Speech given by Jari Arkko at the IANA transition session at the
NetMundial meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil, April 24th, 2014.

I am very happy to be here today and talk about this topic. I welcome
the process started by NTIA, and I believe we all together have and
will evolve the IANA in a responsible manner.

I wanted to give the engineering and IETF viewpoint on
this. Obviously, we care a lot about the Internet.  That it works
well, and that all aspects of governing it are done carefully. But
regarding IANA there is a particular aspect that we have a direct
dependency on: protocol parameters.

As a part of our standards work, we end up allocating protocol
parameters, such as port numbers. The IETF role in that space relates
to setting the allocation policies and ensuring their faithful
implementation. We work together with the IANA department of ICANN,
who actually maintains a database of those allocations. The IETF and
ICANN have a contract that specifies the roles of the different
parties very clearly.

And I want to make a couple of observations about the protocol numbers
aspect of of IANA functions. First, the practices have evolved over
time. The process recently started by NTIA is just another step in
that evolution.

In the last 15 years, the IETF and IANA have seen the creation
of the contract, SLAs, role definition RFCs, and groups to track the
relationship. Not to mention 1000s of RFCs on protocol parameter
allocation policies. Those policies have been set by thousands of IETF
contributors in a consensus process. Through a process open to all,
with participants ranging from academics to businesses to regulators.

Finally, I have a couple of personal suggestions on how we will reach
a good result in the process that is now starting. First, let us run
bottom up community-based processes so that the community itself can
show the path forward. We are doing this in the IETF. So please take
time to participate in the current discussion about the process for
the change, and the subsequent discussion about the actual change.
Second, the discussion of the IANA changes go beyond ICANN. I think it
is beneficial to push parts of the discussion to the organisations
that are responsible for the individual parts, such as the IETF and
protocol parameters or Regional Internet Registries and IP
addresses. Finally, lets stay focused. Lets find a way to make the
IANA changes, while keeping in mind that there many other, parallel
discussions to have.