Vinton G. Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the Internet, his term as chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will expire this week, the Associated Press reports. Mr. Cerf joined the board of ICANN, which regulates domain names and Internet Protocol addresses, in 1999, about a year after the nonprofit group was founded. The organization has generated a good deal of debate since he signed on: Some critics have charged ICANN with being insufficiently transparent, and others have argued that the group should be made more international.
I agree that ICANN has never "managed traffic" on the net.
However, ICANN has for years claimed that its role is the technical stability of DNS and IP address allocation. (I bet that people have forgotten that ICANN also claims that it exists to "reduce the burdens of government".)
(IANA, which is distinct from ICANN and is a jab that ICANN performs under delegation/contract from NTIA, the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration(!), and perhaps also the IETF. And the IANA function with regard to "protocol parameters" has no immediate direct impact on day-to-day traffic flows on the net.)