Internet Society: ICANN, Internet Transitions and Why IPv4 Won’t Die

When your job is to be open to everyone’s ideas, sometimes the hardest part for you is to just go with the right one. In Part 2 of ReadWriteWeb’s interview with Internet Society (ISOC) senior public policy manager Sally Wentworth (Part 1 of which was published on Thursday), we discuss how difficult it can be to navigate the routes of change in Internet architecture, especially when everyone out there – ICANN, Comcast, Russia, etc. – seems to have a different idea.

While maybe hundreds of white papers are published every day leading off with the statement that the Internet is changing so very rapidly, with respect to its technical underpinnings, real change has been dreadfully slow. The exodus of Internet Protocol hosts to an IPv6 address system whose benefits are almost undisputed has yet to begin after nearly two decades of initiatives. And the top-level domain system that helped make Web addresses friendlier to the world than phone numbers is rapidly disintegrating into a bizarre carnival of conflicting interests and outrageous conduct. It’s a state of affairs that gives justification to proposals like that of Russian President Vladimir Putin: that the Internet be brought under more direct governmental control.