Dr. Vinton Cerf, one of the so-called “Fathers of the Internet,” is stepping down as chairman of the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), following seven years of service. Cerf will formally leave the unpaid position after ICANN’s board meeting this Friday in Los Angeles. Snce 2005, Cerf has also been a senior executive at Google with the title “chief Internet evangelist.”
Cerf joined ICANN in 1999, a year after the group’s formation, and was elected chairman in 2000. Cerf is widely credited with shepherding the organization through several high-stakes crises and building ICANN into a stronger organization. When Cerf joined ICANN, many industry watchers felt it was doomed to failure, and the organization struggled to both break away from its de facto supervision by the U.S. Department of Commerce while keeping countries committed to ICANN instead of breaking off to form a separate, more international organization. Although many still regard many of ICANN’s processes as too closed off from the public and major stake-holders, ICANN has worked to significantly open its processes, and the worldwide focus for now is on making ICANN work better rather than trying to replace it with a new international agency. ICANN has also had to re-negotiate difficult contracts for the management of top-level domains, the results of which are still controversial.
ICANN is responsible for authorizing top-level domains (like .com and .net) as well as accrediting domain registrars and operators around the world (in other words, authorizing who can offer domain names for sale and manage top-level domains).
Credit for ICANN’s survival is largely credited to Cerf, whose combination of business prowess and technical knowledge enabled him to work with players at all levels of Internet governance. As a “Father of the Internet,” Cerf also had the celebrity status to meet with government leaders and ministers and, in some cases, not give them what they wanted.
As a graduate student at UCLA in 1969, Cerf tested the first network connections in what would eventually become the global Internet. In the 1970s at Stanford University, Cerf led the team that developed the TCP protocol, which is still the basis of most Internet communications.
ICANN’s board will elect a new chairman at the conclusion of its 30th International Public ICANN Meeting this week in Los Angeles.
