to paraphrase your good friend john klensin, jon postel consciously pushed problems back to the locale and attempted to not involve the iana in controversy and argument. the icann seems to be willing to take on any task, and will invent controversy and argument is none is immediately available to hand. it is the latter approach which has led to the need for a staff of dozens to perform the wortk that used to be done better and far less controversially by one computer scientist in part time. randy