ICANN might name former DHS cybersecurity boss its president?
Source: CongressDaily 06/19/2009
Former Homeland Security Department National Cybersecurity Center Director Rod Beckstrom could become the new president and CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
ICANN a nonprofit group based in California oversees sixty to seventy percent of the Internet address system. ICANN is a contractor to the Department of Commerce.
Beckstrom, who served as the Director of the National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC) in 2008 at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was seen trolling the ICANN meeting in Sydney wearing an ICANN staff badge.
I predict his appointment and association with the DHS will result in further erosion of market share for ICANN. Since ICANN was formed in 1998 they have lost Forty percent market share in the provisioning of root domain name service (DNS). The first country to jump ship was China.
The Chinese Ministry of Information Industry 中华人民共和国信息产业部 (MII) built it’s own addressing infrastructure in 2000. The Chinese no longer rely on the U.S. government for domain resolution. In China users can surf the Internet in Chinese.
If you happen to be in China you can visit Peking University using their Chinese character domain name 北京大学.中国 like millions of other Chinese do. Chinese domains will not work for users who’s Internet is under U.S. Government control.
Other countries are also following the China lead including Russia and India. Turkey left in 2005.
EOL
Editors note: If you want to test Chinese character domains, or even visit the Kremlin in Moscow using Russian language domains – президент.орг – you can visit the Cesidian Root and use their DNS to surf. Instructions are available under the heading “Changing TCP/IP configuration”.