Re: Role of IANA in approving assignments

[Harald Alvestrand <harald at alvestrand.no>]

Robert Elz wrote:
> And in this case, this is exactly the point.   IANA is the
> INTERNET Assigned Numbers Authority, not the IETF Assigned Numbers
> Authority - and the code points it assigns and the registries it
> maintains are used by the Internet as a whole, not just that part of
> it that participates in the IETF.
In my opinion: No. There's no magic in names.

The IANA is a function carried out by a department of ICANN. It has 
inherited the name from the work done by Jon Postel since the time when 
the Internet was small enough that all the users knew each other by 
name. But there is no magic in the name that makes this department have 
any more credibility than any other group that performs functions.

We, as the IETF, whose mission it is to "make the Internet work better", 
need to look at what the function we want to have performed is, and 
whether the current entity is the best one to perform the function we 
want performed. Others have to perform the same evaluation when 
entrusting their registration functions to this entity.

The name is just a name.

                 Harald


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