16 June 2015

Norwegian Internet Exchange - NIX 3



Kjetil Otter Olsen ved Universitetets Senter for Informasjonsteknologi ved Universitetet i Oslo inviterte til et møte for alle knyttet til de norske samtrafikkpunktene - Norwegian Internet Exchange (NIX) http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/nett/fastnett/nix/. Jeg var invitert som RIPE Chair og mangeårig deltager i Internet fora i Norge og resten av verden.

Kjetil ønsket velkommen til det 3. møtet siden NIX ble etablert en gang i 1993. Etter å ha beskrevet eksisterende akritektur med to samtrafiikkpuntker i Oslo,  et i Stavanger, Bergen, Trondheim, og Tromsø, stilte han en del spørsmål til aktørene på NIX om hvordan sammtrafikkpunktet og tjenestene rundt dette skal utvikles videre.

Personlig mener jeg at 

  • NIX bør tilby tilknytning på datasentrene isteden for dagens løsning der alle aktørene må leie egen fiber til NIX
  • Etablere en referansegruppe der aktørene velger representanter som kan gi innspill til driften av NIX
  • Regelmessige møter med aktørene 1-2 ganger i året. Etter modell fra NETNOD, gjerne i samarbeid med en nettverksopperatør gruppe
  • NIX bør styres mest mulig åpent og transparent, i første omgang ved å publisere regnskap for drift av NIX senere bør det vurderes ved å etablere en styringsstruktur som ikke avhenger av Universitetet i Oslo


Et samarbeide med Netnod kan være en fornuftig vei å gå.

Kurtis Lindkivst fra Netnod http://www.netnod.se/ presenterte, på Ålandska, først Netnod og samarbeidet som er inngått med NIX. Netnod har samtrafikkpunkt i Stockholm, Malmø+København, Göteborg, Sundsvall og Luleå. Dagens arkitektur er en sentral switch i PTS sin fjellhall og Netnods eget DWDM nett på topp av leiet mørk fiber - der NetNod står som leietager.
Netnod vurderer å distribuere switchene til datasenterene - noe som vil være mer kostnadeseffektivt enn dagens akritektur.

Kurtis fortsatte deretter med en presentasjon av Euro-IX

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Tore Andersson fra Linpro fortalte om forskjellige teknikker for å implementer IPv6 og fordeler og ulemper med disse.

Her kom det spørsmål fra salen om holdinger til aktører som ikke tilbyr IPv6 og bruker NAT, samt synspunkter på kjøp og salg av IPv4 adresser. Det ble poengtert at det ikke var noe “gråmakred” men at kjøp og salg skjer i henhold til gjeldende policy og registreres hos RIPE NCC.

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Elise Lindeberg fra Norsk Kommunikasjonsmyndighet - Nkom nkom.no - tidligere Post og Teletilsynet fortalte om prosessen med overføring av styring av IANA funksjonen hos ICANN  fra amerikanske myndigheter til en “Multistakeholder” modell der myndigheter ikke er enerådende. Elise har deltatt i "Cross Community Working Group (CWG) on Naming Relating Functions”,  som har utarbeidet en rapport på over 200 sider og nå sist fredag publiserte sitt forslag. Den foreslåtte modellen er å skille ut IANA i et eget selskap som styres separat fra ICANN.

Undertegnede la til at IANA har 3 funksjonsområder, Protokollparametre for IETF, Nummer for Regionale Internett Registere, slik som RIPE NCC og topp-nivå domenenavn som har vært fokus for Elises arbeide i CWG.

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Merte Asak, leder i styret i Internet Society Norge satte fokus på sårbarhet og spurte aktørene om hvor mange som visste hva som kom til å skje i deres nett dersom NIXene sluttet å fungere. Hun påpekte at det er færre aktører på NIX 2 slik at denne ikke ville fungere som alternativ vei for annet enn de 7(?) aktørene som er tilknyttet både NIX1 og NIX2. Hennes forslag var å kartlegge dette sammen, og gjennomføre en øvelse. (Netnod deltar i beredskapsøvelser i Sverige, men så vidt jeg forstod Kurtis har de ikke gjennomført faktiske tester, annet enn når de har oppgradert infrastrukturen)

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Frode Storvik fra Uninett presenterte forskningsnettet i Norge. UNINETTs arkitektur er etter bruddet på begge forbindelser nor for Saltfjellet i 2007 3 alternative fiberveier til hver region. Til Nord-Norge er den ene av de alternative veiene igjennom Sverige. Denne forbindelsen var det bruk for senest for et par uker siden - riktignok kun i noen få minutter. Til alle institusjonene er det to uavhengige tilknytninger. Forbindelse mellom Oslo og Trondheim var verdens første 100Gb forbindelse når denne ble etablert. I disse dager oppgraderes forbindelsene til Nordunet.

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Johan Foldøy Nkom fortalte om infrastrukturen til Nettfart, treder og åpne APIer. Nkoms fremtidige planer innen målinger i Internett for å tilfredsstille europeiske krav om målinger. De har i den forbindelse vurdert RIPE Atlas, men den dekker ikke kravene pr idag.

Presentasjonene finnes på http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/nett/fastnett/nix/nix-mote-juni-2015/

04 June 2015

EuroDIG 15



I was invited to EuroDIG 15 in Sofia, Bulgaria, to participate in the opening panel on a  Common digital market in Europe, representing the technical community. 

The other panelists represented the Bulgarian Government, the EU commission, End Users and, I was representing the technical community. 

The arguments I made was:

Building a common digital market has some interesting technical aspects. First of all we want new players to be able to enter the market in the future. Both suppliers and consumers will need IP addresses to connect to the network. In the current IPv4 Internet this is getting increasingly difficult as there are very few IP addresses available for new players. This is solved by letting users share IP addresses. For both suppliers and consumers this will increase the cost and limit the services that can be provided. 

In government circles there is focus on broadband incentives, for instance for building fibre infrastructure. It is important that governments on all levels makes IPv6 a requirement for receiving governments funds. 

One of the questions from the audience was how we could trust services provided from other countries. This must largely be solved by common regulations and consumer protection mechanisms, but again there are technical solutions that can help increase trust and reduce fraud. One such technology is DNSSec. A solution where responses to name queries are signed to reduce the risk of man-in-the-middle attacks. 

One of the challenges in introducing new technology like IPv6 or DNSSec is to communicate the advantages in a way that the users understand and request the service from their service providers. In some countries like Sweden the country code registry has promoted the use of DNSSec in order to speed up deployment. 

For more details on the whole event, you may want to read the RIPE NCC report from the EuroDIG 2015



07 May 2015

RIPE Chair Report May 2015

IPv6 Forum Saudi Arabia

RIPE 70 is just around the corner and I am writing this summary of my activities from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia where I have enjoyed the hospitality of the Communications and Information Technology Commission - CITC which were organising the IPv6 forum  here in Saudi Arabia. 

I was invited as one of the keynote speakers and talked about how communities in the RIPE region drive the global IPv6 deployment. By writing IPv6 best practices, bringing people together and sharing knowledge and experience. The slides can be found at High Level Strategies to IPv6 success stories.

SEE4

I was also presenting at the SEE4 in Belgrade on the topic of  RIPE vs RIPE NCC from the beginning to after the NTIA transition.  

Walking trough the history of RIPE and RIPE NCC, the CRISP proposal and how the values of RIPE,  bottom-up, open and inclusive, are reflected in the proposal. Simply speaking we move from a structure where the IANA operator operates under a contract with the US Governments to a structure where the IANA Numbering Services operator would operate under a contract with the RIRs as mandated by, and under oversight of, their members and communities.

Imprinting the bottom-up structure is in my opinion very important for the future success of the Internet.

NTIA Transition

The CRISP team, with Nurani Nimpuno, Andrei Robachevsky and Paul Rendek has completed its proposal that has been submitted to the IANA Stewardship Coordination Group

and a team of legal experts from the RIRs have prepared  a SLA which is posted for comments.

There will be an opportunity to discuss this on Tuesday evening  after Chris Buckridge´s presentation on Next steps for the RIPE community.  

IETF Helpdesk

In the CRISP process it has become quite clear that we have a lot in common with the IETF community and that it to some extent overlaps with the RIPE community. At RIPE 70 we will do an experiment with an IETF Helpdesk so RIPE community members have a chance of meeting IETF participants and learn more about the IETF process. Please let us know trough the meeting survey if you think this was useful or not.


Working-group Chairs 

As usual we have planned a lunch for the chairs on Thursday with the following draft agenda

I. Welcome/Intro
III. Administrative/Technical Overview of RIPE 70
IV. Update on the RIPE PC <-> WG Chairs Workflow
V. Additional Way to Participate on WG Discussions
VI. RIPE 71 Meeting Plan
VII. Post RIPE 70 WG Chairs Call? 
VIII. AOB

Participation

Being Chair for the RIPE community brings me to different events in the region. I am unfortunately not able to attend all the events. After RIPE 69 in London I have been participating in the following events:

ICANN 2015 Nomcom

In addition to the selection of an ICANN board member by the NRO NC acting as the ASO AC the numbering community has some influence on the board members selected by the ICANN 2015 NOMCOM. The ASO AC appoints a member of this committee that selects board members, ccNSO, At-Large and GNSO members. The deadline for nominations was 15. March and the 2015. NOMCOM members are busy evaluating the nominations. More details on the current status can be found in the latest NOMCOM report.


RIR management changes


Two of the other RIRs have appointed new CEOs: 

After Raul Echeberria joined ISOC as Vice President for Global engagement last year and Adiel Akplogan joined ICANN as VP of technical engagement

RIPE Region diversity

An observation from all the meetings is that our region is still quite diverse and that the communities are at very different maturity levels. In some parts of the region we are more than happy to, and have the ability to travel to the RIPE meetings, but in other parts there are barriers to this.

We need to recognise our cultural differences and continue to work together to build a strong Internet not only in our region but also on the global level. 

We should keep in mind that our core mission is technical coordination, but we also need to interact with other Internet Governance initiatives to teach them what we are doing and learn from them what they are doing.

Thank you RIPE NCC


Last but not least, I would not have been able to participate in all these events without the excellent support from the RIPE NCC staff. Travel support, presentation material, briefing and not to forget the organization of the meetings all together. Without their hard and dedicated work the RIPE community would not have achieved what we have today.

Sincerely
Hans Petter Holen

RIPE Chair 

01 March 2015

Looking back at 2014

It is now two months into 2015 and I have finally found time to reflect a bit on last year.

2014 was an active and interesting year with regular IGF, ICANN and RIR meetings. In Busan ITU organized their Plenipotentiary conference, which only happens every 4 years.  A completely new initiative, the NETMundial, was created, by among others the Brazilian Government. While NETMundial demonstrated an alternative to the traditional multilateral way to International policies, it also left Russia in particular expressing concern with the outcome. China on the other hand have engaged in ICANN and even organized the first World Internet Conference in Wuzhen.


In the numbering community we have seen a growth in the address-transfer market - a natural development in a market with scarcity, but a big change from the collaborative spirit of the early years of the internet, when addresses resources was a common which we shared based on documented need.
The biggest surprise of all was the announcement of the NTIA to finally step out of the contract with ICANN. It is worth looking back at what happened before ICANN was established: the IANA function was run by ISI at USC in California funded by the US Government. When there were uncertainties of the funding, the Numbering community contributed money to keep the IANA running. This was instrumental to get ICANN started. At the same time the Clinton administration was looking for ways to make investments in Internet services more attractive to investors in order to boost the US Economy, and ICANN was created as an “Industry self-regulation" body. It was a clear understanding that the US Government, at some point, would step out of its role. Now 15 years later we were all taken by surprise, not that it would happen, but that it happened right now.
As a result of this we have spent the year discussing "what now?". What do we propose as an alternative to the NTIA contract with ICANN, for the operation of the IANA function? We formed a team: Consolidated RIR IANA Stewardship Proposal Team - CRISP to produce a proposal based on the principles discussed and agreed in the regions.
After creating the proposal trough an open process at the ianaxfer mailing list and open phone-calls. The proposal was reviewed by the community before it was finalized.

You can find the text of the final proposal at the NRO web site.
The very high level of the proposal is quite simply a close to status quo:
  • the numbering community is organized bottom-up: members elect boards that controls each RIR
  • the community at large sets the policies trough open processes - which is already covered by the ASO MOU with ICANN
  • the NTIA contract for operation of the IANA function for numbers will be moved from the NTIA to the RIRs.
This means that ICANN will be providing this service to the RIRs and the community under a bottom-up oversight and accountability mechanisms from the numbering community.
This is in principle very similar to the proposal submitted by the IETF developed by the ianaplan working group. The name community, seems to have much harder job putting together their proposal. The Cross Community Working Group (CWG= to Develop an IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal on Naming Related Functions is still working.
The next step in the process is for the ICG to check the proposals against the request from the NTIA and make sure they are aligned.
 

04 January 2015

Norwegian Internet Governance Forum

The Norwegian Regulator - “Post og Teletilsynet” invited to a national Internet Governance Forum on December 9th in Oslo. On the agenda there were reports from the Internet Governance Forum in Istanbul by Ørnulf Storm from the regulator,  the ITU Plenipotentiary in Busan by Knut Aksel Wadet from the Ministry of Transport and Communications, the IANA transition, both on the names side by Elise K. Lindeberg from the regulator, and the numbers side by me in my role as RIPE Chair,  and a talk on Internet Governance in the perspective of International politics by Bjørn Svenungsen form the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  At the end there were a panel debate on “Who should control the Internet”.

On the attendee list thee were 27 names, 16  of them from the government, 7 from private sector and 4 from academia.

The meeting was opened by Reynir Johannesson, political adviser from the Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications. He gave a brief overview of the key areas in Internet governance for this governments: Network Neutrality, Openness and Security. He also drew lines between transportation and telecommunications politics; as increased ability for remote work and collaboration can reduce the pressure on public transportation. Internet Governance also touches on defence areas and foreign policy. The Government is also working on a revised eKom plan.

Report from IGF


Ørnulf Storm resented a report from the Internet Governance Forum in Istanbul. After an overview of what the IGF is all about he took us trough the main areas of focus for NPT:
  • How are the NETMundial results discussed at IGF
  • Network neutrality
  • IANA transition

For the results and the road ahead his summary was:
  • Increased focus on human rights and personal data protection issues
  • Renewed mandate for the Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group (MAG)
  • MAG will focus on how the results from IGF, NETMundial and ITU-PP can contribute to the preparations for the 2015 IGF
  • Extension of IGF and WISIS-10 review is under discussion in UN in New York in connection with resolution on ICT for development and the preparation for WISIS+10 Review High Level Conference in December 2015
For more details he referred to

ITU Plenipotentiary

Knut Aksel Wadet then took us trough the key areas of internet governance issues from the International Telecommunication Unions Plenipotentiary meeting in Busan. After an overview of the ITU and the Plenipot, and  the elections, he took us trough the work in the committees:
  • New headquarters
  • Budget and strategy for 2016-2019
  • Revision of constitution and convention - in particular the work on a stable constitution
  • Public access to ITU-documents
  • Reforming the work on the Radio regulations board RRB
  • IMAC (Independent Management Advisory Committee)
  • Global flight tracking
to give an impression of the Non-Internet related discussions at the conference.

He then went on to discuss the Internet related resolutions:

Resolution 101: Internet Protocol-based networks:
Proposal to give ITU a role in IP address allocations and Internet Exchange Points and that members states to prevent illegal surveillance of the Internet. In the end it was agreed that ITU will not duplicate the work done by the RIRs or the organisations already supporting IXPs

Resolution 102: The ITU's role with regard to international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet and the management of Internet resources, including domain names and addresses:
The proposal was that all “public policy” issues in related to Internet Governance should be within ITU and the jurisdiction of the member states. The European proposal was that this should be done in open and transparent, with increased cooperation with other relevant bodies.

Resolution 133: Role of administrations of Member States in the management of internationalized (multilingual) domain names:
The proposal for the ITU to take a leading role in developing domain-names in other languages than English. Several states would not recognise the work done by ICANN because it had not been done by the ITU. The European position was to increase cooperation with other organisations to strengthen the multi-stakeholder model.

Resolution 180: Facilitating the transition from IPv4 to IPv6:
The proposal was that ITU should have a leading role in the development of Internet standards and make sure that all new user equipment are IPv6 compatible. There was also a proposal to conduct studies to establish ITU as a RIR ad that ITU should develop deadlines and principles to ease the transition to IPv6. In the end the resolution was changed so it was clear that developing countries still needs assistance to complete the transition to IPv6, and that ITU shall acknowledge the work already done. Member states are encouraged to increase focus on IPv6

In the end the results turned out pretty well.

Who should control the Internet? - IANA Stewardship transition


Elise Lideberg has been participating in ICANN Government Advisory committee, and is now active in the Cross-Community Working-group to Develop and IANA Stewardship Proposal on Naming Related Functions (CWG). After an overview of the current situation with a contract between the United States Government (USG) and ICANN, and USGs announcement to consider transitioning out of this contract she gave an overview of the CWG.
  • stability of the IANA naming functions
  • part of the bigger picture of ICANN accountability
  • broad representation for the Internet community (within ICANN)
  • CWG has 19 members, but 119 participants following the work
  • Clear mandate, tight deadlines, final proposal by January 31st 2015
  • Accountability is key focus
  • the Multistakeholder model is built on trust - fragile mechanism.

The draft proposal has been built on 
  • IANA customers are satisfied with todays services from IANA - no significant changes in the daily operations are needed
  • Keeping current terms and conditions for the ccTLDs
  • Lightweight structure has been a goal, using existing functions from 
  • Important to keep and strengthen separation between policy development and the pure technical operations of the IANA function
  • Importan to keep a mechanism for sanctions if ICANN/IANA does not deliver the services according to policies

The proposal outlines
  • Customer Standing Committee (CSC) consisting of direct customer of the IANA function including ccTLD and gTLD registries. Monitor the IANA  service delivery.
  • Multistakeholder Review Team (MRT) - representation from the Multistakeholder  community. Overall evaluation of the ICANN/IANA. May initiate termination  or changes to the contract.
  • Contract Co - be the contracting party.
  • Independent Appeals Panel (IAP) - all ICANN/IANA desicions regarding the root-zone or the Whois database can be appealed to an independent dispute-resolution mechanism outside ICANN for binding decisions. 


IANA Stewardship Transition


In my presentation on IANA Stewardship from the Number community side I took the audience trough a brief history lesson explaining the difference between RIPE - the open policy forum, and RIPE NCC - as the secretariat, network coordination centre - and also Regional Internet Registry for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia. 

The RIPE Policy development process is anon process where anybody can suggest new policy and policy changes. The policy is the discussed in the relevant working-group, before the wg-chair declares consensus after a last call. The RIPE NCC Executive board does NOT approve policy - there is a clear separation between policy making and policy implementation.

RIPE NCC, and the other RIRs, have a Governance and accountability framework in place. This can be found at https://www.nro.net/about-the-nro/rir-accountability In simple terms the Managing Director is accountable to the board, which in term is accountable to the members. trough the General Meeting. For conflicts between members and the RIPE NCC there is an arbitration process in place. For policy development we have the Bottom-UP, Open and Inclusive RIPE.

IANA handles a small global registry of IPv6, IPv4 and ASNs - to keep track of which RIR handles different parts of the number-space according to 4 Global addressing policies. These policies has been developed trough a Global Policy development process which in essence is taking the same proposal trough all the regional policy processes. In the end the Address Supporting Organisation Address Council - ASO AC checks that the process has been followed and forwards to the ICANN board for ratification. The ICANN board cannot change the policy - only send it back - so the role of the ICANN board is very different from the name policies.

The discussion on the transition is taking place in all five regions. A Consolidated RIR IANA Stewardship Proposal (CRISP) Team has been set up to consiolidate the five RIR community outputs into a single proposal. The team consists of 15 members, 3 form each region - 2 from the community and one staff from each RIR. The CRISP team will work transparently trough a public mailing list. The CRISP team will forward the common proposal to the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG). The ICG - 30 members from various stakeholder groups -  is responsible for consolidating all inputs into a single proposal. The timeline for the process is tight,, the CRISP proposal will be forwarded to the ICG in January and to NTIA in June 2015.

From the last RIPE meeting the following key principles will be the foundation of the proposal
  • RIR communities are the ultimate stewards of number policy and registration.
    • A working model already in place
    • Bottom-up, open and inclusive
  • No new structures; build on existing structures and relationships
    • Operational and policy relationships already clearly defined
    • Minimal operational change
    • ICANN has provided excellent service as IANA operator

The information of the transition has been presented at the RIPE and RIPE NCC Regional meetings. A summary

Please participate in the process!

Internet Governance as foreign policy

Bjørn Svennungsen took us trough how the Internet of things bringing the Internet to everybody’s attention, Obama and Xi initiate talks to tackle cybersecurity, and further to the Russian statement on Internet Governance:

I do not understand, why an intergovernmental organisation – the International Telecommunication Union, deals with the distribution of radio frequencies, but internet domains are distributed by a Californian corporation controlled by the United States Department of Commerce.
Sergey Lavrov, 5. desember 2013

The Norwegian Government point of view is that
  • Cyberpolicy and Internet governance should not be decided by United Nations
  • International law also applies to the cyber-space
  • There is currently no need for separate conventions for cyber-space
He also touched upon the democratic dilemmas in in Internet Governance and foreign policy in general.

The current trends in foreign policy in cyber-space is that it is under development, there are many arenas, multilateral vs multi-stakeholder, US dominance and China, private sector entering the foreign policy arena, and technology turing into policy.

The meeting ended with a panel of all the presenters giving us opportunity to discuss some of the key issues that had been presented during the day.

Summary

All in all it was a well spent day, with interesting perspectives and some good discussions. As internet Governance is increasingly important to society as a whole, and more and more business depend on the Internet, events like the National Internet Governance forum in Norway should really have a much larger participation. A friendly suggestion to the organisers wold be to see how participation can be significantly increased, perhaps by joining forces with some of the industry organisations and creating a “Multistakeholder Advisory Group” like the Internet Governance Forum.