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Untangling the Nigerian Top Domain Level Registration
Palaver
By
Mobolaji E. Aluko
and
Sunday A. Folayan
January 7, 2004
INTRODUCTION
For a number of years now, an
imbroglio has been quietly brewing in the Nigerian Internet community over who
or what institution (private, government or both) controls or should control
Nigeria’s Country Code Top Level Domain (ng.ccTLD or ngTLD for short). This is
with respect to the assignment of Internet names ending with .ng, for example
http://www.nigeria.gov.ng/. The
controversy erupts onto the public via the press periodically, and got uglier in
the last few days with allegations of corruption flying all over the place. The
latest round was subsequent to a recent attempt to wrest control of ngTLD from
its present registered delegate(s) on the grounds that it is time to have a
Registrar and a Technical Point of Contact (POC) within the country rather than
a Registration Service outside of the country. That move was rebuffed by IANA
(Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) and ICANN (Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers) and reverted to the stakeholders in the country for
consensual agreement.
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.
But first things first, so that
we all can begin from the same chapter and verse, after sorting out some of the
technical morass.
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 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 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:
In a petition to President Obasanjo, the NCS president
averred that opportunities for resolving the matter still exist, and he should
intervene to ensure that the country is saved from embarrassment. NCS said that there was no consensus among stakeholders and the Internet community in support of forced re-delegation, among others.
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