AgainInfoSecurity reports that even after much of the free world refused to sign the controversial new ITU WCIT-12 treaty in December 2012, U.S. Many argued this would give the UN control of the Internet. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Robert M. McDowell warned, ‘the worst is yet to come.’

ITU logo“The United States,” he said, “should immediately prepare for an even more treacherous ITU treaty negotiation that will take place in 2014 in Korea. Those talks could expand the ITU’s reach even further.” McDowell seems convinced that the ITU’s desire to control the internet is not a passing fancy, but a long-term intent. He may be right, and it may come before 2014.

Last week the ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré released his draft report for the Fifth World Telecommunication/Information and Communication Technology Policy Forum 2013. “This draft report of the Secretary-General to the WTPF-2013,” it states, “aims to provide a basis for discussion at the Policy Forum, incorporating the contributions of ITU Member States and Sector Members, and serving as the sole working document of the Forum focusing on key issues on which it would be desirable to reach conclusions.”

ITU’s takeover attemptSuggested themes for discussion include, “Global Principles for the governance and use of the Internet,” and “On the basis of reciprocity, to explore ways for greater collaboration and coördination between ITU and relevant organizations – including, but not limited to, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Society (ISOC) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) – involved in the development of IP-based networks and the future internet, through cooperation agreements, as appropriate, to increase the role of ITU in Internet governance to ensure the largest benefits to the global community.”

This is exactly what caused disarray in December’s WCIT in Dubai the commissioner states.

Meanwhile, a ‘de-fund the ITU petition has appeared on the White House ‘We the People’ website. A supporting website gives full details. “Fighting on behalf of the Internet,” it states, The United States government and fifty-four other countries rejected the ITU’s takeover attempt, but this is a single battle in a war that the ITU will continue to fight. The ITU is spending more than $180M/year to oppose the Internet and is drawing from its reserves more heavily each year ($9M in 2010, up from $5.5M in 2009), as progressive countries withdraw their payments from the ITU’s war-chest.

The ten most oppressive countries in the Open Net Initiative’s ranking of online freedom all sided against the internet, and none of them are giving the ITU as much as the U.S. is. If all the countries that stood with the Internet against the ITU’s attack withdraw their funding, it claims, “the ITU’s membership revenue will be reduced by 74%.”

The petition also calls for future U.S. delegations to be reduced “to no more than one USG representative, tasked primarily with communicating a U.S. position that the ITU’s only legitimate area of authority is radio communications.” The long-term danger from such entrenched views on both sides is that the worldwide nature of the internet might fracture into one internet under multi-stakeholder governance in the ‘free’ world, and a series of heavily government-regulated Internets elsewhere.

“Freedom and prosperity are at stake,” warned Commissioner McDowell.

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I have warned about the United Nations’ attempt to take over the Internet since November.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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