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RSSAC Charter

ICANN Bylaws Article XI.2.3

  1. Root Server System Advisory Committee
    1. The role of the Root Server System Advisory Committee ("RSSAC") is to advise the ICANN community and Board on matters relating to the operation, administration, security, and integrity of the Internet's Root Server System. It shall have the following responsibilities:
      1. Communicate on matters relating to the operation of the Root Servers and their multiple instances with the Internet technical community and the ICANN community. The Committee shall gather and articulate requirements to offer to those engaged in technical revision of the protocols and best common practices related to the operation of DNS servers.
      2. Communicate on matters relating to the administration of the Root Zone with those who have direct responsibility for that administration. These matters include the processes and procedures for the production of the Root Zone File.
      3. Engage in ongoing threat assessment and risk analysis of the Root Server System and recommend any necessary audit activity to assess the current status of root servers and the root zone.
      4. Respond to requests for information or opinions from the ICANN Board of Directors.
      5. Report periodically to the Board on its activities.
      6. Make policy recommendations to the ICANN community and Board.
    2. The RSSAC shall be led by two co-chairs. The RSSAC's chairs and members shall be appointed by the Board.
      1. RSSAC membership appointment shall be for a three-year term, commencing on 1 January and ending the second year thereafter on 31 December. Members may be re- appointed, and there are no limits to the number of terms the members may serve. The RSSAC chairs shall provide recommendations to the Board regarding appointments to the RSSAC. If the board declines to appoint a person nominated by the RSSAC then it will provide the rationale for its decision. The RSSAC chairs shall stagger appointment recommendations so that approximately one-third (1/3) of the membership of the RSSAC is considered for appointment or re-appointment each year. The Board shall also have to power to remove RSSAC appointees as recommended by or in consultation with the RSSAC. (Note: The first term under this paragraph shall commence on 1 July 2013 and end on 31 December 2015, and shall be considered a full term for all purposes. All other full terms under this paragraph shall begin on 1 January of the corresponding year. Prior to 1 July 2013, the RSSAC shall be comprised as stated in the Bylaws as amended 16 March 2012, and the RSSAC chairs shall recommend the re-appointment of all current RSSAC members to full or partial terms as appropriate to implement the provisions of this paragraph.)
      2. The RSSAC shall recommend the appointment of the chairs to the board following a nomination process that it devises and documents.
    3. The RSSAC shall annually appoint a non-voting liaison to the ICANN Board according to Section 9 of Article VI.

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Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."