Canadian Internet Registration AuthorityByron Holland, President and CEO

Agenda

What CIRA does and how

Current Activities

CIRA History and Governance

Internet History and Governance

Questions?

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Mission

Operate the dot-ca Internet country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) as a key public resource for all Canadians in an innovative, open, and efficient manner. CIRA may carry out other Internet related registration activities for the Canadian community in a similar manner.

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Vision

CIRA is recognized as the leading Registry in the world, as measured by the satisfaction of our stakeholders, and the model for other ccTLDs

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Primary Roles of CIRA

Ensure effective stewardship of .ca

Operate DNS in 100% uptime environment

Operate dot-ca Registry

Manage dot-ca brand

Represent dot-ca interests internationally

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What is CIRA

The Registry that operates the Country Code Top Level Domain for Canada or .ca ccTLD

a Thick Registry that currently has over 1.2 million domain names under management

This represents over 800,000 individual Registrants of which more than 16,000 are Members

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What is CIRA

Staff of 42 FTE

Revenues of 11M$ and expenses of 10M$ for 2009

Has about 150 Certified Registrars

CIRA processes:800,000,000 DNS queries per day

4,000 registration requests per day

300 TBR requests per week

4M WHOIS queries per day

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Canadian Market Share: Current

Dr. Zook Q3 2009 Canadian Domain Names Report

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Total Domain Name Registrations

The first quarter of 2009 ended with a total base of nearly 183 million domain name registrations across all of the Top Level Domain Names (TLDs). This represents a three percent growth over the fourth quarter of 2008 and a 12 percent growth over the same quarter of last year. The base of Country Code Top Level Domain Names (ccTLDs) rose to 74.1 million domain names, an 18 percent increase year over year and a four percent increase quarter over quarter. In terms of total registrations, .com continues to have the highest base followed by .cn, .de and .net.

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What CIRA does on top of this

Develops and maintains its own registry software supporting 2 interface formats

Owns and operates all its registration and zone file servers

Operates the To Be Released (TBR) system

Operates WHOIS service

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What CIRA Does

Manages and enforces the Certified Registrar Agreement

Certifies and re-certifies Registrars

Manages major Certified Registrar Issues (financials, sales, going out of business, etc…)

Holds regular consultations and meetings with Registrars

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What CIRA Does

Manages and enforces the Registrant Agreement

Handles Registrant complaints

Operates the Manual Change of Administrative Contact (MCAC) process

Operates the confirmation process for all critical changes to Registrant entries

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What CIRA Does

Runs annual elections for the Board

Holds a formal Annual General Meeting (AGM)

Publishes an annual report

Publicly publishes the minutes of its Board meetings and audited financial statements

Operates the CIRA Dispute Resolution Process (CDRP)

Operates bilingually

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.ca Registrations

Because of legacy considerations CIRA registers many types of domains as opposed to simply second level as in .com (e.g. xyz.com)

CIRA accepts domain registrations at the 2nd, 3rd and 4th levels:

xyz.ca

xyz.on.ca

xyz.ottawa.on.ca

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. ca Registrations

CIRA allows the registration of conflicting domain names with permission

CIRA reserves municipal names for the municipalities e.g. only the city of Toronto can register city.toronto.on.ca or toronto.ca

CIRA reserves province names for provincese.g. only the Government of Ontario can register ontario.ca

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How We Do It

Strategic Plan

Consultation and outreach across Canada

Participation in international technical and policy forums

Offices in Ottawa

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CIRA Policies

Canadian Presence RequirementsFor Registrants

For Registrars

CIRA Dispute Resolution Policy

WHOIS Policy

Low barrier to entry for Registrars

Competitive Registry

Protection of the Registrant by the Registry

Registrants are the members of the corporation

Current Activities

Product Improvements

Registry re-writeExisting Registry software is 10 years old

Policy and procedure simplification

Loosen dependencies on Oracle database software

Multi-year project

Beta software ready in November 2009

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Product Improvements

DNSSECRFCs for adding digital signatures to DNS data

Provides authenticity of data

Adds secure delegations from parent to child, creating trust hierarchies (“path of trust”)

Provides provable denial of existence

Compromised name servers detected and ignored

DNS data manipulation detected and ignored

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Product Improvements

IPv6What is an IP address

An IP address or IP number (internet protocol address or number) is a unique number that computers use in order to identify and communicate with each other on a network that uses the Internet Protocol standard

IPv4 is the fourth version of Internet protocol

Uses a 32 bit addressing

Allows for 4,294,967,296 unique addresses

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Product Improvements

IPv6IPv6 is the next-generation Internet Protocol

Next widely deployed Internet protocol

Uses a 128-bit system to hold 340-undecillion (34, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000)

IPv4 address exhaustion

Network security is integrated into the design of the IPv6 architecture

IPv6 only in its infancy in terms of general worldwide deployment

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Product Improvements

IPV6 and CIRACIRA's root zone servers have been using IPv6 since at least 2007

IPv6 for dot-ca domains supported since Q4 2008

CIRA has just recently registered its first dot-ca hostnames to use IPv6

CIRA's outlook on IPv6Monitoring the decrease in IPv4 address availability

Ready to accommodate an increase in IPv6 domain host registrations

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CIRA HISTORY and GOVERNANCE

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CIRA History

University of British Columbia

Canadian Domain Name Consultative Committee

Founding Board

Canadian Internet Registration Authority

CIRA Governance

Not-For-Profit Corporation

Member-driven

1999 Binder Letter to CIRA:Recognizes CIRA as the administrator of the .ca domain space.

Requests a structure predicated upon:

Conducting CIRA's activities in an open and transparent manner that ensures wide public access to all relevant information;

Following fair and sound business practices;

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CIRA Governance – Cont’d

Binder Letter to CIRA cont’d:Ensuring an appropriate balance of representation, accountability and diversity on the Board of Directors for all categories of stakeholders;

Applying for domain names being as quick and easy as applying for domain names in other top level domains, and priced competitively;

Reducing conflicts between persons granted domain names and other Fights holders, including trade-marks or business names; and

A system that facilitates and encourages entry for new players including registrars.

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INTERNET HISTORY and GOVERNANCE

History of the Internet

Began in 1960s and 1970s as a tool for research and military use

By 1990s commercial services began showing up

10 years ago 100 million people were online

Today roughly 1.5 billion people are online – and progressing

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Internet Governance

Internet Society (ISOC), Internet Architecture Board (IAB), and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)

Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

Internet Governance Forum (IGF)

CIRA’s unique place

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Internet Governance Cont’d __________________________ ICANN Structure

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↕CIRA

Internet Governance Cont’d

Early Internet Culture continues: collaborative, multi-stakeholder, bottom-up

Can have reverse of expected impact

Single voice can have disproportionate influence

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Questions?

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