The Challenge of Borderlessness and a Billion Connected People: Pondering the Future of the Internet

ICANN is a technical coordination body for the Internet. Created in October 1998 by a broad coalition of the Internet’s business, technical, academic, and user communities. ICANN assumes responsibility for a set of technical functions previously performed under U.S. government contract by IANA (Internet Assigned Names Authority) and other groups. Specifically, ICANN coordinates the assignment of the following identifiers that must be globally unique for the Internet to function: (1) Internet domain names; (2) IP address numbers; and (3) Protocol parameter and port numbers. ICANN is a non-profit, private-sector corporation, dedicated to preserving the operational stability of the Internet; to promoting competition; to achieving broad representation of global Internet communities; and to developing policy through private-sector, bottom-up, consensus-based means.

Participants

• M. Stuart Lynn
  President & CEO, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)