Jan 28, 1997


As many of you may know, a public meeting was held in Sydney
on January 17, 1997 to discuss the future of the top level
Australian DNS. This was the third such meeting, but the
first two had been by invitation, with an eye to getting
some concensus from the current administrators.

It was resolved at this meeting that a task force would
be put together with the intention of laying the framework
for an organisation to manage the Australian DNS. The
primary functions of this organisation are expected to
include:

  o Ensuring the technical integrity of the Australian DNS.
  o Allocation of new Second Level Domains (eg: blah.au)
  o Appointment of organisations to administer these 2LDs

A model that was put forward at the meeting was for a
non profit company limited by guarantee to be created,
with initial members being current "stakeholders". These
members would elect a board that would be responsible
for the day to day running of the organisation.

It was also resolved that the people present at the meeting
did not, by themselves, form a sufficiently large cross
section of the current and future Australia Internet
community. As such, the intention of the task force is
to present a proposal for public comment by March 1, 1997,
with a further public meeting at the end of the month.

Initially, representatives of

    INTIAA          WAIA           SAIA
    ISOC-AU         AUUG

volunteered their time to be a part of the task force.
An invitation is being sent to each of these organisations,
asking for them to put forward a representative. Other
bodies that feel that they have time to offer are also
invited to respond to this message and request inclusion.
At this point, we simply require that the organisation be
incorporated, that its objects are related to the
Internet, and that the representative be willing to
contribute time and effort in a cooperative effort to
produce concensus as quickly as possible.

It was suggested that the five current administrators
would also be invited to participate.

The task force will attempt to report as often as possible
to the mailing list "dns§intiaa.asn.au" and keep people
informed as to progress. Feedback and comments are
essential and will be welcomed.


Regards

Michael Malone