Technical Committee Meeting Minutes 01/07/04

— filed under: IPv6, Peering

Date: 01 July 04
Time: 4:00pm - 6:00pm
Place: InternetNZ Offices, Wellington

Agenda

Does Tech still serve a purpose?
Video Conferencing
Multicast Books
APTLD Representative
CA and SSL
Peering
IPv6 Progress and Roadmap
Other Business

Present

Brendan Murray (chair), David Harris, Bill Parkin, Don Stokes, Keith Davidson, Peter Macaulay, Michael Sutton, Chris Streatfield (for the first item), Simon Riley,

Apologies

Nick Wallingford

Does Tech Committee Still Serve a Purpose

This was the first meeting in a very long time. The mailing list is very quiet, there is a new chair, and there was a feeling that Tech was being bypassed. There was a perceived need for a re-commitment to the purposes of Tech from both the committee members and the executive. Members of the executive were present for this item, which was extremely valuable. After a fair bit of debate it was agreed that Tech does fill an important purpose for InternetNZ.

The recommendation to the President therefore was:

Technical committee

as an entiry should continue to exist
it must meet regularly
exists to report to Council
does not exist to generate the ?big reports?, that is the role of working groups which may be spun off from Tech
does provide an advisory service to operational areas of InternetNZ
will review the Strategic Plan to see where we are for the next 12 months

Video Conferencing

There are two parts to this: a simple requirement to provide a 2-ended point-to-point videoconferening solution between an Auckland office and the InternetNZ offices. The other is the larger and more general need to "eat our own dog food" - to use the internet as a means of meeting and communication for InternetNZ.

There is a identified solution to the point-to-point problem. It is essentially an operational matter since we are talking about a commercial product. Recommend that Peter Macaulay borrow a couple of units, try it out and if it suits he might as well just do it!

The larger problem may be soluble using an existing multicast trail setup that Michael Sutton has in place. Michael volunteered to see if it is easy to convert what he has into a suitable solution for unicast video conferencing. At this point we are looking at something simple to get going. If it turns out that we need to look at more complicated solutions we will come back to the issue.

Recommended

Tech accepts the offer of Michael Sutton to investigate support of videoconferencing, and to further investigate other options should the need arise.

Multicast Books

Michael Sutton confirmed to Peter Macaulay that the books we need to supply are the same ones that were supplied to the NZNOG conference earlier in the year. They will be ordered ASAP and distributed to suitable interested parties, some of whom have not yet been identified so we should keep a stock in the office. The expenditure was approved by Council some time back so does not need a formal recommendation.

APTLD Representative

This item arose from a request from Peter Dengate-Thrush regarding a need to get some representation on the APTLD Technical Committee. Tech is a little uncertain on the exact profile of a suitable person. Nonetheless it is clear that there should be an InternetNZ representation here and Tech is the right place to work through. Further consultation with Peter will be required to determine the amount of resource InternetNZ will need to put into this. To signal the intentions of InternetNZ Tech recommends:

The chair of the Technical Committee of InternetNZ would be the usual representative to the APTLD Technical Committee, but would recommend on a meeting by meeting basis a need to attend, not attend and/or send an alternate.

There is a longer term intention to determine if there is a better solution, based on closer examination of the actions of the APTLD Technical Committee.

[In the meantime I have emailed PDT and have been put on the mailing list for the APTLD Tech group]

CA and SSL

Fthere is a possibility that govt might want to get involved to provide some resource to make this happen. There is good reason for InternetNZ (or its agents like NZRS, say) to get involved in this. But we all believe that there are significant costs. We do believe there will be a need for government involvement.

David Harris volunteered to look at the costs and ramifications. This isn't to usurp anyone elses plans, but to get our understanding solid. We want to know how we might fund and manage the whole CA issue for SSL certs etc. Brendan Murray and Michael Sutton will help David. Once that is done we will have some room for scoping the real need for a project or task force to take it forward.

Peering

The issues for this are more political than technical. It went on the agenda because it was such a hot topic and it was worth seeing whether there was a position we needed to take. There is a need for a policy position on the peering issues. There is a report being generated now and when that comes back we might want some input into the policy. Simon Riley volunteered to maintain some oversight of what is happening.

IPv6 Trial and Implementation Roadmap

There is lots of push from central government wanting progresson IPv6 (despite China having apparently moved all the way to IPv9 ). NZ is a bit behind in developing an Ipv6 forum (there is an ipv6forum.org and ipv6forum.org.uk, for example, but no ipv6forum.org.nz!) Part of the problem is that there is no real champion of Ipv6 in this country. We think perhaps that the best approach might be to get together a seminar at NZNOG or similar. There is a need to talk to Andy Linton, but he's currently out of the country. Simon is probably best set yo sort out a good time. At the same time we need to look at sponsorship for a WIX F-Root server.

Other Business

DNSSEC
Despite Council's decision to put some money into making this happen, there are a bunch of technical issues that have arisen with regard to the ability to use DNSSEC records to walk a domain. Don Stokes gave a good presentation on this. The problems are clearly significant. It would appear that InternetNZ really should be taking a position and taking part in the BIND Forum ( http://www.isc.org/sw/bind/forum/forum.php ) and perhaps the DNS-MODA group. This is more than an implementation issue.

Don will put together a position paper on this. He will need to wait until the NZRS representative gets back from KL since he will have picked up more of the global position from the ICANN meetings.

SSL Certs for InternetNZ Web and applications
This is an operational matter. We request/direct Peter Macaulay to arrange commercial certificates for the InternetNZ servers (especially with things like OpenExchange coming onstream). That solves part of the SSL problem immediately.

Travel Fund
Simon Riley raised this issue. We would like to recommend that InternetNZ announce something along the lines of:

"InternetNZ has a small fund to provide travel assistance to people that have made a significant contribution to the internet in NZ for conference or similar travel where they will be presenting a NZ perspective".

Internet Innovation Fund
Simon Riley again. We would like to recommend that InternetNZ use part of its project fund to

"Provide an Internet Innovation Fund, to support worthy projects that promote the internet in New Zealand. Projects might include some technological development, or a work experience program to develop internet engineers. InternetNZ will be developing application guidelines and seeking applications soon".

PGP
In accord with good practice and security on the internet, we think it is a good thing to digitally sign and encrypt communications. One way that we can encourage such use is to recommend that all InternetNZ email communications should be signed or encrypted with PGP (or gnupg) keys, that InternetNZ should have signing keys for the office and for official communications. Part of this is operational and Peter Macaulay is encouraged to work on this. With a new council after the AGM this would be a good time to arrange key signing at the first council meeting of the new term. (Perhaps key signatures printed on the official InternetNZ business cards would also be a good thing?)

We recommend to council that all members of council should use pgp or gpg for all official communications, that all documents on the web site be accompanied by a digital signature to ensure their veracity. This should apply with the new council.

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