Steve Crocker at the microphone.
Quiet group without much to do until recently. SECSAC membership. Technical people, not political people. Committee activity in last month dominated by wildcard. Sitefinder generated complaints and problem reports. Preliminary advisory. Information gathering. Still gathering input on substantive technical input, thoughtful commentary and analysis: secsac-comment@icann.org.
October 7 and October 15 meetings in Washington DC. Information posted on web site. SECSAC is writing report; part of larger process. SECSAC is strong on technical aspect. Also policy issues and economic impacts. Appreciate being an advisory committee. Not a decision-making body.
Back to wildcard: What happened? Wildcard. Some things broke. Some took defensive action. BIND patches, ISPs blocking sitefinder.
Areas of concern: no notice. Is it the thing right? Competition and contracts.
Just don't do wildcards? But: Existing registries; ccTLDs, .museum, but world has not come apart. Why is it a problem now if it wasn't a problem then? Issue of size?
Initial Advisory. Three recommendations. To Verisign: Please roll back, and provide time for everyone to think hard about this. To tech community: Ambiguous specifications / best practices? To ICANN: Please clarify procedures. More to say when finished with writing.
October 7 and October 15 meetings. Transcripts are available.
Tentative Issues: Abruptness, rightness, systemic stability, confidence, technical clarity, process clarity, displaced costs, innovation at core v. edge, future architecture, role of standards (do RFCs say everything?), existing wildcards, scope/size.
Will finish work over month or so. Will release report.
Cerf: Wildcards in general? Crocker: Yes, look at it in general. One step further: Wildcard is internal device for how you implement a broad set of reswponses or response to broad set of queries. Look at wire protocol -- doesn't matter what's in zone. Other kinds of synthesis. General questions: What are expectations in this area? What is impact of change? Align specs with practice? Align practice with specs? Live with a certain degree of discrepancy?
