Next ICANN Meeting, Marina del Rey, November 13?15, 2001
Many members of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) community wrote in response to a call for input as to whether the events of September 11 would affect their plans to travel to Los Angeles in November to attend the scheduled ICANN meetings. Almost without exception the respondents emphatically encouraged ICANN to hold its meetings and stated unequivocally that they planned to attend unless the international situation deteriorated to where travel was not practical.

Given this response and given the need to address emerging priorities, ICANN is planning to proceed with its November meeting, subject to any further serious change in the international situation that would affect travel conditions. However, as discussed below, the format of the meeting will differ significantly from what had previously been announced.

The events of September 11 have caused institutions worldwide to rethink their priorities and plans. As an international institution, ICANN is not immune. Although those events raise logistical and other concerns for holding meetings, they also underscore the need to address Internet stability issues, and security as a key component of stability. ICANN is not responsible for the overall security of the Internet. However, given ICANN's global responsibilities for the stability of the Internet's naming and addressing systems and under the new circumstances facing the international community, it would be irresponsible for ICANN not to conduct an in depth assessment of the robustness and security of these systems, and to take steps, if necessary, to strengthen the Internet in these regards. These are urgent matters and of worldwide importance.

The Internet is global in reach, as are the threats of terrorism. The events of September 11 offered a stark and tragic reminder of the incalculable importance of a reliable and secure naming and addressing system to support emergency response, personal and other communications, and information sharing. E-mail, instant messaging, and the Web, for example, all played essential roles.

Accordingly, the November ICANN meetings will focus on stability and security of the Internet's naming and addressing systems and of their operational implementation globally. This will be the overriding imperative for the meeting. As such, this will be a very different kind of meeting than previous ICANN meetings and will not follow the usual format.

At this meeting, ICANN will be seeking to promote discussion throughout the community on how to reassess areas of potential threats that could affect services within the scope of ICANN's responsibilities, how to improve readiness to meet these threats, and what additional policies or other actions should be considered and implemented to facilitate such improvements.

Clearly not all these questions will be answered in one meeting, but ICANN must now devote its energies as members of the global Internet community towards obtaining answers. Every constituency and supporting organization will be asked to report on its efforts to ensure the stability of the Internet's naming and addressing systems and what additional steps it proposes to take to improve that stability and security among its member organizations. Agenda items will be assessed for inclusion by what they contribute to the overall focus of the meeting.

Although a precise schedule has not yet been mapped out, these meetings will last three days from November 13 through 15, inclusive. Constituencies and supporting organizations will be asked to meet during this time to focus on the topic of the meeting. There will be a Board meeting at the end of the meeting to address essential business. The Board agenda will concentrate on topics where time is of the essence.

The focus of the meetings may well delay progress on some of the worthy and important initiatives that are currently underway. The effects of such delays have to be measured against the importance of ensuring the stability and security of the Internet itself. This will require patience on the part of those who may experience delays in matters of importance to them so that the ICANN community can bear down on the issue at hand.

This is only a preliminary announcement to enable attendees to firm up their travel plans. Details of the meeting will be announced as soon as possible. Please visit the ICANN Web site (http://www.icann.org) for further updates.

Van Jacobson Receives 2001 ACM SIGCOMM Award
Van Jacobson, the man widely credited with saving the Internet from an otherwise inevitable congestion collapse in the late 1980s, has been named the 2001 recipient of the ACM SIGCOMM Award. Jacobson is chief scientist at networking startup Packet Design, LLC.

The award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group in Data Communications (ACM SIGCOMM) to a recipient with a long and distinguished history of contributing to the field of data communications. Jacobson began his career in data communications developing control systems for the Department of Energy in the 1970s. He is best known for redesigning the TCP/IP protocol's flow-control algorithms to better handle congestion, preventing the Internet's collapse from traffic congestion in 1988–89. He is also widely recognized for his work on network synchronization effects, scalable multimedia protocols and applications, IP operations tools (for example traceroute and pathchar ) and high-performance TCP implementations.

Prior to joining Packet Design as a member of the founding team, Jacobson was chief scientist at Cisco Systems, and before that had been group leader for Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory's Network Research Group.

The SIGCOMM Award has been presented every year since 1989. Prior recipients include Paul Baran, Vinton G. Cerf, David Farber and Leonard Kleinrock. ACM SIGCOMM is the world's largest professional society devoted to data communications. For more information, see: http://www.acm.org/sigcomm/

Useful Links
The following is a list of Web addresses that we hope you will find relevant to the material typically published in The Internet Protocol Journal. In the near future we will make these and other links available on our Web site: http://www.cisco.com/ipj

If you have suggestions for other pointers to include, please drop us a line at ipj@cisco.com

	The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The primary standardssetting body for Internet technologies. http://www.ietf.org
	Internet-Drafts are working documents of the IETF, its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are not an archival document series. These documents should not be cited or quoted in any formal document. Unrevised documents placed in the Internet-Drafts directories have a maximum life of six months. After that time, they must be updated, or they will be deleted. Some Internet-Drafts become RFCs (see below). http://www.ietf.org/ID.html
	The Request For Comments (RFC) document series. The RFCs form a series of notes, started in 1969, about the Internet (originally the ARPANET). The notes discuss many aspects of computer communication, focusing on networking protocols, procedures, programs, and concepts but also including meeting notes, opinion, and sometimes humor. The specification documents of the Internet protocol suite, as defined by IETF and its steering group the IESG, are published as RFCs. Thus, the RFC publication process plays in important role in the Internet standards process. http://www.rfc-editor.org/
	The Internet Society (ISOC) is a non-profit, non-governmental, international, professional membership organization. http://www.isoc.org
	The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) "... is the non-profit corporation that was formed to assume responsibility for the IP address space allocation, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management, and root server system management functions previously performed under U.S. Government contract by IANA and other entities." http://www.icann.org
	The North American Network Operators' Group (NANOG) "...provides a forum for the exchange of technical information, and promotes discussion of implementation issues that require community cooperation. Coordination among network service providers helps ensure the stability of overall service to network users."
	The Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) provide IP address block assignments for Internet Service Providers and others. Currently, there are three active RIRs: The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC): http://www.apnic.net RIPE Network Coordination Centre —the RIR responsible for Europe and Northern Africa: http://www.ripe.net American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)—the RIR responsible for the Americas and Sub-Saharan Africa: http://www.arin.net Two more RIRs are in the process of formation: AfriNIC for Africa and LACNIC for Central- and Latin America.
	The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) " ... develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential as a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding." http://www.w3.org/
	The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) "... is an international organization within which governments and the private sector coordinate global telecom networks and services." http://www.itu.int
	The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) " ... is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from some 140 countries, one from each country. The mission of ISO is to promote the development of standardization and related activities in the world with a view to facilitating the international exchange of goods and services, and to developing cooperation in the spheres of intellectual, scientific, technological and economic activity. ISO?s work results in international agreements which are published as International Standards." http://iso.org

This is by no means intended to be a complete list of organizations that are related to Internet development in one way or another, but this list should give you a good starting point.

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The Internet Protocol Journal
Ole J. Jacobsen, Editor and Publisher

Editorial Advisory Board
Dr. Vint Cerf, Sr. VP, Internet Architecture and Technology
WorldCom, USA

Dr. Jon Crowcroft, Marconi Professor of Communications Systems
University of Cambridge, England

David Farber
The Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunication Systems
University of Pennsylvania, USA

Peter Löthberg, Network Architect
Stupi AB, Sweden

Dr. Jun Murai, Professor, WIDE Project
Keio University, Japan

Dr. Deepinder Sidhu, Professor, Computer Science & Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Director, Maryland Center for Telecommunications Research, USA

Pindar Wong, Chairman and President
VeriFi Limited, Hong Kong

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The Internet Protocol Journal is published quarterly by the Chief Technology Office, Cisco Systems, Inc.
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Tel: +1 408 526-4000
Email: ipj@cisco.com

Cisco, Cisco Systems, and the Cisco Systems logo are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. in the USA and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

Copyright © 2001 Cisco Systems Inc. All rights reserved.
Printed in the USA.