26 December 2007

Re-elected to the ASO AC

At the RIPE 55 meeting in Amsterdam in October I was relected to the Address council for a period of 3 more years: http://www.ripe.net/news/aso-2007.html

I made the following statement priort to the election -
http://www.ripe.net/info/resource-admin/aso2007/holen.html
- and thought I will keep it here for reference.

I have been an active participant in the RIPE community since the beginning of the 1990s when establishing one of the first commercial ISPs and LIRs in Norway. Prior to this I had a short career as node manager for the Norwegian UUCP node while working at the University of Oslo - but that is hardly relevant anymore.

I am strongly in favor of well documented procedures and open and transparent processes - and have done my best to contribute to these by taking active part in working-groups and task forces to document and improve policy documentation.

As previous chair of the LIR-wg and later Address Policy-wg I have been committed to open discussion and open process for policy development in RIPE. I am happy to see that the Address Policy-wg is now in good hands by my successors chairs of the workinggroup.

As member of the ICANN Address Supporting Organization Address Council since its formation - I have taken active part in bringing the RIRs and ICANN together in the accoord prior to the formation of the NRO. As chair of the address council I drafted several of the early procedures for conducting business for the address council. I have also been committed to keep the proceedings of the Address Council as open as possible by always suggesting opening up our meetings to RIR observers, ICANN observers and even suggesting public minutes being made available from informal meetings.

Today I believe the challenges of the Addressing community and thus the Address council are twofold:

First - We need to take active part in bringing the transition policy discussions forward in the regions.

This is both for the global policies concerning the remaining parts of the IPv4 space, but perhaps just as important the future role for the RIRs in maintaining the IPv4 address space.

I cannot offer you any solutions to how we should deploy IPv6 or how we should deal with the remaining IPv4 space. I may have opinions on what may work and what might not - and I do look forward to take part in fruitful discussions with the RIPE community on this matter.

What I can offer is my experience as a long time member of the community to bring the discussion forward and bring the RIPE point of view to the Address council.

As I have worked for small startup IPSs, the Incumbent, a multi national ISP, and several content providers and now a multi-national software and services company who offers application services on the Internet - I believe I can add most perspectives to the discussion and understand the different points of view.

I have also worked with regulatory issues - and appreciate the difference between "the regulatory way" and "the Internet tradition".

Secondly - The address council must maintain and improve an open and transparent way of acting. There are several small matters I would like to see the AC work further on:
  • getting the most recent procedures up on the ASO AC web
  • keeping tradition for open and transparent meetings
  • being active participants in the regions
  • show our presence at ICANN meetings together with the NRO
While my job today is mainly on the management side - I do still know how to set up BGP4 and analyze network performance. I am just now in a process to establish my company as a LIR and have started on a long term informal plan to prepare for IPv6. If my services are still wanted by the community I will gladly accept another 3 year term on the NRO Number Council aka the ICANN Address Council.