The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has begun the final stages of privatizing the management of the Domain Name System (DNS) that powers the Internet.  This transition was begun in 1997.

From the press release...

"As the first step, NTIA is asking the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to convene global stakeholders to develop a proposal to transition the current role played by NTIA in the coordination of the Internet’s domain name system (DNS). "

The NTIA, in conjunction with ICANN and Verisign,  is currently responsible for managing the root zone, including the administration of the root zone file which contains the details about the top level domains (TLDs).  The TLDs are the last part of a Full Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), such as .com, .gov, .mil, etc.

-- Rick Wanner - rwanner at isc dot sans dot edu - http://namedeplume.blogspot.com/ - Twitter:namedeplume (Protected)