CircleID

ICANN's 25th International meeting officially opens in Wellington, New Zealand today. The meeting, which runs from March 25-31, sees stakeholders from the technical community, business and government and civil society, participate in over 30 meetings and workshops, covering some of the most important issues relating to the ongoing stability, security and growth of the Internet. These meetings constitute an essential part of ICANN's global consensus-development and outreach efforts.

Some of the highlights of the week will be:

• The Board will consider the ICANN Strategic Plan 2006-2009
• Discussions relating to the ongoing reform of ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC)
• A public meeting of ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) will consider the challenge of alternative TLD name systems and root services on the stability of the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS).
• The SSAC will also examine recent Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on the DNS and identify near- and long-term measures to reduce the threat of similar attacks
• Community discussion of both the policy and technical trial issues in introducing IDN top-level domains
• An Internet user's forum to discuss new Top Level Domains (TLDs), designed to ensure the launching process meets the needs for the world's user and registrants
• A public workshop on Internet governance, with a special focus on local Internet community issues including relations with country code Top Level Domains (TLDs), and local Internet community involvement in the international discussions on Internet governance, the formation and participation in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), and implementation of the WSIS outcomes in relation to respective organisations.

Commenting on this week's meeting, Dr Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN, said: "We anticipate a very productive meeting in Wellington. Particularly important will be discussions relating to the GAC, which we hope will continue to evolve and play an increasingly significant role as the voice of international governments in our public-private partnership.

Visit ICANN's website for more information about the meeting.

See related topics: DNS, Domain Names, Internet Governance, Security, Top-Level Domains