[IP] more on A battle for the soul of the Internet
Begin forwarded message:
From: Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 7, 2005 8:47:47 AM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Cc: ian.peter@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] more on A battle for the soul of the Internet
David Farber wrote:
From: Ian Peter <ian.peter@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
The characterisation in the article "A battle for the soul of the
Internet" of what is going on with WSIS is a long way from the
debate which is going on at present. Few people involved in this
see it as a UN vs ICANN battle any more.
Ian
Thank you very much for pointing out a few flaws in what, so far, has
been vociferous and unbalanced criticism of both ICANN and the WSIS,
from people who have quite strong opinions on the issue, but are
allowing their personal dislikes to overcome logical thinking.
This article by Geoff Huston and Paul Wilson of APNIC is an interesting
read on this issue - http://www.circleid.com/article/1045_0_1_0_C/ as
are the other articles at http://www.circleid.com/channel/index/C0_8_1/
[particularly those by Geoff, Paul and Tom Vest]
Two of my comments [one in response to yet another tirade by Karl
Auerbach on icann, as it happens] in that thread would be relevant to
this IP discussion -
regards
srs
-----------------
I read the session transcripts of that WGIG meeting that have been
posted on www.wgig.org, and am gratified to know that Leichtenstein
(on behalf of the presidency of the EU), Australia et al do
understand the issues involved.
Most of the people making those comments (especially the
representatives from India and China, both of whom I have had the
pleasure of meeting at various other conferences) are, with all due
respect, not aware of the true technical or even social / economic
complexity of the issues being discussed, and nor are they really
aware of the true nature and governance of the RIRs. Oh, I am glad
to see that the delegate from Syria was in full form. He is, how
shall I put it, quite well known for his frequent contributions at
other ITU meetings :)
Here is my perspective on a few issues raised there ..
APNIC, for example, is governed by its AC / EC, and members from
any APNIC region can, and regularly do, stand for election to these
committees. This, and other RIRs, are a cooperative undertaking by
ISPs from around the region of coverage of the RIRs, asiapac in the
case of APNIC.
ICANN, both the board and its At Large component, is fully open to
people from any country, anywhere, standing for election and making
their opinions known as well, besides helping them gaining some
better understanding of the underlying processes.
So, raising the "other" invisible hand - the invisible hand of US
Government remote control - is not going to be productive or useful.
Nor are the usual claims that "China is short of IP addresses" -
China has been receiving ever increasingly larger blocks of IP
space in the recent past, and all IPs there are allocated by the
LIR, CNNIC - which shares the apnic common pool of addresses, but
is responsible for allocating it locally.. so any shortfall of IP
space that China raises in future should result in them being
referred right back to CNNIC, which is a quasi governmental agency,
I believe.
Then there is the "holders of international bandwidth are at an
advantage" theme that gets harped on - this time by India. Some
people in India, and others active in the asiapac network operators
conferences, have been advocating the need for an internet exchange
long before NIXI was formed. However, the way NIXI took shape and
is being run is far below potential, and improving this (plus
adding an Akamai cluster, and mirrors of popular download sites,
colocated at the datacenter of any of the ISPs that peer at nixi)
will go a long way towards improving this situation. Oh, I almost
forgot. India's input to the WGIG said something about root servers
all being located in developed countries. I am sure now that
they've retained Afilias for the .in ccTLD they'll have some
slightly better knowledge of anycast. Put it to them that the root
nameservers are anycast, and mirrors of (say) I Root or F Root
would be an excellent thing to have at the NIXI [or at an isp that
fully peers,
advertises all its routes, at nixi]
I could say more, but these issues have been pointed out in the
past, and right now, I am concerned that the effort to promote
internet governance is being superseded by an effort to wrest
control of the existing structures from their incumbent operators,
who hold these in trust for the international internet community
and operate it as directed by the community.
This is not a war of independence against a colonial power, though
it appears to be projected as such.
If governments wish to participate in the governance of the
internet, the existing framework is extremely accomodating and can
fit them in quite easily. Government owned telecom and internet
providers (BSNL / MTNL in India, China Telecom in China etc) can,
and should, play a larger role in this, by standing for election to
the APNIC AC for example, and actively involving themselves and
contributing their expertise in other ways at APNIC.
and --
Karl
I wont comment on ICANN here. But in response to this -
On another point, you mention the lack of technical expertise on
the part of some WGIG participants.
It is easy to dismiss the people who are working on the WGIG issues
because they lack technical credentials. But one must realize
I rather agree, that is a valid point. In response to this I'll
just repeat what I said at an igovernance panel organized by apdip/
undp during apricot kyoto ..
http://www.apnic.net/meetings/19/docs/transcripts/igov.txt
The ideas are mine. The words are mine. The english as transcribed
in that link sure doesnt sound like mine though, I guess I can put
it down to transcription error :) Anyway, here goes.
I have filled in one or two blanks left in transcription, from my
memory of what I said there. And corrected some of the english as
well.
---------
So here what we have is technologists pointing to poor misguided
regulation saying that isn't going to work or pointing out that the
Internet has no national boundaries so traditional regulation is
not going to work. On the other hand we have governments insisting
we do need a route because we have substantial interests that are
being affected by this. For whatever motive. To preserve a national
monopoly that is bringing substantial money to the government for
example an income in telco. Or for other even more mercenary
reasons such as a plain desire for control - or from a sincere
desire to do good and ensure good for the people by good
governance. So where and how do we channel
the energies of governments towards good governance where they can
do the best.
For example, you have a lot of issues that depend on international
cooperation between governments, and between governments and
industry. Cyber crime, for example, and anti-spam regulations -
wherever there is a crossover between the online world and the
offline world, and where participation and cooperation between law
enforcement / judiciary / governments / ISPs around the world is
essential in order to get the job done.
In the course of my job I work with a whole lot of governments,
besides working together with other ISPs and businesses. And I keep
wishing there was already a framework in place instead of trying to
build it from scratch at ITU/OECD meetings, as well as at network
operator meetings like the ones I help organize at apcauce.org
In the case of the telecom sector and inequitable pricing of
telephony and bandwidth in developing economies, governments could
help localise the industry [by helping set up internet exchanges],
arrange / broker appropriately equitable prices with other providers.
That's what I was trying to say. How do we get governments to
participate in the current governance process, without undermining
the foundations of the existing process, and without
unintentionally making their participation intrusive or harmful?
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