IGF 2010
Vilnius, Lithuania
15 September 10
Main Session
MANAGING CRITICAL INTERNET RESOURCES
10:00
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Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during Fifth Meeting of the IGF, in Vilnius. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> Ladies and gentlemen, if you could please start taking your seats, we'll be starting very shortly.
>> MINDAUGAS GLODAS: Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, we're now resuming the IGF meeting and this morning's session is dealing with managing critical Internet resources. My name is Mindaugas Glodas. I'm representing a private stakeholder, company Microsoft, and I will be chairing this session.
It has probably already become banal to talk about how important and central to our existence the Internet has become but I would still like to go through a couple of examples and a couple of uses ranging from our daily lives when we do e banking, when we do shopping, when we're searching for the news, searching for anything, when we're socializing. People spend hours on Facebook, on Twitter. Some people even make their living doing marketing activities using Internet tools, such as Facebook. Even funding political election campaigns, if not winning those campaigns, is sometimes actually attributed to successful Internet communications.
We've seen many breakthrough usages, for example, in health care, when health care is becoming available for elderly people, without even leaving their homes. In education, when interactive education is brought to numerous audiences in remote locations. And obviously, needless to say, there's critical applications such as coordination of disaster relief efforts in Haiti, and lately in Pakistan.
But I think really our industry is now standing on the doorstep of really I would even call it a paradigm shift, we're standing in front of the real adoption of cloud computing.
Governments around the world, small enterprises, big enterprises, when they move to the cloud, will actually move their mission critical systems, their mission critical data to the Internet. Should something happen to the Internet, those corporations, those applications, will virtually cease to exist.
And therefore, I think it's critically important that we make sure Internet develops well and we take care of the critical Internet resources. Internet has started in the universities in a naturally very Democratic environment. And I think it is our task to make sure that Internet as such is equally available on all continents of the globe, is equally available in all countries.
And therefore, IGF is a unique meeting place for all these multistakeholders and plays a very important role in making sure any obstacles for Internet's future are removed. The United Nations Working Group on Internet Governance described critical Internet resources as including the administration of the main name systems, IP addresses, administration of the root services, technical standards and so on and so on. We're building on these definitions now and we talk about IPv6 availability, its successful applications and examples of how that has been successfully implemented in different products.
We're talking about internationalization of critical Internet resources and enhanced cooperation which has become more relevant when the United States Government provided for a new arrangement with ICANN involving the international community of stakeholders in this relationship. We have seen progress around domain names that use National scripts, and developments around new Top Level Domains, and last but really not least, Internet, like I already mentioned, is critical in situations of disaster and crisis to provide coordination of relief efforts.
Many challenges in these areas still remains, and this is the place to discuss that, to make your opinion known to the others. But I would really kindly ask you to be active in this conversation, in this dialogue, but also be very respectful with each other. We are quite many. We have limited time of only 3 hours, so I ask you to keep your remarks as concise as possible.
Should you wish to develop and spend some more time on this, I would rather say: Stick to the key messages, and provide your broader perspective in writing. But I'm sure that all this will go very smoothly, as I will soon be handing you over to very experienced moderators, whom you already know from the past years.
And that is Ms. Jeanette Hofmann, Mr. Chris Disspain, and the remote moderator, Ms. Cathy Handley.
So with this, Jeanette, Chris, Cathy, I would like to hand it over to you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: It's a joy to see so many people in the room, to see so many familiar faces but new ones which is great. I'll do the logistical things, emergency exits, wings and all that. So we've got microphones dotted all over the room. We've got people with microphones also.
If you want to ask a question or make a comment, there are two ways you can do that. One way you can do it is write your name on a piece of paper and write roughly what it is you want to talk about. You don't have to write your question or comment but you can write down a subject and put your hand up and someone hopefully will come and collect that piece of paper and bring it over here, where they will be sorted and then we'll deal with them.
Alternatively if you want to talk about something we're actually talking about at the moment you can go to one of the microphones, or I believe there are some people with actual microphones who if you put your hand up will provide you with a microphone. Those of you who have been in these sessions before at the IGF with Jeanette and me will know that it's mostly about what you have to say and very little about what we have to say.
So we've got IPv4 and 6 to talk about IPv4 and 6 to talk about, international cooperation. New utilities for development and disaster and crisis. That's a fairly full agenda and we'll try to get through it if we can. The first topic is IPv4, IPv6. Jeanette.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Good morning, everybody. Our first topic is the status of IPv6 availability around the world examples, and cases. Last year's session on IPv6 started off with Paul Wilson from APNIC explaining we see a substantial increase in the allocation of IPv6 but that IPv6 traffic is still very low. In fact, much less than 1%.
This year, we focus on the availability of IPv6, but we will also look at hurdles of 4 actual employment. We start off with a short update from Ruth Puente from LACNIC, part of a workshop that took place yesterday. So please, you have the floor.
>> RUTH PUENTE: Thanks, Jeanette. Good morning ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for giving the NRO the opportunity to discuss the pressing issue of IPv6 deployment.
The NRO consists of five Regional Internet Registries, or RIRs AfriNIC, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC and the RIPE NCC. All of these organizations are represented at the Internet Governance Forum this week. Together, the RIRs represent, and are supported by, over 15,000 of organizations around the world, who coordinate the administration of part of the Internet's fundamental infrastructure.
As we are all aware by now, we are approaching the depletion of the unallocated IPv4 address pool. Therefore, one of the most significant Internet issues right now is the global deployment of IPv6.
With this in mind, the NRO organized a workshop, held yesterday, called "IPv6 Around The World." In it, participants discussed real world examples of successful IPv6 deployments and initiatives, and identified best common practices in planning, capacity building and deployment of IPv6. Several important themes emerged from this session:
One, IPv6 specific initiatives that bring together different stakeholder groups have a dramatic effect on IPv6 adoption. Examples such as go6 in Slovenia and NIC.BR in Brazil have resulted in significant uptake in those countries, and can offer models for other regions and economies to adopt.
Two, the primary driver for IPv6 is business continuity as the IPv4 Internet reaches capacity, organizations must adopt IPv6. Without IPv6, networks will not be able to grow and organizations will not be able to provide all services to all users.
And, three, governments have a clear role to play in this area and can be key pushers of technological innovation. Many governments have already deployed IPv6 on their own networks, and many more have imminent plans to do so this must be an example followed by all.
This year, for the first time, all five RIR communities took part in a coordinated global IPv6 deployment monitoring survey. Funded by the European Commission and conducted by GNKS Consult and TNO, more than 1,500 organizations from 140 economies responded to the survey. The results revealed that IPv6 awareness continues to grow, and a significant proportion of organizations are already taking steps toward IPv6 deployment.
The survey also revealed some misconceptions about the cost of adopting IPv6.
While those who have not started planning for IPv6 cited cost as a major concern
Organizations that have deployed, or are deploying, IPv6 often find the expense less than anticipated. While it is true that deployment of IPv6 is an investment, organizations must understand that delaying IPv6 because of this may ultimately result in greater costs, with last minute deployment and planning likely to increase the investment required.
Since the last IGF, the RIRs and their industry partners have been working closely with a wide range of stakeholder groups to educate, promote, and share information relating to IPv6. We have provided vital expertise to intergovernmental organizations including CITEL, the OECD, APEC, CANTO and the International Telecommunication Union. RIRs also host events like government working groups to meet the specific needs of governments in their region.
These efforts truly enhance cooperation in a multistakeholder environment. The knowledge and the resources required for IPv6 deployment are accessible to all stakeholders.
It is imperative at this stage, that your organization be actively pursuing IPv6 deployment. Thank you for your attention.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Thank you. I had a look at this survey that was commissioned by the European Commission, and what I noticed is that many ISPs mentioned, vendor support as one of the major hurdles. So I was wondering, is this a misconception, as well? Or is vendor support still a major hurdle for ISPs in order to provide IPv6? Perhaps we could just collect a few contributions from various stakeholders who are vital for the provision of IPv6? Perhaps we could hear from vendors, from ISPs, but also from Governments that who mentioned in her introduction. Patrik, please, introduce yourself.
>> PATRIK FALTSTROM: Patrik Fältström, Cisco. To a large degree I think people who say there are problems with hardware from vendors, software, and many other things are today misconceptions. The development and deployment of IPv6 is going very fast and is increasing a lot just like we saw in this investigation from the RIRs and the commission.
From Cisco's side, we do have IPv6 support in most of our equipment, and we are adding new features and new IPv6 features every week is so basing statements on problems with IPv6 on even two-months old information is not correct today. Regarding what is also important for us of course just like everyone is the deployment and the working deployment and allocation of IPv6 addresses. And we're participating heavily in all the standards organisations and policy processes, specifically the RIR's process that strongly support being where allocation policies are handled.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Does that mean there's a communication problem between vendors and ISPs you've say these are misconceptions? Or is it your perspective from Cisco is not representative and not true for all major vendors in this business?
>> Patrik Fältström: There are rumors and if you ask vendors today, today they'll say that we have but on the other hand, there are very specific issues where there are problems for example such as various specific things like DSL connections, DSL home connections. There are discussions even in the IGF on how to handle that and before the standards are settled it's hard for vendors like us to actually implement it but we have Cisco and others deployments of IPv6 also in those difficult areas.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: If I'm buying equipment at this sort of level, am I expected to simply know to ask the right questions?
>> PATRIK FALTSTROM: No, if you buy Cisco equipment today, they support both IPv6 and IPv4 and that implies also when you upgrade the software for your existing equipment, as long as the equipment can handle the amount of memory et cetera for the new version of the software you will automatically get IPv6 support.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: But you say there's some equipment I could go and buy if I don't go to Cisco for example. I can go out and buy which would not necessarily support IPv6. That's right isn't it?
>> PATRIK FALTSTROM: Yes, there's some equipment and we have for example at Cisco, we do have navigators that customers can use and verify what very explicitly what kind of features are in each version of the software for each platform, yes.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: So for the future then, are we effectively looking at, if we think of the equipment as the fuel, are we effectively looking at a situation where eventually in the old days when you had leaded pet roll and now you have unleaded there with was a gas station and some had only leaded and no gas stations only had unleaded and eventually it turned around to the other way, is that where we are at the moment?
>> PATRIK FALTSTROM: That's approximately where we are. To some degree we're in a better situation than the leaded unleaded pet roll. I think most people driving a car, they're now, they are putting they're putting leaded petrol in and then they hand in the car for a service so they upgrade the software in the car and then they can fill up unleaded petrol and didn't know about it so I think a year from now really fast we see more and more that everything that supports Internet, regardless of whether it's wireless access like in this room or gear, will be both IPv4 and IPv6 so the transition will be more and more for every day more and more transparent and invisible.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: So we have a second vendor who will give us his view and I would like to ask about mobile phones also specifically because this was an issue mentioned last year that mobile phones were sort of lagging behind. Introduce yourself.
>> JONNE SOININEN: I will. I'm Jonne Soininen from Nokia Siemens Networks, and I will talk about our products and our mother company's products, Nokia, as well. First, I would like to agree with what Patrik said that there is many of these misconceptions about the support of IP version 6 or the inability of the equipment to support that is old and it's constantly moving. This doesn't mean that everything will support IP version 6 today but it's increasingly supporting.
For instance in our gear we're basically adding IP version 6 support all the time and we have added already in the equipment that we believe that our customers which are operators for Nokia Siemens Networks that those features they need first are already upgraded and they can start using IPv6 today. Coming to the mobile phones that you Jeanette asked about, on Nokia's mobile phones all the Symbian devices support IPv6 today and have supported it for many years so you might have something that supports IPv6 already in your pocket.
Okay? You just didn't know about it. However, this is not necessarily true to every vendor but at least we have tried to do our best to support IPv6 in the grade of products where we think that they would be first used and hopefully they will be now used as well.
One thing in addition to that is also that what we see now, the interest to IPv6 has completely changed in the last year or two. Whereas before, we had to talk our customers about IPv6 and telling them they should be ready. Nowadays they actually ask us and want us to prove that we know about IPv6 and we do support it, and we understand the technology.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Thank you, Jan. This sounds encouraging. Perhaps we now turn to the role of Governments in the support of IPv6. There is Constance Burger from the Federal Ministry of Interior, Germany. Perhaps she wants to give us her view.
>> CONSTANCE BURGER: My name is Constance Burger from the Ministry of Interior. And we care about the role of IPv6 in the next years and somebody saw my presentation yesterday perhaps, I don't know. Just a few words for our role. Germany is thinking the Internet is the main driver of business innovation and growth in our country.
And one task of a Federal Government is to continue developing and designing the Internet, so that it is possible to better utilize and potential offers and we see IPv6 as a chance to turn the Internet of communication to the Internet of things and services.
And the federal government regards the adoption of IPv6 as an important part of introducing new Internet technologies and modern secure communication infrastructures. I want to say we are a buyer and user of network infrastructure and applications, public administration plays an important role in the Government in German market and with the active introduction of IPv6 and the demand of V6 capable products, will grow even more. With the political positioning, we will create greater transparency and planning certainty of participating interest groups. At the same time, the stimulus package will help motivate the IT sector and adapt IPv6.
Germany is the largest Internet nation in Europe, and in the top 5 in worldwide. About 62 million people in Germany regularly use the Internet for penetration rate of 75%. But this also means that all that Internet users must and want to retain full functionality and they will be able to do this only if they adopt IPv6. Therefore, German Government allocated with help of an address block and IPv6 and we're going to deploy IPv6 in Germany. And I think what we can do as Government, we can give the awareness and economics the transparency that's coming up and we need the help of all these parts from the industry.
And we want to go forward with IPv6 and this is a signal I can give to you and we need the help from the other Member States or the IGF members to share the experience. Thank you.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Thank you, Constance. Can I ask you a concrete question? Are there any Germany any experiences with procurement policies or perhaps also other Governments would like to speak up on this issue? I would like to know whether Governments have implemented such policies, but even more if they have any noticeable effect. Does it make a difference, yesterday?
>> CONSTANCE BURGER: I think it's a longer process and in Germany, the Constitutional levels are so that we can just recommend some things to municipality states and the federation. So we had adopt the action plan from the EU commission and there are many advices how to procure new services and products and I think it works but we need a longer time in Governments. That's a problem. These are small steps but I can we can see it in 10 years.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Thank you. Maria Hall from Sweden.
>> MARIA HALL: Thank you very much. Maria, I'm working for the Minister of Enterprise of Communication in Sweden, the IT Department.
I would like to underline what my dear colleague from Germany is saying how important it is you're actually engaged. I think this IPv6 deployment is one very good example of the dialogue between the business sector and the Governments or the public sector which is also the municipalities, it's very, very important. Live I've had good opportunity to have this kind of dialogue within this community and I'm also Co Chairing the Working Group which has been discussed in this IPv6 deployment for a rather long time so in Sweden right now actually we have the IPv6 deployment more or less within the e government development process and one of the first steps that we took a couple of years ago was to have this procurement event because procurement is one tool that's very strong for everybody but as I try to put it really into the e government process. To use this tool to give a bunch of different demands. IPv6 of course is one thing but of course it's like security and some kind of other parameters. So that's the first thing.
The next thing is we need to have some kind of strategy for turning on the IPv. It's very good that you're trying to have all these tools and software and things. To prepare for IPv6 but the next very important thing is you actually start using it because what I'm trying to say at my colleagues at the Government is one day it's going to be a citizen that's only having IPv6. Then of course you want to make sure that person or that company is actually going to be able to use our public e services. So that is one thing that I'm having much dialogue with my other colleagues especially at the Ministry of finance who's responsible for the e government development in Sweden. Thank you very much.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Thank you, Maria. What about deployment of IPv6 in other regions in the public sector? Could you perhaps speak on that? Need a microphone here.
>> Yes, I can say that in the few countries in our region that are active on IPv6, they are enforcing their procurement measure adding IPv6 as a requirement and giving some effect. Recently we have heard from Egypt whereby all the access to their IPv6 lab has to be in IPv6 and to do that they have to request from the provider to be IPv ready, and that has created an interest IPv6 ready and that created interest to provide the service and serve the Minister of ICT. I know that other countries like Uganda and can Kenya are investigating the same thing but yeah if it is there but it's a long time process and it has to be done in cooperation with the private sector, as well.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Thank you, Artiel. If there's nothing yeah, please.
>> HASANUL HAQ INU: Thank you. I'm from Bangladesh, a member of
Parliament and chair on communications. I need to emphasize in a the
transition from IPv4 to 6, we need to have governmental intervention in
a developing country like us.
If the government doesn't initiate the process, then it is -- it's a
very long way. So in my country, the government has issued an order
their that -- reported to the country should have a capability of IPv6.
That helps. That helps. So I want to say that Internet governance
forum, please tell the comments of the respective countries to
implement IPv6. That is our experience. You know that we have 59
million mobile users in my country at this moment. 5 million Internet
users. It is growing fast. But at this moment to build up the
capacity. So we need training in all these things. APNIC is giving us
training in our country. But as a developing country we will think
that within 2012 we can catch up, because we have IPv4 version. But
the new or comers will go directly to IPv6 version.
So the transition, the tacking will not be that much.
See we think that we can pick up the challenge and by 2012 we can do
it.
Thank you very much.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. Does that make it more likely, then,
do we think -- I think Maria was saying that at some point there will
be a person who is only IPv6. And unless -- so may need to access
everything. It sounds as if it may be that actually some of the first
people who are going to be only IPv6 will actually be in the developing
countries because as you have said, you have to -- because of your
issue, you have to mandate that the equipment is IPv6.
So we may end up actually having the first pure IPv6 access in
developing countries.
Do we have another --
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Yeah, we have quite a few. We have Pakistan,
but keep it short. I also want to call on ISPs.
>> FOUAD BAJWA: Fouad Bajwa from Pakistan. I'm going to share some
comments from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority IPv6 Monitoring
Group.
I'm just reading out a report issued by them earlier this year.
Their recommendations have been that they have to increase IPv6
awareness and capacity building, and the strategy for this would be
organising seminars and training programmes for university students and
professionals.
The second organisation was establish a National Internet Registry to
overlook IP and DNS management issues in the country.
The third one was provide some profit incentives to Internet industry
for encouraging them to adopt IPv6 based infrastructure. These
incentives include reduction in regulatory fees and tax rebates.
Four, upstream Internet connectivity providers may be asked to enable
IPv6 readiness in their networks.
Five, necessary funding be provided through agencies like the
Pakistan National ICT R&D Fund Co to establish IPv6 research labs for
academic institutions.
Number six, an exclusive National IPv6 road map may be devised
catering future strategy for IPv6 transition.
The comment of the public at large, the technical community in
Pakistan was more or less based on the fact that we need a business
case not looking at actually the profitable aspects, but as the need
for continuity. Whether businesses and organizations would be able to
continue. Provisioning of the Internet. Since there's a lack of
content providers in Pakistan the issue remains that IPv6 stands at a
very, very minute level of implementation. Thank you.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Thank you. Jan Zorz?
>> JAN ZORZ: Hi. My name is Jan Zorz. I come from Slovenia
institute, and I want to make a statement.
We are about to submit a list of IPv6 requirements in ICT equipment
that could be used by governments and other stakeholders for the
tenders when they are buying the equipment.
With the support from several working group chairs-- and we are
submitting this paper to IPv6 working group at -- together with Sander Steffann. I would-like to invite you to be part of this discussion so
we can come up with a document that makes sense. So RIPE-NCC can probably publish it as a recommendation. Thank you.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Thank you. In sounds really useful.
Next one is Leonid from the Russian ccTLD.
>> LEONID TODOROV: I would add some twist to the discussion. My
understanding is that for the Internet for end users mostly and we
should think of them primarily and that said, I was wondering --
yesterday I attended a workshop on IPv6 deployment. I'm appearing --
in this regard, but I realised that cited the costs of deployment as
one of the measured hurdles. And I wonder if there has been any cost
benefits analysis, any calculation which may be useful instrumental to
some other countries which are about to deploy IPv6. That's number
one. Number two, you may consider me new libertarian, I know it's not
fashionable at all, but I can see here in this room CISCO, and knock
Nokia, and other giants deploying IPv6 deployment. And other people
from mostly from the governments who insist on governmental
intervention and an active role of the government in these process.
Sew my instincts tell me -- you know, I'm from Russia, we are
notorious for having certain kind of alliances between the government
and big businesses.
So my instincts tell me whenever there is such a unanimous let's say
expression of interest, you know, we should be in the -- to understand
whether it's a kind of alliance which is behind that to protect certain
vested interests.
IPv6 deployment. It will certainly affect the cost of the process
and that will finally fall upon end users.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Vested interest. Do you have anything
specific?
>> LEONID TODOROV: No. No. I don't have a specific interest.
So if there is anybody to --
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: I think that may be falling on deaf ears, Leonid.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Next speaker is Sara Lynn from the Chinese
industry of information technology.
Otherwise I would like to ask if there are ISPs in the room. Because
this suggestion of venders that there are major misconception, it's too
good to let it drop. So --
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Someone with a hand up there. Hopefully
responding as an ISP. And -- another one there. Okay. So hello. Can
we get the microphone here?
And another one -- start with this one because he has a microphone.
Could you introduce yourself, please? ? Hang on.
>> NIRA SONKA: My name is Nira Sonka, I represent telecommunication
from India.
Feedback on equipment supporting IPv6. If you look at Indian market
with 600 million -- most of the documents are 8 to 10 years deployed.
And I seriously doubt that -- IPv6. Number two is all that you have
done for the economics and -- most of the venders are saying IPv will
come in the future. The question is here how do we quote it between
IPGF on various forums. Ensuring that IPv6 equipment that is going
forward supported, especially for the service part of the market like
India, and so on and so forth. Thank you.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Thank you.
Benson?
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Gentleman here.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: You need to press the left button, close to the
light.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: There's one on its way, sir.
>> Hello?
>> NIGEL ADAMS: My name is Nigel, I represent a -- DC net. We have
been offering IPv6 services for some six years now. And to those ISPs
who say there is no demand for IPv6, could I just say that we are now
gaining contracts against those ISPs who don't offer IPv6. And that
you should be educating your sales forces. Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Can I ask you a question?
If I'm a customer of yours, what's -- what do you say to me is the
benefit to me?
And do you differentiate in the service that you've provided, or am I
paying a different price because it's IPv6?
>> NIGEL ADAMS: No, IPv6 is a standard service as far as we're
concern the. Most of our customers are hosting providers, and a lot of
hosting providers realise that they will need to offer IPv6 very
shortly or they will start to lose customers.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: So awareness is out there is what you're saying.
>> NIGEL ADAMS: Awareness is out there. It's up to you to train
your sales force.
>> BENSON NCUBE: Thank you. My name is Benson Ncube, representing
Cabling for Africa, ICT provider in Botswana.
In regard to the -- IT forward to IPv6, there is a big challenge,
especially for developing countries where there is an investment heavy
investment, on the equipment that is currently running IP version 4
services. And for the corporate world it's difficult in developing
countries to justify the purchase of the new equipment.
I don't know whether the venders have some support that is there to
push up this process for developing countries. Things that -- systems.
This is what I need to be enlightened.
Thank you.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Thank you for this comment. Perhaps when
Patrick speaks, he might respond to that question. But before that, we
have Jonathan Zuck.
>> JONATHAN ZUCK: Thanks. Jonathan Zuck, ACT, corporation for
technology.
I think IPv6 is one of those technologies that is going to come up in
a number of different sections of the discussion. I think we do a
disservice when we think about IPv6 as a replacement for a waning
existing service instead of as a new service. And we need to be more
focused on why we're building demand for IPv6 in terms of increased
security, greater numbers of addresses that allow the tracking of
things-like drugs, during a crisis, et cetera, children, et cetera.
That I think will lead to real demand and real opportunities for cloud
computing and small business growth, et cetera. IPv6 has to be thought
of a critical resource on its own, a new resource and not overflow
because we keep discussing it in the context of waning IPv4 addresses.
I think that's why we do ourselves a disservice on the demand side when
we use IPv4 as the Gateway to IPv6. We shouldn't do that. It's a
critical resource that we have to get deployed right now.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Jonathan.
Raul?
>> JONATHAN ZUCK: Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Also -- all right.
>> RAUL: I want to make a point regarding --
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: You need to introduce yourself.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: He say Raul. Echeberria, University of Latin
America, the -- Internet society. I want to mention something that --
regarding the kind of agreements that are available in ISPs in
developing countries. Because it is -- it -- it doesn't seem very
logical, but the ISPs in developing countries have less legacy
equipment. So it is like a strange coincidence in this case, but due
to the fact that the Internet has been deployed in developing countries
in the last few years, most of the equipment that we see in ISPs in
developing countries are almost compatible with IPv6. In fact, when we
offer training workshops in IPv6 in any country of Latin America, it is
just to talk with the ISP few weeks before the workshop and help them
to configure IPv6. And without investments, they can offer us, provide
us IPv6 services in any location of the city, given ISP. So I think
that sometimes we could conclude wrongly that because we are speaking
about developing countries, the kind of equipment that are located
there are less modern or less powerful than equipments in other places
of the world. Thank you.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Before we call on Izumi, two matters of
procedure, first we woo like to close down the list of speakers for
this topic. And second when you want to speak and fill out one of
these pieces of paper, you need to write down your name twice on the
second piece of paper so that the scribes have a chance to get your
names.
And now it's Izumi.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Patrick first.
Yes, Patrik?
>> PATRIK FALTSTROM: Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Jeanette.
Let me try to respond to some of the questions or statement that was
said about venders and equipment.
First of all let me emphasize what Raul just said. It is in fact
much easier in many cases to deploy IPv6 in developing countries. Just
because of the lack of legacy equipment they in many cases have more
modern equipment. And we have many projects at CISCO, for example,
where we together with the Internet Society is building connect points
in Africa with equipment that supports IPv6 from the beginning. It is
also the case that I think that we will see the first IPv6 only end
cost root servers in a developing country because it's easier to deploy
there.
So what we are doing from CISCO is we are working very hard, as I
said, to make sure that deployment of IPv6 is a software upgrade for
anything that is newer than -- well, pretty old equipment.
There is an issue, though, that was mentioned from our friend from
Bangladesh, about interoperability. We do not have as much experience
with IPv6 as we have with IPv4. That is something people should know.
We also from CISCO and other venders try to help people like Jon in
profitability and how to deploy IPv6. But most of that development is
happening in the operation communities with the IRs and in the
developing world. It's the developing countries, once again, as Raul
said, where we of course could do more. A lot of things are happening.
>> IZUMI AIZU: My name is Izumi Aizu from the Tama University of
economic -- I have been with the study group convened by the industry
of communication. On behalf of ministry next to me, now sitting, we
have disclosed guideline for ISPs for the publicly relations of -- or
information disclosure on how to really -- they make public
announcement of IPv6 adoption status.
Inside that there are two classes of information. These are sort of
mandatory. And these are the optional. I cannot go into the details
of the time constraints. But we sorted out what kind of information is
essential for the end users for using the ISP services. When are they
going to adapt to the IPv6 or not. And stuff like that.
The general agreement is it's voluntary that each ISP will decide
what kind of information to disclose. But they have some common
guidelines by the industry so that consumers will have a clear
understanding of the services they use.
Thank you.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Thank you Izumi, despite the fact I have
already closed the last list of speaker, there's one last question I
would ask the representatives of the RIRs in the room. It's a
question, Chris, yesterday, when we prepared the session.
If you are asked could change one thing to enhance the deployment of
IPv6 in the coming year, what would it be?
Anybody willing?
Axel? Raul?
You need a microphone for Raul.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Raul.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: It's a good question, isn't it?
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Yes, I don't know why I came to the microphone.
(Laughter.)
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: I think that's -- my perception is that things
are going well. So I don't see the need of changing such big things.
I think we will see really deployment of IPv6 in the next few years.
But we have work of many people very much in creating the capacities
around the world.
As the fact -- the kind of discussion that is being held here today
is a proof of that. The level of details and the discussions and
concerns are very different than five years ago.
So I think that's -- why we are not seeing yet all the deployment of
IPv6, we are ready for that.
What I would change, probably I could start work more intensively
with equipment provider before, as we have staff training and call the
attention of the community to this. As probably we should have started
before that and talking more with the economic sector in order to
create more -- our attention is also in the economic sector. The
people that wish to study in engineer in the beginning of 2000 is the
people that is monitoring the networks today.
So proof of that assumption that I would have -- I could have
change --
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Raul, I thank you for this very diplomatic
answer.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: And to close on IPv6, the NRRs have a stand in
the area and this says if you are a content publisher, equipment
vendor, or any other business, go see them and grab this information.
So thank you all very much for the contributions on IPv4 and IPv6.
We're going to move on now to the -- the very cleverly titled
internationalizing critical resource management and enhanced
cooperation, two areas critical Internet resources management and
enhanced cooperation. Neither of which there is a clear definition of.
But as those of you who have been to these sessions before will know,
one of the things that there is no doubt fits fairly and squarely under
the heading of critical Internet resources management is ICANN. So we
have asked the chairman of ICANN, Peter, if he would lead us off with a
very brief introduction on the last 12 months. And since we were last
here, if we could have a microphone for Peter, please. His hand is up.
Microphone is coming, Peter.
>> PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Chris and Jeanette. Chris, I wonder if you would mind if I finished off IPv6 and mention what ICANN is doing about that. There's a couple of references in our one page strategic plan and the first is internally taking care of business so we're IPv6 compliant internally. The other thing is a leadership role in relation to advocacy for IPv6 and we see this has a lot of explaining in the non internet world exactly how the allocation works. Will there's some confusion in some places about the RIR process so we see our role as explaining that and encouraging uptake through that process and of course there's a lot of personal speaking engagements I do the CEO, Rod is here and I think can join in. Without trivializing that, one of the things we focus on is the extraordinary number of addresses, 370 trillion, trillion, trillion. So we use that as a way of reassuring those people who are sometimes told there's a shortage of IPv6 addresses. There's some confusion there between the two systems.
So as part of that I've had to look at some of the incredible analogies that are available, grains of sand on the beaches of the earth aren't enough to equal that number. The most recent one I've seen is there's enough addresses in IPv6 to give every person on the earth enough addresses, the same number of addresses as there are atoms of carbon in a metric on the of coal so we're getting this message up and working with everybody else in developing that.
I want to finish on that and the point I make is the same one that Jonathan Zuck made in reminding people that SMS technology was a feature that was exploited and turned into a service. Go and look we say to the entrepreneurs, look at what this new IPv6 will allow by way of new business opportunities.
So that's a quick roundup on that. Coming to enhanced cooperation, I think we start by looking at where this terminology comes in, and it's clause 69 of the Tunis agenda. The first point to note is that really it's about enhanced cooperation to enable Governments to do what Governments do and that was on an equal footing to carry out their roles and responsibilities in international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet.
And then there's a very important qualification because enhanced cooperation is not about, but not in the day to day technical and operational matters. Of course that's what ICANN is doing. We're responsible for coordinating the day to day technical and operational matters in relation to aspects of the Internet.
We're enhanced cooperation bites in relation to organisations like ours is working together with a system of legal practices et cetera, processes towards enhanced cooperation involving all stakeholders and providing annual performance reports. So I guess the starting point for us in relation to that is just a comment that we are a multistakeholder organisation so it's in our very DNA to be cooperative. Otherwise we can't function.
And remembering also that ICANN coordinates a dozen Governments. So we actively coordinate with all of the if you like the internal elements that make up ICANN starting for example with the ccTLD managers who were in place before ICANN was formed and we coordinate with the ccTLD associations in relation to for example disaster recovery and other exercises and we're pleased to see yesterday here at the IGF that the regional ccTLD associations have cooperated in developing a next step cooperation for contingency planning.
We coordinate obviously with the RIRs allocating perhaps most recently global policy in relation to equitable distribution of the remaining IPv4 address space.
We actively work with the root server operators, we cooperate with them. We have our own at large organisation building up individual memberships all over the world. And more clearly and by way of contract we cooperate with the registries and registrars of the generic name space. And last in this list of internal cooperation, the Governmental Advisory Committee, hugely important to ICANN to have the support of Governments by way of governmental advice on those matters of public policy affecting what we do.
And in relation specifically to enhancing that cooperation, we've had a joint Board GAC Working Group, Heather Dryden has been leading that and Ray Plzak has been leading the relationships to increase the efficiency of the GAC and ICANN. The subjects by all of us, we commit to all of these kinds of things that we the, tans apparently and with full accountability.
Looking externally we participate for example and we participated in the waste, the Working Group on Internet Governance and we've become firm supporters obviously from the very beginning of the IGF. At this IGF, the Chairman of the Board, the CEO other Board members and staff are here in Lithuania to participate, cooperate, to exchange views, to share and all of the benefits that the IGF does. More formally than that there's a whole series of MOUs where we cooperate with external organizations. I mentioned a few of those with UNESCO as being helpful in relation to the IDN project.
We have MOUs with Egyptian and Russian scientific and cultural and technical NGOs, with the American, the OAS intercommission telecommunications, with Pacific island, so we have a formal process of cooperation through MOUs and they're all visible on our website. We have formal liaisons with the IETF, people who develop the standards of the technical operation of the Internet, with the World Wide Web consortium, ITSE and the ITU who form a group and with the security and stability Advisory Committee. So we have a constant eye on enhanced cooperation because that's how we operate.
Recent exercises of course IDNs that have helped increase the exposure of the Internet and will bring forth we think a whole new generation of entrepreneurs and the developers in those countries whose scripts are now available. We focus a lot on translation and interpretation. We've got millions of words on our documents translated and interpreted. We've done reachout to other organisations such as the ITU. I visited the Secretary General of the ITU on taking office and we've had Hamadoun Touré come and speak at our meetings and there are other exchanges going on and we do that with the other bodies and as I said the CEO speaks around the world at these kind of organisations enhancing cooperation.
Chris, is that what you're looking for? That's a list of the kind of enhanced cooperation.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: That will do to go on. Thank you very much. We'll throw the floor open. There are a number of people who want to make comments or ask questions. Brian, are you in the room, Brian Cute?
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Last year, the Affirmation of Commitments had just been released when we met, and we thought it would be good now to talk about what has been done, what has been implemented of the Affirmation of Commitments. And we ask the chair of the first review panel to comment on that.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: But he's gone on a walk about. So we'll try and locate Brian, if necessary I'll say something about it because I'm on the review team.
Let's take our first comments from the floor. Have Bertrand first and then the gentleman from China.
>> BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: Good morning, my name is Bertrand de La Chapelle, the Ambassador for Internet Governance issues in the French foreign affairs Ministry. I want to make two quick comments. The first one relates to enhanced cooperation. As some of you may know, there has been a very interesting discussion during the commission on science and technology for development meeting in may in Geneva and this resulted in a Resolution that was sent to ECOSOC and endorsed in ECOSOC in July that asked the Secretary General of the U.N. to organise consultations on enhanced cooperation on a multistakeholder basis.
I think this is a very important step forward, because until now, there has been a strong disagreement on what exactly enhanced cooperation meant, whether it was a process that was supposed to deal only with Governments and what they were supposed to do on their own, or whether it was something about the interaction of different Governments with the other stakeholders.
In previous IGFs, I had the opportunity to explain that in our view, the term "enhanced cooperation" in the various paragraphs, 61, 70, 71 of the Tunis agenda, actually refer to this very specific element and the definition of Internet Governance which is the words "in their respective roles."
The reality and the substance of enhanced cooperation discussion is to determine under which conditions the different stakeholders have a responsibility in the different stages of elaboration of a regime, in the different venues and structures where they participate, and depending on the different topics. So I'm looking forward to the exchanges and consultations by the Secretary General of the U.N.
The second point I want to make because I will unfortunately have to moderate a session that overlaps with this one, is on the topic of the critical Internet resources. We all know that there is an interesting double deadline. At the end of 2011 and at the end of 2012 regarding the INR contract and the cooperative agreement between the United States Government and VeriSign for 2012. These are two different contracts. What I want to share here to help move the discussion forward is we believe very strongly as long as the discussion on the management of the root server system and the oversight if we call it that way, as long as the discussion is framed in the terms of the unilateral control of one Government over the critical Internet resource of the Internet, we will not be able to have a constructive discussion.
And the way we see it is that the subject and the challenge we have is to find a common wording for the problem we want to address, and the way we understand it is that we all have a common challenge and a common objective, which is to ensure the integrity of the root zone file and what we mean by the integrity of the root zone file is we all want to make sure that no one voluntarily or unvoluntarily can tamper with the root zone file and once we agree this is a common interest for all Governments, for all stakeholders, then we can begin to discuss whether there is a possibility to go even further than the current arrangement.
But I want to say very publicly and very clearly that we do understand that no evolution towards a better internationalization of this mechanism can be achieved if on the side of the United States, which is fulfilling this function at the moment, there is not the guarantee that the evolution will ensure the same level of protection and security that the current system provides.
So in conclusion I wanted just to frame this debate because this is the very good benefit of the Internet Governance Forum to be to attempt to find a common formulation for the problem, instead of pitting one group of actors versus another group of actors, or one specific one in this case. And I hope this will help the discussion. Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Bertrand. Gentleman from China? Mr. Lin?
>> XIAO LIN: critical Internet resources. We understand the fora so far addressed the management of critical Internet resources. This shows how important this topic is and it also shows that it is also the main mission of the IGF
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Could you briefly summarize what you said so far?
>> XIAO LIN: I'll start again. It's a privilege and pleasure to be able to participate in this Forum and to have this opportunity to discuss the management of the critical Internet resources. Now, over the course of the various fora we've had we've already stressed the management of critical Internet resources, and this shows I think very well how important this subject is, and that it is one of the main missions an essential mission of our Forum. To perfect the management system and to be able to have an equitable share can also give us a basis for an equitable sharing globally, and also it allows the Internet to fully play its role.
The Chinese Government always attaches importance to the subject and has come so over the course of the last 10 years. We have tremendous development in this area and up until the first half of this year, we already have 420 million users of the Internet in China and we have increasing the rate of utilization of Internet, and we already have a very huge number of users as I said and each year we have more than 15 million users of the Internet that are added to the ones already using it. So we have developed many activities in this area.
Now, at the same time, with this tremendous surge in the development of the Internet, we have problems of domain names, these areas are extremely important. We are using 1/5 of the Internet, but the domain names in China does represent only 1/20 of all those used throughout the world, so the management of the critical Internet resources is critical for critically important for China, and if we talk about the actual management of the critical Internet resources, well, China's cooperating with many countries around the world. We have the same common position. We're prepared to communicate with other countries to resolve problems that arise in connection with the Internet all over the world. Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you very much. I think we're all aware and agree that the resources are critical. The question or the sometimes disagreements arise about how they should actually be managed but we certainly all agree they're critical. I'm going to ask Milton to take the microphone next and Brian, if you could get ready to do your bit next. Milton? You go ahead.
>> MILTON MUELLER: All right. Yes, I wanted to talk about the
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Please introduce yourself.
>> MILTON MUELLER: Milton Mueller, Syracuse University, Internet Governance project. So the IANA contract is an important element of the Internet Governance regime. Because it's coming up for renewal, it is something we should be discussing in this session. It would be nice to actually discuss a real Governance issue in this session. I would like to make a few comments about that starting with what I thought were very helpful observations from Bertrand.
I agree with him that the issue is the integrity and functionality of the Internet's root, and that is the criteria against which any institutional changes should be held up against so I agree that Governments to complain about U.S. unilateral control have a burden to explain how any alternative institutional arrangement would improve things with respect to the functioning of the Internet.
I would remind Bertrand and everyone else it's not just the Domain Name root we're talking about, its also the addressing hierarchy root and this is an increasingly important element of Internet Governance. Some people have talked about the separation of functions that are currently bundled in the IANA contract as an element of Governance that could be changed or reformed in the process of moving forward.
So for example, the IANA contract could be separated into a standards component going to the IETF, an addressing component going to somebody, and the Domain Name component. It doesn't necessarily have to be bundled in one organisation.
And that brings me to my last point, which has to do with the role of the IANA contract as an accountability mechanism, that if you simply assume or give this contract to one organisation, ICANN, which has weak accountability things, weak accountability mechanisms already, the IANA contract renewal could be a good way to ensure that it is more accountable by making it renewable and competitively bid over a period of, let's say, 5 to 10 years. Thank you.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: May I just ask back Milton, you said in the, I would say, unusual, careful way that some people suggest to split these functions. Do you think they should be split?
>> MILTON MUELLER: There are advantages and disadvantages that need to be discussed carefully about that. The advantage is the decentralization of authority, and there are very few technical interdependencies, there are some but very few technical interdependencies between the address and the domain name root administration so why do they have to be together? The advantage is the decentralization of power. The advantage is you might have to create another policy Forum and duplicate the costs of people running around talking about these things.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Milton, thank you. I want to make it really clear to everybody in this room there's no close down on this if you want to talk about IANA contract, that's absolutely fine. As a moderator I'm sure it will be very interesting but I do need to say to be fair, as a lawyer I'm extremely well aware of the fact there are certain people in this room who will not talk about it and cannot talk about it because it's a legal contract so while I'm very happy to discuss it for the next half an hour, I know that the people you probably want to come to the microphone won't.
Brian, can I get you to do your brief introduction to the ITRT? Last year as Jeanette said we were in Egypt celebrating acknowledging at least the signing of the Affirmation of Commitments between ICANN and the U.S. Government. And since then, stuff has been happening based on that Affirmation of Commitments and one of those things that's been happening is the gloriously named accountability and transparency review team.
Which Brian has the honour to chair so I've asked him to give us a very brief update because this goes of course to transparency and internationalization and enhanced cooperation so Brian, thank you.
>> BRIAN CUTE: Thank you, Chris. And, Chris, you have the joy of participating on the team, as well. The ITRT as we refer to it. We began our work in April. We're a group of 12. We have structured our work with a focus on paragraph 9.1 of the Affirmation of Commitments that among other things focuses on how ICANN manages its public input processes, it's PDPs and decision making.
We're the first of a series of review teams under the Affirmation of Commitments. We've structured our work into two work streams: The team itself has four Working Groups that is broken up the elements of paragraph 9.1 and is beginning to do a review of how ICANN is improving and working on those processes internally.
We also engaged an independent expert the Berkman Centre from Harvard University to do specific case studies for us. Where we are in our work is that come mid October, somewhere around the 15th to the 20th, we will be issuing proposed draft recommendations for public comment.
We do presently have a public comment period open. It doesn't have an end date. We are happy to take comment from the community. From a practical standpoint, if you had comments to factor them into our draft recommendations that go out by mid October, I'd suggest you get them in by the end of this month for us to consider them but there will be a follow on public comment period starting in mid October and we're obligated to deliver a final report to the ICANN Board by the end of December this year. You can find the information for review on the ICANN website on the left hand side. There's a button for the AoC reviews. Click through there and you'll find our work.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Thank you, Brian. I have a question of a more general nature. This is a new procedure, like a bit of an experimental procedure. Would you say, what have you learned so far? Do you think this is a method that could be used also for other organisations to enhance legitimacy and accountability and sort of transnational sphere?
>> BRIAN CUTE: Thank you for the question. We've actually learned quite a bit so far. Part of our final report will be reporting to the Board our learnings in this process. It is an interesting and challenging process. The people who are in it are populated from the ICANN community. We are to a large extent insiders, if you will. We're very conscious of that. We have conflicts of interest policies, we're very aware that our output needs to be embraced by the community, embraced by the Board. So we need to be autonomous. We need to be neutral and we need to be independent.
We spend a great deal of time talking about that in the early phases. In terms of the work itself, we took a blank slate approach to our task, the Affirmation of Commitments is a new agreement between ICANN and the Department of Commerce. There have been prior efforts by ICANN to address accountability and transparency. We're looking back at those prior efforts, but in terms of how we structure our work and our outputs it's been a blank slate approach. We've developed our own principles along the way. We'll certainly share our thoughts with the community and the Board at the end of the process as to how this mechanism worked and yes, I do think it's a good potential mechanism for other organisations.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Brian. I think it's pretty clear from this session so far, and previous sessions, that there is a there are many understandings of what enhanced cooperation might mean, in very different contexts. We've had Peter telling us what the Tunis agenda says specifically and Bertrand putting a slightly different interpretation on effectively the same words. But one thing I think is really clear is that it means different things to different people.
So we're going to perhaps if Heather Dryden, the interim chair of the Governmental Advisory Committee will address the issue of enhanced cooperation specifically with respect to the GAC and ICANN, we could get a microphone to Heather, please.
Others if you have things to say don't forget to put your hand up and giver us a piece of paper. Heather thank you.
>> HEATHER DRYDEN: I'd like to talk a bit about the Governmental Advisory Committee at ICANN. Peter den gate thrush gave U an overview of ICANN and the certainly the Advisory Committee is an important part of that multistakeholder community he was describing. The role of the Governmental Advisory Committee is to provide advice on public policy issues arising from the coordination of the DNS. And in terms of enhancing cooperation, there are efforts external to the organisation.
For example, there are about 100 members of the Committee, and that includes both Governments and public authorities, as well as intergovernmental organisations that regularly attend GAC meetings, and in that sense, UNESCO and WIPO would be two good examples of that kind of interaction.
But there are numerous examples of the GAC working with other parts of the community to deliver positive outcomes regarding the Domain Name System that are of particular interest to Governments. I'm sure many of you are aware of the introduction of internationalized domain names, country codes, and of course, Governments are very keen to take up the opportunities there. I'm not sure of the exact number that we have now but many Governments have taken advantage of the fast track that was developed as part of a Working Group within the ICANN community where governments and others including the Country Code name Supporting Organisation really did collaborate effectively in order to quickly introduce internationalized domain names. If we speak of more current efforts in terms of new generic top level domains, the GAC recently recognized the importance of maintaining this aim of universal resolvability for the Domain Name System so I think that's quite significant. Also, Peter den gate thrush and Chris Disspain talked about the joint Working Group which is between the Government Committee and the Board of ICANN to review the role of the GAC and this includes really key questions in how those communications and that relationship continues to be cooperative, and an effective, for example, Government advice. So how that is received by the Board and the processes surrounding that, and whether improvements can be made to that.
Also, in terms of liaisons from that Governmental Committee to other parts of ICANN, what is the role of those liaisons? And do we need to look at having other kinds of liaisons or other means of ensuring that GAC advice and advice from other parts of the community are looked at early enough in ICANN's bottom up policy development processes so that that process works as effectively as possible.
So we're really looking forward to coming out with concrete recommendations when that work concludes in December of this year. So thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Heather. We have one more comment on enhanced cooperation from Peter van Roste, if you could bring a microphone here. Heather, I just wanted to respond to you and say it's also true isn't it that actually enhanced cooperation in the GAC itself is not just, it's not just without, it's within and Governments who are in fact in favor of enhanced cooperation, because you don't have all Governments, and so it would be good for other Governments to enhancely cooperate by joining the GAC presumably. Heather, did you want to say something? No, okay.
So we're going to move on to our next topic in a second but before we do, did you want go ahead. Yep.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN LEBLOND: Thank you. Olivier Crepin Leblond, I'm an ISOC ambassador, but I'll speak on my own behalf, also at the European At Large Organisation, I'm the Secretary of EURALO and ICANN. I just wanted to add to what was said earlier about public participation in ICANN.
There is the at large which effectively is users and Civil Society organisations, consumer groups and so on. I wanted to say you can get involved through at large and ALAC asks us to bring your point forward in the ICANN processes that's all. Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you very much, Olivier. As a final example of enhanced cooperation something which Peter alluded to a little earlier on, Peter, would you like to thank you.
>> PETER VAN ROSTE: Thanks, Chris. Good morning everyone. My name is Peter van Roste. I'm the General Manager for CENTR. When ccTLDs want to cooperate they roughly speaking have three different fora, the IGF to discuss all things that are technical matters. On global ccTLD related policies they can come to the ICANN meetings and discuss their ccTLD issues that are of interest of them. For all operational issues however they do have their regional organisations. Regional organisations we have AFTLD, LACTLD, Asia and central for Europe. Regional organisations group typically by all the ccTLDs from their region and allow them to exchange information. In the buildup for IGF 2010 we quickly came to the conclusion that especially with the lessons learned from the previous IGFs, we really wanted to have something tangible as an outcome from this workshop. So what we agreed to do is instead of informally exchanging information between those four regional organisations we're effectively going to build a knowledge platform that will group basically all ccTLDs across the world, and this again would focus on operational issues.
So it's sharing information is broader than security. But since in the context of our workshop this was the most relevant element this was picked from that debate. APTLD has obviously more know how about IDNs than anyone else. Centre is looking for instance in different aspects and LACTLD maybe has unfortunately the opportunity to share contributions from Chile and Haiti on how to deal with natural disasters. So that's basically it. The timing is that by Cartejena we have a detailed list and by Q1 next year we should be up and running with a knowledge database.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Peter, excellent. Unless we have any final burning comments we'll move on to third of our topics which is new TLDs and internationalized domain names for development and Jeanette, would you like to start the ball rolling?
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Yeah, last year during the main session, I think Chris announced the submission of proposals of, for the first IDN TLDs and they're added to the root so we hope to hear from perhaps Egypt or Russia about the progress being made since then and we also have reports from workshops. I think Zayed or Fatimah will report from the workshop, good.
>> FATIMA SEYE SYLLA: Yes, yesterday morning Fatima is the AFRALO chair. I'm from Senegal. So yesterday morning, AFRALO held a workshop on new TLDs and IGNs for development. The importance of obstacles. And this workshop addressed with the very rich panelists the new ccTLD programme, history, opportunities and barriers in developing countries. The IDN ccTLD fast track implementation and the impact of new IDNs on the development for poor countries and communities. The debate demonstrated the existence of a big concern about the real impact on needy countries and communities, and the questions related to possible, the possible number of applications for new TLDs from developing countries and the poor communities. The effective impact of the new TLDs and IDNs on development and mainly the barriers linked to the application costs, the application cost, the technical requirements such as IPv6 and DNS 6, process the complexity of the application, technical human resources we're lacking.
Another major issue linked to the programme inclusiveness was debated. There were still worries even though ICANN is doing a very good job in having Working Groups working around these issues, there were still worries about conducting studies prior to implementation, meaning here feasibility studies, during and after implementation, to see if we're going in the right way or not.
For example, is it the best way to open a single round of unlimited number of applications rather than successive rounds of limited number of applications so that we can correct what needs to be corrected after the experience of each round has been done. So that's all. And we're here to answer your questions if needed.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. It seems to me that what you're saying has come out of this workshop is that development, new TLDs for development is a double edged sword. It could be good for development, but perhaps it could actually be difficult, or make development more difficult. And I think Zahid you were going to say a few words.
>> ZAHID JAMIL: Zahid Jamil from Pakistan. Zahid Jamil from Pakistan. I was one of the panelists yesterday I've been asked to give you the more specific obstacles looked at by the group of organizers. As far as the IDNs are concerned, I think it's a very important thing that ICANN is doing introducing IDNs but I'll just focus a little more on what the new gTLDs which are not just new IDN gTLDs but new gTLDs what they'll do in general for developing countries. This was discussed yesterday. The chair of the ICANN Board was kind enough to be in the workshop yesterday and confirmed there would be something around the region of 300 new TLDs per year that would be probably mandated by ICANN.
The impact of this specifically on developing countries is something that was a topic of some discussion. What is also sort of discussed was the issue of the economic analysis, which has come out, and the root scaling study that come out from ICANN which have been very good studies. The only problem with it is that we are now at a stage where the process or the draft applicant guidebook is going to convert into a crystallized final guidebook, and this economic analysis has come out now saying we don't have enough statistics. We don't know what the impact necessarily will be on the economic and social impact and to do service et cetera. So maybe one of the things that was discussed in that workshop was.
Did we do the cart before the horse? Should the studies have come first and the rules subs subsequent to that? Other than that obviously the cost on developing country businesses about having to acquire on the second level several domain names and basically then obviously being stuck with the use of search engines to market themselves from the developing country businesses. And the impact of this on the digital divide in developing countries.
One area of concern was the impact this entire process and the sensitivity that could necessarily be shown to developing countries, what impact that would have on the credibility of private sector led multistakeholder models of governance especially when this may become an example of challenges by other Governments, some Governments, and IGOs. Thank you for the opportunity.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Can I ask you a question? I'm not sure I got this right: Do you think it's ICANN's job to do financial analysis? Or is it something the applicants need to do?
>> ZAHID JAMIL: One of the requirements on the overarching issues as part of the new gTLD process was that economic study would be done by ICANN so the current economics analysis on the website of the new gTLD website of ICANN shows it was done by ICANN. It was funded by ICANN and the economic analysis itself says there's so much more statistics, social costs and economic costs that need to be studied and probably if you read it, it seems maybe we went and made the rules before we did the feasibility and the feasibility obviously is sort of part of what ICANN must do before it starts. This is one of the business models issues. Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Can we pick up on the point about developing nations and TLDs? Tijani you're on the ICANN I believe you're on the ICANN Working Group looking at go ahead. Sorry.
>> ANDREW MACK: My name is Andrew Mack from Washington and I am also
along with Tijani, and Budon, and I think a couple other people who may
be here, a part of this working group. So Tijani has asked me to give
you a quick two minute version of where we are. The working group was
established in April, following the passage of a board resolution 20 at
the Nairobi meeting. We brought together a truly multistakeholder team
that has people from NGOs, private sector, academia and literally
around the world representing pretty much every continent. We started
off with a primary goal of focusing on looking at different kinds of
support that might be offered to new TTLD applicants from needy and
underserved groups. And our primary criteria for eligibility was the
issue of need.
So we spent the last five months looking at this. And have looked at
a series of different kinds of support.
Among them, price support. Are there ways that the costs can be
reduced to make it easier for needy applicants to move forward with
their application.
To the point that Zayed just mentioned. And technical assistance.
Are there ways to the communities can help applicants complete their
applications and fulfill their needs. To Fatima's point. There was
also discussion of IDNs and ways to serve underscript securities.
The group presented at Brussels, we are working on recommendations
for board consideration. And the process is still in motion.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Would you like to become a little more specific
and talk about those recommendations?
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: On a purely off the recovered base, no one is
listening.
>> This is the -- the goal of this is to be consensus based, right?
And we're still in the process of finalizing the report and stuff
like that. We have looked at specific possibilities for reducing
prices. One of the big barriers is considered the high price. We have
also recognized that there are a number of technical areas where for
example, language translation is a big challenge. A lot of people from
emerging markets who are trying to become part of the process, they
don't have necessarily access to all the documents in a language that's
comfortable for them. They also may not have access to the specialized
consulting, the IP lawyers, if you will. And other resources at their
disposal, or if they are at their disposal, they're very high cost.
One of the things that we have been looking at is one are some of
those obstacles and are their donor agencies or other agencies that
might be able to be supportive.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: We could spend a heap of time talking about --
everyone is entitled to bring up whatever you would like. We could
spend a lot of time talking about perhaps we should have done things
this way. But what's key from this I think is that irrespective of
what we maybe should have done, we quite -- currently there is a lot of
effort going into finding ways of assisting the -- how did you
describe, needy applicants, I think was the expression.
>> I think I used needy and underserved.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: One has to be so careful.
Needy applicants.
Can we hear from anybody -- one of the other aspects to this was
this -- IDN sort of talked about it, new TTLDs. A year ago, as
Jeanette said, we were enjoying the first applications having gone in.
But now as we sit here today, we have number of them live.
Leonid, can we -- yes. Can we have a microphone please for this
gentleman?
>> LEONID TODOROV: Leonid Todorov, CCTL.ru.
I'm happy to inform you that the new IDN TLD for Russia is up and
running we have already 16,000 plus domains registered in that zone.
And 3,000 plus actually delegated. So they are operational and people
can -- people have their access to them.
That was quite challenging exercise. We were happy to be among those
first four nations who pioneered this area.
I believe that we've done a great deal of effort. We put into
protecting, first of all, the owners of legal rights for trademarks, as
well as the government needs. And they are more or less -- well, let's
say they are dealer protected, but we constantly working on modifying
all those -- to make sure that not only Cyrillic trademarks are duly
protected but -- rated trademarks are protected as well in these new
zone.
And, well, I believe that we should thank, first of all, the ICANN
for this unique opportunity and the civil community, our peers with
whom we consulted all the time and whose advice was really invaluable
for the launch of these new IDN TLD for Russia.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Leonid, thank you. Can I ask you a question?
It's often said in respect to new details when they're coming, that
a lot of names will be registered in them purely as defensive
registrations to protect the trademark and so on.
The only -- the only current examples we have that we can look at and
maybe see whether this is likely to happen are in some of the
IDN-ccTLDs. Do you have any statistics as to how many of your
current -- 16,000 --
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: 16,000 names you would class as being protected
registrations as opposed to people registering names?
>> Leonid: We haven't done this analysis as yet because the time
series are too short and I believe the overall number is not that big
to prove some of our empirical guess work. But I would say that
certainly quite a fraction of those domains have been registered
specifically for the sake of protecting certain strayed mark or certain
trademarks.
There are legal clash -- we piece these -- let's say this area of law
in Russia is still under construction. So we do have certain
ambiguities in our law. And some companies, some trademark owner, they
clash over domain names. We indeed have that sometimes unpleasant
chance to help those sort of disputes out of the court.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you.
And is it heading to the microphone --
>> FOUAD BAJWA: Thank you, Chris. Fouad Bajwa, from Pakistan.
My personal observations, with regards to IDNs and developing country
issues -- first of all, before I present my comments, I would like to
congratulate Dr. Hussain of Pakistan who has constricted to the IDN
development community with ICANN, and he has been invited to the
Security and Stability Committee on ICANN, which he has graciously
joined.
His publication creates a very big foundation for developing
countries to follow as part of the pan-localization project, which is a
very good contribution for developing countries to look at how they can
participate in the technical issues with regards to the IDNs.
My first comment is with regards to IDNs and their adoption in
developing countries. It's going to be a long process. For some of
the countries where language is -- has been already localized and is
core to the ICT, or the Internet functions of that country, like within
the Arabian world and the Chinese world and the Russian world, their
adoption may be pretty quick and fast. But for countries, let's say in
regards to my own country where tradition of English language usage on
the Internet has been great, and we're certain some other efforts have
been there for including Urdu Language as part of online content, there
still needs to be a lot of attention given towards creating awareness
in those countries.
And that's capacity-building stance as one of the primary issues,
which in order to counter problems in adopting IDNs.
Second thing, I think the global focus is still required. A global
focus in terms of that the IDN implementation is starting from top to
down. But at the same time there's some bottom level support required.
For example, ccTLDs. They have to be moderated in all developing
countries where nonLatin languages exist and whose applications have
been accepted for IDNs to actually start the grassroots level
awareness.
That's regional language and individual input is definitely needed.
So primarily capacity building still remains a huge issue. And those
IDNs are actually -- the content are adding to the concept of digital
divide. Thank you.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Next is Izumi.
>> IZUMI AIZU: Thank you. Izumi Aizu from Tama University, Japan.
About a year ago, we formed Japan Internet Domain Name Council. I'm a
member of, but speaking by myself -- or, for myself. This is a full
time stakeholder organisation, participated by the industry
associations of CICERAL, and University nonprofits and as an observers.
We have started the open selection process for the new registry
operator of the IDNCCT, or dot Nihon, in Japanese or Chinese
characters. We are a little bit slow, behind China, Korea, or Hong
Kong because we decided to have open bidding process. First of all, we
have to discuss the selection criteria, and how to set up independent
selection committee.
So essentially intent was to bring some open competitive environment
in which the existing registry can also participate to bid for.
After a lot of work, many, many things, the bid was closed. And
somehow only the existing registry could apply for. And they are
likely to -- which I cannot really tell their outcome yet -- to be
selected. Now, our focus of discussion is moving into the governance
for oversight of the new CCTLD-IN. And also coordination between the
new and existing ccTLD. It's a little bit complicated but we are
getting lessons on the governance of ccTLD. Much more work is to be
done, and there's talk about the ccTLD, like Tokyo, Osaka, how do we
coordinate or not. These are issues on the table and we'd like to
share that. Thank you very much.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Thank you, Izumi.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Izumi. One of the things that was
clear -- I don't know how many of you made it to the workshop yesterday
on TLDs for development, but I think one of the things that was --
points that was made really clearly was that it's important to remember
that the new TLD, being an IDN, CCTLD or a TLD generally, is not the
end itself. It's merely an enabler and it's helping. And it's pretty
clear that from what we've heard this morning there is both an up side
and a down side to development -- to the effect on development and
developing nations.
Do we have any last speakers who would like to say something about
this before we move on to our final topic?
Okay. So the final topic is -- disaster and crisis.
Now, we -- we've got disaster on one side of the fence and crisis on
the other side of the fence.
When it comes to disaster, we have a couple of real life examples to
discuss with you.
It's the gentleman from Haiti with us?
Would you like to come up, sir?
As a general rule we don't generally do sides at these sessions,
especially this week or next week is beneficially declared
nonPowerPoint week.
But the slides on Haiti are so important that we thought we'd put
them up.
Do the guys at the back have the remote control?
Is that it?
Yes?
Can we have a microphone, please?
Max is going to very, very briefly talk about what happened in Haiti.
That fits under the topic of disaster.
>> MAX LARSON: Thank you Chris and Jeannette. I'm going to talk
about our experience regarding DNS operation can help ccTLD and to our
service during disaster. I will also talk about the value of
collaboration between peoples in the Internet community.
So that is the -- and that ht, we have been able to get it for a
consortium on the faculty of sciences of the State University of Haiti
and the Haitian Development Project, which is a development project.
We begin with those operation in 5. So we are a small -- as for our
infrastructure, we had two servers before the earthquake in Haiti. And
three other servers at the University of Princeton, one is by
Polytechnicque Montreal.
We have been using this service for the last two years, actually.
And registry application services are host and managed by COCCA.
We have some monitoring boxes service that we use smart ping to keep
track of all the services.
So what you see here is the data centre of the telco where we had
our servers. So during the earthquake the telecode centre collapsed,
along with our servers that we're hosting in Haiti. So we lost two
servers during the earthquake. And the primary server and one of the
secondaries. And we couldn't have fund to reach the managers of the
secondaries. But dot ht domain continues for a number of sites located
outside of Haiti.
What happened is that during the earthquake, a few hours after the
earthquake some of the managers of the secondaries notice that the
primary server which were in Haiti was unreachable. So they get
together and they contact the operator of the -- in Australia, and they
configured the secondary servers to pull data from the IDN master,
because the primary server that -- which were located in Haiti was
unreachable.
So what we learn from this event is the necessity to adopt best
common practices regarding DNS operation.
It is also important to have a geographic network diversity on
ccTLD-LDN structure to avoid point of failure.
Five years ago when we were to decide where we are going to put our
server, there were a lot of political talk as to where we should have
to put all our servers in Haiti. At that time we decided to have
servers outside of the country. Mostly because of -- as you know,
every year we -- 880. So at that time we were thinking about the
hurricane or earthquake. So we are happy that we did that.
What we learn also is the volume of people networking. During the
earthquake and -- we have learned that after -- long after the
earthquake that there was a lot of talk in the Internet community, on
mailing lists, to try to collect shelter for people in the Internet
community in Haiti.
And also all the discussion regarding DNS management in -- to make
sure that the Internet point could continue to be operational. And
some point we need fuel too for the diesel generator. So we discuss
with people in the Internet community to find out where we can find
fuel for the generators.
So what we are doing next is trying to secure our numbering resources
from LACNIC, and purposes to host the dot ht servers at the Internet
exchange point. We are also working on contingency planning.
We are also working, thanks to LACNIC, to deploying basics with at
least one of the ISPs and -- in Haiti and integrate the basics on
the -- in Haiti, and we are developing a project with the local
Internet community regarding any copy of effort and bring more content
at the exchange point and also building capacity.
It is important because when we are talking about ccTLD as a
critical -- as critical Internet infrastructure we forget that in some
countries that we are talking about one or two people that -- dealing
with day-to-day operations. So in our case we think it's important to
do capacity building to have a pool of competent people that would be
able to take care of business if the person that are available now
should not be available for some reason.
So that's all. Thank you for your time.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Max. That was great. Thank you.
(Applause.)
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Does anybody have a question they'd like to ask
Max?
Are you getting up to go to the microphone?
You are -- okay.
>> First of all I would like to say that Max is very humble. So he
doesn't mention that. But in Haiti there is an extraordinary team of
engineers working in different things. Is the same people that is
involved with in the CCTLD, in the creation of the IXP. Has very
strong commitment with the ICT development in Haiti. I think that's
very commendable.
Now, beside that, I think that when -- I would like to come back to
discussion at the beginning of the session regarding IPv6. I would
like -- what Max has said, even the problems that the people in Haiti
has faced in the last time, they were able to set up IPv6 services.
The ATIXP was the first in the regional running, IPv6 in that way.
And so they still are running IPv6 in the XP and also it is people
from LACNIC took advantage to help configure IPv6 in one of the ISPs
there. So it shows what we mentioned earlier that it is not a matter
of big investments and money to implement IPv6. And they are proving
that.
Congratulations, Max.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you.
The next speaker I have on the list is -- thank you, Max -- is Frank
March from New Zealand.
And the speaker after that is Sami Al-Basheer, publisher from Saudi
Arabia.
>> FRANK MARCH: Thank you, Chris. I'm -- my name is Frank March,
president of Internet New Zealand. We are responsible for the dot nz.
The --
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Would you speak louder?
>> FRANK MARCH: How's that?
Just a very, very briefcase study from New Zealand. Most of you will
be aware that New Zealand had a 7.1 richter scale earthquake on the 4th
of September. About the same size and effect of the Haiti earthquake
and we were very fortunate that the results for us were very different.
And our hearts go out to the people of Haiti in the way that they have
had had to recover from a massive disaster.
In fact, the earthquake in Christ Church on the 4th of September is
the largest earthquake ever to have taken place without the loss of a
single history -- single human life. Part of that was fortunate. It
was 4:35 in the morning when practically everybody was in bed. And the
structure of buildings in New Zealand generally and in Christ Church in
particular is such that people in bed basically weren't affected. The
major damage would have been to cars and people in the streets, had the
earthquake taken place four or five hours earlier or four or five hours
later.
But the reason I'm drawing your attention to this is that the -- the
limit of destruction in the city, about 60 percent of houses have some
form of damage or other. Some of them are uninhabitable, many of them
with fairly simple recovery required. Most of them remain habitable.
Particularly services such as water, sewage, and particularly power
were out for -- some of them are still out, still being recovered ten
days later. But most of them are recovered within two or three days.
The telephone services remained up. But became overcrowded,
overloaded very quickly, as you might expect. Initially the newspapers
and television stations were asking people to send in videos from their
mobiles and that sort of thing to see on the news. You'll see on You
Tube a number of the videos that were submitted as a result of that
showing -- actually taken during the course of the earthquake.
Particularly some CCTV footage of supermarkets and that sort of thing.
But the -- we're -- very quickly without of course -- the mobile
services very quickly were overloaded and people were asked to stay off
them so they could be used for emergency services only.
What I want to report to you is that the Internet remained
operational in Christ Church and throughout New Zealand without a beat.
Didn't miss a beat the whole time. The services remained up. And we
were able to maintain links between isolated groups who exchanging
information from about 2 minutes after the earthquake ceased.
So thank you very much. That's wonderful to report. One additional
point. We understand that McDonald's may be coming out with a new
burger, the Mac burger that comes with a free shake.
(Chuckling.)
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: We are glad to hear that, especially that the
Internet didn't miss a beat.
Our next speaker is Sami Al-Basheer.
>> SAMI AL-BASHEER: This unfortunate incidents happen in Haiti,
Chile, now lately in New Zealand. And I just want to seize the
opportunity to inform you of the efforts the ITU is doing in this
occasions. We have -- we were one of the first organisation to be in
Haiti to restore communication by providing satellite terminals. And
of course we started a fund to rehabilitate the infrastructure in
Haiti, with many of our members and other stakeholders in addition to
some resources from the ITU itself.
And recently with the unfortunate flood huge disaster in Pakistan,
the ITU also took the initiative to restore some satellite
communication there, to help in the recovery efforts and to help
organizations and all humanitarian efforts.
In Pakistan we also started a fund and started with our own money of
a million U.S. dollars in this fund. And now we are asking the help of
the international community to help the Pakistani administration to
restore their communication infrastructure, which was badly hit by this
unfortunate flood.
This is just information I would like to provide of the efforts the
ITU has taken in these locations. Thank you very much.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Thank you, Sami.
>> Fouad Bajwa: About the support of the international community, as
a citizen of Pakistan I'm very grateful to have the whole -- how the
whole technical community has responded to the crisis in Pakistan. I'm
thankful to my friends from across the world, even the people who have
extended their will to support the crisis in Pakistan.
I would like to thank in particular all the stakeholders
participating in the IGF process or the Internet governance process.
Because together the combined efforts as how we can deal with
information needs of this crisis. For example, the Google created
immediately a response centre on line which is available on Google.
.com/crisisresponse/pakistan_floods. As part of this they made
available satellite imagery of all the disaster hit area. Secondly
they created a resource locator. And the representative in Pakistan
also extended the news that they had contributed 200,000 -- 2,000
dollars to the relief efforts.
Secondly I would also like to mention that many of the organizations
including the United Nations and so forth have set up very important
technical tools on line in the Internet in response to this. For
example, communities have gotten together to create local.com.pk, a
website that provides up-to-date satellite imagery. KML files are
available, take snaps every few minutes. The Sahana disaster
information management system team is already in Pakistan. There's
Pakistan flood incident reporting by Ushahidi, and crowd map.
Interestingly this project is from Africa. SRSO relief activities
again being managed by Ushahidi. And they're also providing maps. The
relief Web which comes under the U.N. Emergency Response is in
formation for the humanitarian relief community. The UNOSAT, Pakistan
map products again, human-produced maps of the situation. The comments
community has also stepped in by introducing the crisis comments wiki,
for the Pakistan funds. ICT4Peace has added an inventory wiki. And
once again, I would just like to thank everyone who's extending their
support and we still need your support. Thank you.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Thank you, for that.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: One more comment on disaster recovery if we get a
microphone to Steve, please. And then we will move on to our final
piece of the morning, which is the other side of disaster crisis. But
Steve, you can -- the precrisis.
>> STEVE DEL BIANCO: Steve Del Bianco of NetChoice. I heard talk
about network diversification. To have a resilient network in the case
of disaster but we also need geographic diversification of data storage
as well. Mindaugas, in his opening with respect to cloud -- talked
about medical records -- critical network resources. Medical
professionals on the ground in a disaster need on the ground access to
the medical records for people they're treating for sickness or
injuries.
And if the data itself is stored only in the country affected, you
can imagine that even if the networks up, that was -- database servers
may not be accessible at all and the medical records will be lost at
the time they're needed most. The answer to this should be easy.
Industry should just be doing backups or moving data to other places
that won't be affected by the same disaster. In other words,
diversification of where we do the backups. But I think you all need
to know there are significant barriers to moving data across national
boundary, even if only for backups. And that's because nations,
frankly, have different laws with respect to privacy of data,
particularly medical data, and data protection mandates. To eliminate
the loss of the data. So it's a simple ask, an ask of the government
representatives and regulators that participate at IGF to work together
and harmonize your data protection laws, to make it possible for us to
move and back up data across national boundaries for the purpose of
data diversification that will help us in a disaster recovery effort.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Steve.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: That's a very interesting aspect. What would
be your suggestion, that we just deactivate -- that we harmonize data
protection across countries?
>> STEVE DEL BIANCO: Yes, I would never say deactivate.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: That's why I corrected myself.
>> STEVE DEL BIANCO: I would activate the Harmony of -- cloud
computing offers benefit, but monstrous opportunities for small
businesses to deliver applications in competition with each other. One
of the largest barriers to cloud computing are these cross border
differences on data privacy and data security.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Any other comments on disaster?
All right. So we have to cross this now -- we have two people on my
speaker's list, one is Thomas de Haan, the other is Bill Graham. Bill,
would you like to go first?
Can we have a microphone, please?
>> BILL GRAHAM: Great. Thank you, Chris. I wanted to report
briefly on a workshop held yesterday morning called priorities for the
long term stability of the Internet put together by the European
commission, the Internet society of Netherlands, the communications
regulatory of Lithuania and Tama University. We reviewed threats and
things that need to be done to improve the way we work to improve long
term security. I will try and briefly summarize the threats and trust
people to refer to the report if they're interested.
First off there was a series of technical threats which included
malicious acts, implementation issues because the Internet is growing
and changing so quickly that there can be problems if these changes are
not implemented correctly.
Interdependence. One of our speakers --
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sorry. We have --
>> BILL GRAHAM: I probably broke it. I was speaking too fast for
the scribes, I think.
So interdependence was one interesting point that was raised. One of
the speakers said that as a -- by way of example if you want your
neighborhood to be nice, you can clean up your yard. But if your
neighbors don't clean up their yards you're not going to get very far.
I thought that was a good illustration. But as one of the speakers
said, in his view the main threats are not technical but really they're
on the policy front. So we then turn to some threats to long-term
stability from policy. One of those was the possibility of
fragmentation of the network if net neutrality is not maintained. The
need to maintain free end to end flow of information. There was a lot
of discussion about overregulation or poorly informed regulation.
Because there's a lack of people who are really comfortable with
technical things. So the lack of cross-talk between the technical and
the policy side bring their own threats.
Also multistakeholderism is difficult for some policy agencies to
handle. So we're still developing a level of comfort. And ability to
do things in a multistakeholder way.
We had a case study from Lithuania about some National efforts to monitor the stability and security of their networks and they identified a need to have reliable indicators so that they could do that work. We then turned to other discussion of solutions, and someone said that the issues that are threats to stability are well known to the technical community for years, all the ones that I just mentioned are not new to the technical community. However, when they become a problem or threaten to be a crisis, then the policy Committee wakes up to them, and deals with it.
So there's a need to close the gap among researchers, operational people and policy people. There's also a need to train people to operate at the intersection of policy and technology. Then we very briefly looked at a map that Izumi had prepared showing some areas between policy and technology, and he identified two gaps. One, there's a gap where there's no functioning mechanism right now for regular global policy coordination or for a second one, for global operational cooperation.
We can didn't think there was with a need for new organisations, but to look carefully at how those issues can be dealt with in some mechanism. So after going through all that, we the outcomes, I think, is a group of people have begun to talk about some principles for policy to deal with these kinds of crisis issues, and I think we'll continue work on that mapping exercise to try and identify gaps and refer those things out. Thanks.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Policy coordination in the cross national dimension or National level?
>> BILL GRAHAM: Regional and cross national although the National level is also important.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: It's a real Internet Governance issue then.
>> BILL GRAHAM: I think so.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Better set up another organisation, then.
>> BILL GRAHAM: Two or three. That was really one of the strongest points is that there isn't a need for new organisation. There's lots of organisation effective in the field. It's just flagging these particular concerns. It's about the existing ones coming together dealing with the specific issue.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Bill. Those of us who are fortunate enough to operate in an environment certainly in Australia in an environment where we have a self regulatory ccTLD Manager endorsed by our Government, has obviously a close relationship between the government and the ccTLD. Increasingly I know for many ccTLD managers as the Internet becomes acknowledged as more as and more of a critical Internet resource, Governments become more and more interested in making sure that we're all covered in a crisis so that no one can ever say to them, well, why didn't you do this? And, Thomas de Haan has a few things to say about that particular issue. If somebody could give him a microphone.
Thomas, thank you.
>> THOMAS DE HAAN: Thank you, Chris. First of all, I think what we have seen with the disasters on the other side of other countries like floods, earthquakes, et cetera, is something which to be honest in our dull and very flat country in the Netherlands we don't have. Unfortunately, on the other side we have a very dull climate so the things which I think is important for Government to realise in this contingency planning is the fact that we depend very highly on ICT especially in the Netherlands.
We're still top 3 broadband user. We have a highly globalized economy, we depend on ICT. And then on the second point we have also a very strong ccTLD. SIDN is still the fourth largest Critical Internet ccTLD in the world. And in Netherlands approximately 70% of all websites, whether Government, whether private, whether social websites, they're all dot NL for 70%. And approximately 29% of let's say websites, the penetration of websites about 29 on 100 per capita which is very high in the world. So this triggered for us a kind of thinking about the responsibility as a Government.
SIDN is a private Corporation, it's a not for profit Corporation, comparable to dot DE and dot UK so there is no formal ties between Government and our ccTLD registry, and also we really don't want to have a formal tie in the sense of regulation, Domain Name regulation, because we think self regulation is still let's say the best way in this context in ICT to rely on self regulation and self organisation. So what we basically do, I will make it very short, we started a dialogue as a peer to peer two parties and we came to an MOU in which we focused really on certain things which can really go wrong, and then we're talking about a disaster in the sense of an organisational disaster, a major technical disaster, things like going bankrupt kind of trigger moments and we came up with two things which are in this setting relevant that we have kind of emergency assistance agreement that in case that there's really a big disaster on the side of the registry, that we as a Government will assist.
The second part is a road map which we made up together with the ccTLD, a road map to come to a new registry, to nominate together in a consultation process with the local community which we're a part of to come up with a new nomination for a new registry. And of course, this needs cooperation with ICANN and IANA which we're still working with it. So I think this is thank you.
>> JEANETTE HOFMANN: Thank you. Are there other examples of this kind of cooperation between ccTLDs and Governments that somebody would care to report?
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Clearly no one's cooperating. I think unless there are any other comments from the floor, now might be a good time for us to get a summary of what's happened in the last 2 and three quarter hours before we hand the floor back to the chair. And Emily Taylor has very kindly been busy taking notes. Can we have a microphone here, please? Thank you.
And will hopefully provide us with a summary of what we've talked about.
>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you very much. Chris and Jeanette have asked me to give me take on today's discussion, summarize what took place. And I must say the discussions have been immensely wide ranging both in topic and in the diversity of speakers who have taken the floor today. First of all, we looked at the status of IPv6 availability around the world. And this was a lively discussion, informed by the feeder workshop on IPv6.
Overall, we saw this as an example of the Internet in transition, a bit like the migration from leaded to unleaded petrol, that for a time, it's very rare. Then you have co existence and then gradually you move across to the new system. Hearing real world examples from Governments, vendors, Internet service providers, they talked about their successes, and also the obstacles in their path.
One interesting highlight was that people were starting to say that the demand is now coming from the end user, from the customer, and rather than just simply a push of information from the number resource allocators. The landscape is changing quickly and we're told to be aware of outdated information particularly on equipment and capacity.
And one speaker encouraged us to articulate the benefits rather than just the depletion of a waning resource and what IPv6 could open up. And lastly, the situation of developing countries was highlighted, and one speaker said they may be in a position of advantage comparatively because of the lack of legacy equipment. But, of course, that equipment still costs.
Secondly, we moved on to the internationalization of critical Internet resources, both the management and enhanced cooperation, and for me, this took us across the following two items, as well. So last year, at this discussion, we talked about the Affirmation of Commitments, which had just been released, and the first applications for non Latin script Top Level Domains. So many speakers discussed and emphasized the importance of this topic to them, and within the IGF. We heard about the steps taken by ICANN since the Affirmation of Commitments. We heard from the Chair of the Committee looking at accountability and transparency within ICANN.
The relationship was mentioned between the number of users and the number of registered domain names in a territory, and it will be interesting to see the impact of deployment of non Latin character domains in the root on this. We also heard about cooperation between the GAC, the Governmental Advisory Committee, and the ICANN Board, with other stakeholders, as well, and the tangible result of a creation of a knowledge database between Country Code Top Level Domain managers.
So moving on, we looked at a sharper focus, at new Top Level Domain names, and the introduction of non Latin scripts in the domain root. We heard reports from the feeder workshops, which looked at bought the opportunities created by internationalized domain names, and also some concerns about whether this would actually close or increase the digital the divide.
But speakers talked about the great benefits that can be brought to national businesses, e government, enabling local language content, and we also heard about the Working Group set up by ICANN specifically to look at what can be done to assist needy applicants.
Our last look was at disaster recovery and crisis. And we heard of the remarkable achievement of the Haitian registry in ensuring continuity of service despite the destruction of the local infrastructure, and this also emphasized the importance of hearing multiple viewpoints. He talked about the political pressure to have the infrastructure just provided locally versus the influence of industry best practice and cooperation which tended towards geographical diversity.
And a healthy reminder, a timely reminder, that when we talk about management of critical infrastructure in many countries, we are sometimes talking about one or two people.
A point was made that Haiti has implemented IPv6. It's not just a question of money, but shows the benefits of cooperation. And we also heard about the responses of natural to natural disasters in New Zealand, the ITU's role in restoring satellite services, and what is being done on the ground.
One speaker also mentioned the importance of geographical diversity in protecting data and backups, and the interesting conflict between National laws on data pro Tech shun, which may inhibit this, and this perhaps protection which may inhibit this and this is perhaps a topic that demands further thought. Next and lastly we looked at other threats, not natural disasters but sort of operational, technical and policy and the need for people to operate at the interfaces between these areas to enhance understanding, although no new organisations were called for.
In contingency planning we had the example of the Netherlands, where there was a cooperation between the Government and its local Country Code registry, which fulfilled the Government's obligation to plan for disaster without undermining the self regulation of the registry. So what have we learned over the last 5 years? And how has the discussion moved on?
Personally, I really see a difference in the nature of the dialogue, how it's conducted. This set topic was felt to be a bit too even to qualify for a main session in Athens 5 years ago, and we took our first tentative steps in Rio. By Hyderabad we had the confidence to start this format of open discussion, and through the next 2 years, I would say that the level of outright disagreement, the acrimony has reduced, and the level of information exchange, real world examples, has increased.
A great deal of the heat has gone out, the dialogue is more wide ranging.
It's not as fast progress as any of us would like, as all of us would like, but I guess that is the corollary of corroboration between stakeholders and consultation: It takes time. But here we have been talking about the experiences of the Russian registry in implementing domain names and both naming and numbering the essential blocks are there but they're not there as an end in themselves. They are there as an enabler to extend the reach of the Internet to all people, all languages and local content.
At a higher level, I think we see the impact of the IGF in two respects: We are encouraging stakeholders to climb out of their silos, where we were stuck 5 years ago, and I think this is a tribute to the non threatening environment here. And secondly, the importance of people sharing their experiences.
This is all new stuff we're discussing today, IPv6, new internationalized domain names. People here are working on things that have not been done before, and on which many millions of people depend. Things don't always go right, but overall, what I take away from this session is the willingness to cooperate. It helps to share both the problem and the solution, to be honest about things that didn't go right, but overall, to celebrate our successes. Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Wow, we did all that? That's impressive. We're going to turn off our microphones and hand you back to your Chairman. Thank you very much indeed for your attention.
[ Applause ]
>> MINDAUGAS GLODAS: Thank you very much, Emily. I think this is by far the best live to say online summary I ever heard in my life so immediately after the event so you've basically done my job for summarizing.
In principle, mine and the Secretary's job has been so easy today because we had amazingly good moderators so thank you Jeanette, Chris and Cathy for remote moderation of this event.
[ Applause ]
And clearly, this event would have not been possible without your active participation, the Internet professionals so applause for that.
[ Applause ]
But also, I would like to still take as a summary a little bit broadened scope and just talk about the fact that Internet only exists because there are those who consume products of the Internet. These are businesses, and these are individual consumers. And whatever we do, we should keep in mind what is in their most and best interests, and all they care about probably, a simplified summary, but is connectivity, the availability to connect, the security of that connectivity. It's the devices to be able to access whatever is on the Internet, and that whatever is on the Internet is actually the content.
So being on the private side of the stakeholders and representing a private company, I think we, jointly with our partners and also competitors, are doing a great job in bringing those technologies forward, but we can only do that successfully if we have proper level of partnership with the Governments and the NGOs.
And to me, we often talk about public private partnerships and to me, Internet is the best example of the biggest system in the world that is governed as a public private partnership and that public private partnership actually spans multiple Governments, and it spans multiple commercial entities. I think we should actually keep up this good job, and take it with the responsibility to secure those needed critical resources that the Internet has a good future, and develops further both from the technological perspective, but also very importantly from accessibility perspective from the availability perspective and from the safety perspective.
I think it's been a good discussion. The rest of the day and the rest of the week is packed with interesting sessions so while we now break for lunch, most sessions are actually starting quarter past 2:00, and another general session is starting at 3:00, so welcome back here, or to your breakout sessions.
And before I finish really, just a technical remark, that many of you are connecting to the wifi network and you only connect to either the IGF or IGF underscore. All others while they accept connectivity they will not function properly and you'll be experiencing network interpretations.
So, and particularly, don't connect to the free public wifi. We don't know what that is. It's a rogue network.
Well, with that, thank you very much. And the meeting is finished. The session is adjourned.
[ Applause ]
[ End of session ]
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