On 1 October the US government through the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) relinquished its role of overseeing the technical management of the ‘internet’s address book’, or the IANA functions, that ICANN has overseen since its inception. The role was handed over to a global multi-stakeholder group, allowing the IANA functions contract to expire.But the right of American politics did its best to thwart the transfer of powers using its usual efforts of fear and ignorance. The cheerleader of the opposition was Senator Ted Cruz who invoked fear reminiscent of the cold war opposition to the USSR, saying the transfer of powers jeopardised “free speech online and has been widely denounced by conservative and grassroots leaders and Members of Congress.”There was even a lawsuit from four US Republican state governments – Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma and Nevada – that sought a temporary restraining order to prevent the IANA contract from expiring on 30 September. The states argued the handover was unconstitutional and required congressional approval. But the case failed.From Saturday the global multi-stakeholder group, which consists of a collection of academics, technical experts, private industry and government representatives, public interest advocates and individual users around the world, will oversee the IANA functions. It’s a transfer that has been planned since 1997 and in March 2014 a formal plan was announced. It had been a goal of Democratic and Republican administrations, with the odd exception, through the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama presidencies.There won’t be many noticeable changes. Speaking to IP Pro: The Internet, ICANN’s Theresa Swinehart said “nothing really changes in the context of ICANN overall, aside from some adjustments in the clerical functions and the role we play in accommodating the community proposal, and in enhancing some of the accountability processes we have in place.””It’s not changes to what we do, it’s taking on additional areas and areas of additional balances on the accountability side.”The change had near unanimous support from the global internet community, including from the Internet Society and the Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF).”Today’s outcome confirms the strength of both the community and the multi-stakeholder process in tackling issues important to the continued growth and evolution of the Internet,” said Gonzalo Camarillo, Chair of the Internet Society’s Board of Trustees. “We commend the NTIA for its trust and confidence in the multi-stakeholder Internet community to achieve this important accomplishment.”The IETF noted in a blog post that “this is a good day — but also in many ways just like previous days. It is what we are already doing. The Internet will continue to work as it has before. The communities continue to work with the IANA system to make sure it responds to the needs of the users, as we have. Networks and people co-operate, voluntarily, so that they can connect over the Internet. Just like what the world has been doing since the dawn of the Internet.””Like many things on the internet, this is the result of many incremental steps by many people, Andrew Sullivan, IAB Chair, told the IETF blog. “It is incremental change that brings us the stability of the internet.””We rarely get the opportunity to witness a global consensus as broad and diverse as the one in favour of this transition,” Alissa Cooper, Chair of the IANA stewardship transition Coordination Group, who also spoke to the IETF blog. “Hundreds of people and organizations from across sectors and across the world had the courage and endurance to see this process through, and as a result the Internet is running as smoothly today as it did yesterday.”