|
|
||||||||||||||
| RC 127442 |
|
|
|
||||||||||||||
| RC 127442 |
|
Untangling
the Nigerian Top Domain Level Registration Palaver INTRODUCTION We
believe that 2004 should be the year to resolve this controversy once-and-for
all, so that we can get on with the important business of fully deploying
Nigeria’s Information Highway to the full benefit of national development.
A
CRASH COURSE ABOUT THE INTERNET AND IP ADDRESSING Suppose
you buy a computer, and its only connection to the outside world is
its plug into the electrical socket in the room.
We will call that isolated computer a “workstation” (let us
call it Workstation 1). Now consider adding another workstation (say
Workstation 2), dedicated either to another user or set of users in
your family or business, or essentially to another set of created-and-stored
files and executable programs. If
these two workstations are linked either by wire (e.g. Ethernet cables)
or wirelessly (e.g. infrared link) so that they can SHARE files back
and forth, or they can LOG into each other so that working on the
keyboard of Workstation 1 would appear as if you are working on the
keyboard attached to Workstation 2, then what you now have is an isolated
“network” of 2 workstations – that is, an isolated “local area network” (LAN) - in which these
two computers “know” about each other and can share files, but in
which no other computer or LAN in the world can get to any of them. Typically,
of course, an isolated LAN is more than two linked workstations. We need not bother ourselves here whether the LAN is “server-based”
(one computer controls all the others) or “peer-based” (all computers
are essentially equal). All
we need to know is that there is need for additional hardware (e.g.
network interface cards, bridges and switches) to facilitate the interconnections;
network software to manage the connections; some method for the system
administrator to uniquely name the various computers on the LAN, and
some protocol for the network system to use these names to pass messages
from one computer to the other. A
LAN, while usually physically located within a narrow geographical
region, e.g. a room or a building, need not be so: we could have a
WAN (wide-area network) or even a MAN (metropolitan area network).
The names hint at quite large geographical distribution, although
their extents here are nebulous.
The essential idea is that all the computers on the LAN, WAN
or MAN share the same protocol and same possibly small set of servers,
switches and bridges. In management information system (MIS) lingo, each LAN, WAN or WAN
may be known as a “domain” by itself, or could be a “sub-domain” (like
a sub-network) or part of a larger domain.
Each computer would be regarded as a “node.” The idea behind a domain or sub-domain is some centrality in its
processing and/or administrative management. Now
imagine not different workstations but different LANs, WANs or MANs,
all with possibly different protocols.
If any two or more of these are interconnected, what you have
is an “inter-net(work)” – the Inter-net with a small “i”.
For a workstation in one LAN (say) to send information to another
in another LAN, there is need to uniquely identify both each workstation
AND each LAN. There must therefore be a host ID(entification) and a network ID.
Again, that inter-networking demands its own new set of software,
protocol and hardware – essentially “routers” which serve as intelligent
bridges between networks. What
we have come to know as “The Internet” is therefore a world-wide connection
of LANs, WANs and MANs, whose adopted “lingua franca” or networking
protocol is TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol),
and where we think of sub-networks/networks in terms of sub-domains,
domains and nodes. The TCP portion of TCP/IP receives request for
transmission, establishes the connection between nodes wishing to
share files or information request, packetizes the data, sequences
them, sends them along, and makes sure that they are re-assembled
accurately at the other end, otherwise it re-sends the data. The IP portion of TCP/IP is simpler: basically to attach assigned and globally-unique 32-bit (four 8-bit bytes)
IP addresses (e.g. 138.238.144.31) to the packets to identify the
sender (one address) and the intended receiver(s) (one or more addresses)
of the packets. Without getting
too much into subnet masks addresses (such as 255.255.0.0), the high
two-bytes portion (eg“138.238”) identifies the “Network ID” (i.e.
domain or sub-domain ID, in this case, Howard University), and the
low two-bytes portion (e.g. “144.31”) identifies a particular host
or node ID at Howard University, in this case one of its servers.
This IP version 4 naming method allows about 4.3 billion unique
addresses (actually 2^32). If we note that the world’s population at the
moment is about 6.2 billion, we can imagine that IPv4 may run out
in the not too distant future. Now
on the Internet, we are also familiar with easier-to-remember textual
addresses or names: world-wide-web addresses (otherwise known as a
Uniform Resource Locator URL) such as www.nigerianmuse.com
(with IP addresses 64.177.22.69; see http:// 64.177.22.69) and an
email addresses such as muse@nigerianmuse.com
. In this URL, if the .com comes last, then that tag (like the original ones .net, .org, .edu, .gov and .mil; or since
November 2000, the newer ones .biz,
.info, .museum, .aero, .coop, .pro, .name) denotes the Generic Top
Level Domain (gTLD) of the URL, and the next name is that of a “company”,
and a third name (if it exists) would refer to a device (e.g. a network
printer with an IP address) within the company.
However,
as need for names has significantly crossed geographical boundaries,
it has become necessary to introduce ccTLDs i.e. Country Code Top
Level Domains such as .ng (for Nigeria), .us (for the US), .gh (for
Ghana), .uk (for the United Kingdom), etc., thereby giving users greater
choice of names. Thus we have,
e.g. www.skannet.com.ng with an IP address of
69.3.249.131, and an email such as
sfolayan@skannet.com.ng. Where used, a ccTLD becomes the Top Level Domain
and the gTLD becomes the Second Level Domain and the company name
becomes a Third Level Domain, etc.
Translation between URLs and IP addresses are then done by
Domain Name Servers (DNS), otherwise called “resolvers”, scattered
around the world. INTERNET
BUREAUCRACY - AND ITS JUMBLE
OF ACRONYMS AND POWER CENTERS Who
assigns all these gTLDs and ccTLDs, URLs and IP addresses and translates
the names to numbers and back? For
an IP address (and its associated URL) to be globally unique on the
Internet, it is clear that there should either be a globally central
addressing administration and/or a globally central address registry.
The neutral, centralized, but shared, database of all gTLDs
is called the Shared Registry System (SRS;
formerly managed by the InterNIC, Internet Network Information
Center www.internic.com), and
is currently operated by US-based company, Network Solutions, Inc.
(NSI www.networksolutions.com ). NSI is itself a subsidiary of SAIC (Science
Applications International Corporation).
Actually, for a while, under contract from the Defence Department
in the US, being the promoters of ARPANet (the recognized precursor
of the Internet), NSI was also solely in charge of assigning IP addresses. However, during the Clinton administration,
this responsibility was given to ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers www.icann.org),
then a new nonprofit organization explicitly formed to “take over
the responsibility for the IP address space allocation, protocol parameter
assignment, domain name system management, and root server system
management functions now performed under U.S. government contract.”
ICANN
thus has broad authority to administer the present system of issuing
Internet addresses, including adding Top Level Domains for inclusion
into the SRS. It has distributed all of its services among
several certified Registrars (which are private institutions or companies)
around the world, albeit retaining NSI as one of its registrars for
domain names. These Registrars rely on the SRS. There
are other Registrars of note, many of which predate ICANN, but have
since had to shift their previously assigned responsibilities.
IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority www.isi.edu/div7/iana), a subsidiary unit
of the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) of the University of Southern
California (USC) was originally charged by DARPA with the responsibility
of assigning unique Internet parameters (specifically TCP port numbers,
ARP hardware types) as well as managing domain names, and still retains
some of its original functions. The
responsibility of specifically of assigning IP numbers within the
geographic areas of North and South America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan
Africa was shifted (on December 22, 1997) to ARIN (American Registry
for Internet Numbers, www.arin.net), but that responsibility has also
since been distributed among Registrars. Recently, approval was given
by ICANN for the creation of AfriNIC (www.afrinic.org)
which is being hosted at the European registry (www.ripe.net). There
are actually over 220 ICANN-accredited gTLD domain-name Registrars
scattered all over the world, each handling and processing certain
defined functions, including domain, IP and other Internet addresses
registration see: http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html
, http://www.icann.org/registrars/accreditation-qualified-list.html http://www.internic.net/alpha.html. Perhaps
the most useful page to visit in this respect is http://www.newregistrars.com/. The
moral of the tale of this section is to emphasize the distributed
nature of authority over the Internet, and the cooperative nature
of its various agents and stakeholders. THE
NIGERIAN TOP LEVEL DOMAIN .ngTLD – THE PRESENT SITUATION
In
all of the records above, however, there is not a single registrar
listed in Africa for gTLD registration, a registration that would
not generate any controversy since it depends on technical qualifications
only! What
about ccTLD registrars? Many
countries have more than one ccTLD to themselves.
Virtually ALL of countries require those who would use their
ccTLD tags to have physical presence WITHIN the country.
While this does not mean that their registrars or their technical
point of contacts must be within the countries, obviously, this would
be most convenient. See http://www.ccregistrars.com/cctlds.html. Only countries like Ascension Island (.ac),
Cocos (Keeling) Islands (.cc), Central African Republic (.cf), Libyan
Arab Jamahiriya (.ly), Republic of Moldova (.md), Niue (.nu), St.
Helena (.sh), Sao Tome/Principe (.st), Turkmenistan (.tm), Tuvalu
(.tv) and Samoa (.ws) have unrestricted ccTLDs.
A visit to http://www.ccregistrars.com/ will reveal
that of the 53 African countries, only 17 countries [Burkina Faso (.bf), Burundi (.bi), Cameroon
(.cm), Central African Republic (.cf), Congo (.cd), Egypt (.eg), Equatorial
Guinea (.gq), Ghana (.gh), Kenya (.ke), Malawi (.mw), Mauritius (.mu),
Rwanda (.rw), Senegal (.sn), South Africa (.za), Tunisia (.tn), and
Uganda (.ug)] are listed to have such registrars.
See also http://www.afridns.org/
where there is an
aggregation of information about African domain names Although
Nigeria is neither on the list of unrestricted ccTLD countries, nor
is any Nigeria-based institution listed in the directory of registrars,
what it has is a “free registration service” with the following information:
http://www.iana.org/root-whois/ng.htm .ng
- Nigeria Sponsoring Organization:
Nigerian
Government - undecided branch
Administrative Contact:
Mrs.
Ibukun Odusote
Technical Contact:
Randy
Bush
Domain
Servers:
URL for registration services: http://psg.com/dns/ng
Whois server: None listed.
Record
last updated - 06-February-2003 ______________________________________________________________________________ Thus
although ngTLD’s “sponsoring organization” is a company called
the “Nigerian TLD Registration Service” (NTLDRS) and the “Nigerian
Government” (what ministry or agency is “undecided”), and the administrative
contact is a Nigerian, the technical contact is based in the United
States, and the domain servers are in South Africa, Australia, United
States and Sweden, with none in Nigeria. [At least two name servers
are required; three but no more than seven are recommended; see http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2182.html
] Actually, a more recent
DNS report of gov.ng shows the primary name-server as the host Rip.psg.com
in the United States [use
http://www.dnsreport.com. ]
From
1995 until about 2000, registration service for Nigeria was hosted
by CNR-Istituto CNUCE, in Pisa, Italy; the
technical point of contact (POC) was Abraham Gebrehiwot; and the administrative point of contact (admin POC) was also
Iyabo Odusote. It was then transferred
to Randy Bush of the Network Startup Resource Center www.nsrc.org as the technical POC. Information
about domain registration for the four countries handled by NSRC (Guinea, Liberia,
Nigeria and Tanzania) can be found in www.psg.com/dns
.
Now
if we take a look at Ghana’s and South Africa’s information sheets,
we will read as follows: http://www.iana.org/root-whois/gh.htm
The
facts shown above for Ghana and South Africa when compared with those
for Nigeria are instructive and speak for themselves.
COUNTRY
DOMAIN REGISTRATION – BY THE NUMBERS
How
many institutions have so far actually registered their domains in
Nigeria? To answer this question, we went looking and found the information
for ALL countries, but show below the following information as at
January 2003 for Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, United States and the
United Kingdom:
Source:
http://www.isc.org/ds/WWW-200301/dist-byname.html
Thus,
Nigeria has not had a large registration demand prior to January 2003,
but this is bound to grow with greater access to the Internet. [The
smaller numbers for the United States compared with the United Kingdom
are a reflection of the fact that gTLD registrations are overwhelmingly
US based, and the use of .us
ccTLD is only recently gaining in popularity – by gentle coercion
of Internet authorities.] SO
HOW MIGHT THIS NIGERIAN PALAVER BE RESOLVED?
As
already stated, the motivation for the latest outburst over this ngTLD
has been a rebuff by ICANN and IANA for its re-delegation.
It appears that the Nigerian government, being one of the listed
sponsoring organizations, therefore has an obligation to bring all
stakeholders to the table.
Without
prejudice to whether good service is being currently offered by ngTLDs
registration service provider NSRC or not, all the above information
therefore indicates that the controversy currently in Nigeria is really
over the following:
Thus
mixed up in the controversy are issues of technology transfer, indigenization
and national pride, to list a few. It
is clear that the mode of Registrars’ accreditation for country top
level domains is that there should be just one such registrar per
ccTLD in the country. [Note again that some countries have more than
one ccTLD]. On the other hand, for gTLDs, there can be as many registrars
as possible who qualify depending on their technical resources, both
material and personnel. Since
NO single registrar currently exists for gTLD in Nigeria, it is curious
that there is such a hue and cry over managing Nigeria’s ngTLD. It would appear that a two-step process might
be commended to all present “combatants”, that as many institutions
and organizations as possible to first independently vie for gTLDs
(that is .com, .net, .edu, .org, .gov, etc.), and then one of them
or a new consortium of all of them combined can apply for registration
for the ngTLD. For example, we might have as follows:
1
NITDA – as gTLD Registrar for .gov,
.coop, .aero;
2
NUC – as gTLD Registrar for .edu,
.museum;
3
NIG and ISPAN – as gTLD Registrars for .com, .org, .name, .pro;
4
NCS – as gTLD Registrars for .net,
.biz and .info;
5
A new non-profit consortium, e.g.
ngCORE or ngNIC, which will be a successor to the listed “Nigerian
TLD Registration Service” company.
It should now be comprised of all stakeholders in the Nigerian
Council of REgistrars (let us call that ngCORE), with delegation of
Second Level Domain registration to the same groups above:
i.e. gov.ng to NITDA, edu.ng to NUC, com.ng etc. to NIG and
ISPAN, etc.
Each
of these institutions would be authorized to manage their domains
for (say) two years at a time subject to review, but can choose to
sub-delegate their responsibilities as they see fit. The important
requirement here is that all ngTLD registration functions should be
within the country. The
proposed ngNIC body could then have at least three vital organs:
with
each committee having a liaison in the other committees. In
the interim, it might be appropriate to have one of the many Nigerian-owned
ISPs either in Nigeria and/or in the Diaspora to be officially qualified
and listed as one of the DNSs of ngTLD, even if none of them is the
primary DNS. Note that this is QUITE different from having a Technical
Point of Contact inside Nigeria. Whatever
be the case, there is need to come up with a Business Plan and a Transition
plan from where we are to where we wish to be – which is domestic
control of our country’s top level domain - in a manner similar to
a process recently followed in the setting up of AfriNIC.
EPILOGUE
We
would like to emphasize that rather than an avenue for contention
over power, authority and the potential for money-making, the administration
of a country top level domain such as ngTLD is all about service,
stewardship, fairness and technical reliability. This is clearly spelt
our in RFC1591 http://www/isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1591.txt.
It
is incumbent upon the Nigerian government, most probably through the
Communications / Science & Technology committees of the National
Assembly – with invitation of expert advice from Nigerian Information
Technology Professionals in the Americas (NITPA) - to convene an open
forum of all stakeholders to hammer out an agreement between all of
them to discuss matters and stem the ongoing public acrimony.
Ultimately, the formation of a National IT Council that will
be charged with much more than mere ngTLD administration is inevitable,
to provide a general vision for the advancement of Information in
the country – that is a comprehensive national IT policy.
This
is a task that also must be done as soon as possible in this New Year
2004.
Season’s
greetings to everyone!
Mobolaji
E. Aluko (alukome@aol.com) is Professor of Engineering
at Howard University in Washington, DC, USA President/CEO of Alondex Applied
Technologies, LLC, a USA-based innovative technologies company.
He
is also a member of the board of NITPA (Nigerian Information Technology
Professionals in the Americas.).
Sunday A. Folayan (sfolayan@skannet.ng.com) is the Managing
Director of General Data Engineering Services Ltd [SKANNET], Secretary,
ISPs Association of Nigeria (ISPAN), and Member - ICANN at Large Advisory
Committee (ICANN ALAC).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/geistgovernmentcctlds.pdf “Governments
and Country-Code Top Level Domains – A Global Survey: Preliminary
Report - December 2003” by Michael
Geist http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1591.txt Domain
Name System Structure and Delegation March
1994 http://www.icann.org/committees/gac/gac-cctldprinciples-23feb00.htm Principles
and Practices to be Followed in Delegating and Administering ccTLDs
http://www.iana.org/cctld/redelegation-overview-19jun02.htm Information
about re-delegation requests https://rip.psg.com/~randy/nsrc.html Randy
Bush and the NSRC
AfriNIC
issues: Market
Survey: http://www.afrinic.org/AfriNIC_ISP_LIR_Markets.html
______________________________________________________________________ Guardian December 29, 2003 Dispute rages over Nigeria's internal domain name THE hosting
of the Country's Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) name locally
may remain elusive for long as contenders to the hosting right are
yet to resolve their dispute. The
Nigeria Internet Group (NIG), a non-profit organisation, has applied
to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN),
the global Internet administration for re-delegation of the ccTLD
from its current hosts in the United States of America (USA) to the
NIG. That
was in March 2003. But the original Person of Contact (POC) for Nigeria,
Mrs. Ibukun Odusote, in alliance with Nigeria Computer Society (NCS),
protested the composition of NIG's Board of Trustees and wrote to
ICANN in that regards. Besides
asking ICANN to jettison all imputations made by NIG for alleged lack
of technical competence, Odusote and the NCS disagreed with the composition
of NIG's Board of Trustees, saying if NIG should have a say, it must
enlarge its profile to include: Presidents of NIG, NCS and their counterparts
in Computer Professional Registration Council of Nigeria (CPN), Information
Technology Association of Nigeria (ITAN), Nigerian Society of Engineers
(NSE), Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON), Internet Service
Providers of Nigeria (ISPAN) and Institute of Software Practitioners
of Nigeria (ISPON). NCS
also suggested as members the chief executive of Nigerian Universities
Commission (NUC), Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC) and National
Broadcasting Commission (NBC), the present POC, among others. Odusote
and NCS insisted that instead of NIG, all these persons should constitute
the Nigeria Network Information Centre (ngNIC). Based
on the protests communicated to ICANN chief executive, Dr. Paul Twomey
in August, the global body wrote back to insist that a stakeholders'
meeting of the Internet community in Nigeria be convened to resolve
the matter. ICANN's decision was equally backed by global domain name
managers, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). These were
communicated to contenders for the hosting rights in Nigeria. On
October 6, 2003, the first stakeholders' meeting hosted by Science
and Technology Minister, Prof. Turner Isoun with officials of NIG,
National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and others
in attendance was said to have been deadlocked. Principal
party to the hosting, Mrs. Odusote, who should ordinarily endorse
any person or group of persons so selected was conspicuously absent.
"I
was actually invited, but I had an urgent presentation to make at
UNESCO in Paris, France. But I sent my apologies," she told The
Guardian on telephone at the weekend. A
second meeting held on November 4, had her in attendance but NCS,
ISPON, ITAN among others were not there, "so I objected to the
meeting because of the number of delegates at that meeting; 22 in
all, 17 were from NIG, NITDA and Science and Technology Ministry and
I believed these did not represent the Internet Community well enough.
In spite of my protest, the director-general of NITDA, and the minister
insisted that I must endorse NIG as the new hosts for the ccTLD for
Nigeria. I declined on the gound that instead of NIG, we should have
the Nigeria Network Information Centre (ng.NIC) with all stakeholders
involved." She
added that she reported that matter to the NCS, which in turn, wrote
to ICANN chief executive officer (CEO) on December 19 and another
petition to President Olusegun Obasanjo to seek redress and save Nigeria
from imminent embarrassment. But
NIG President, Dr. Emmanuel Ekuwem alleged that Odusote was being
economical with the truth. The various meetings were properly convened
and invitations extended to the stakeholders suggested by Odusote
and NCS. According
to Ekuwem, the meetings were exhaustive and well-attended and the
protests by Odusote were an after thought. "NIG
has been endorsed by NITDA and the Science and Technology Ministry
because we are empowered by our licensing instrument from the NCC,
and duly registered by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). Our
activities go beyond persons and individuals, so we are on the side
of the law." Ekuwem
explained that the CCTLD is a national resource and goes beyond individual
or group of persons as only government has the right to appoint anyone
competent enough to manage such national resource. "We are guided
by the rule of law." The
government, Ekuwem said, through the Science and Technology Minister
wrote to ICANN on December 8 for forced re-delegation because discordant
tunes came from the camp of Odusote and NCS. Ekuwem,
who is also CEO of Teledom International Limited, a broad band Internet
Service Provider (ISP), alleged that Odusote's alliance with NCS is
a year 2003 phenomenon. "She has always changed alliances from
Yaba College of Technology, to NITEL, then Ministry of Information
and National Orientation where she currently works and now NCS...
The objective, "Ekuwem alleged, "is to delay the local hosting
of this very important national resource. But we have refused to be
distracted." In
the protest letter to ICANN CEO, Twomey, dated December 19, 2003,
NCS President, Dr. Chris Nwanenna, said among others that NCS, the
largest Internet stakeholder community in Nigeria, does not support
the re-delegation of .ngccTLD to NIG on the ground that:
|
nitel mtel Nigeria gsm fixed wireless ncc nigerian
communications commission globacom per second per minute billing
telecommunications mtn econet