Firstly my apologies for the lateness of this report, but with several minor issues being resolved at deadline, I felt it more important to delay and therefore be up to date.

There are therefore recommendations in this report which were not included on the agenda.

Copyright Bill

I believe the InternetNZ submissions on the Copyright Bill once again demonstrate InternetNZ’s ability to gather useful input from stakeholders and craft compelling and pragmatic submissions on issues relating to the Internet’s regulatory environment. Outstanding efforts from Jordan Carter, David Farrar and Rick Shera, along with major contributions from many others have contributed significantly to the quality of the submission. More detailed reports on this subject are on the Council agenda.

Members Consultation Meetings

Meetings were held in Christchurch, Auckland and Wellington between 19th and 21st of February, with around 50 members attending in total. The 3 key areas of consultation and decision making were the Strategic Plan, Business Plan / Budget and Structural Review. Members were given updates on our work on the telecommunications regulatory issues and the Copyright Bill. 

Strategic Plan:

Members indicated their acceptance of the Strategic Plan as distributed. The Plan was also distributed to sibling organisations etc, for their input. Reg Hammond responded on behalf of MED and NZRS also provided some input. Council should consider these submissions before deciding to adopt the plan (See Recommendation 7).

Business Plan / Budget:

The only item of issue that arose during members discussions was a desire that an additional $25,000 budgeted expenditure be provided, for an investigation into peering. The business plan has been amended to incorporate this amount and circulated in the Council papers.

It is useful to note that this final budget is still within an acceptable level of variance to the “Fiscal Envelope” established by Council at its October 2006 meeting. Furthermore, members acceptance of the Strategic Plan for the ensuing 2 years, and the general indication that the level of budgeted expenditure will remain constant in order to fulfill Council and member expectations should be noted. These useful indications may be helpful for Council in discussions on the .nz registration fee setting agenda item.

I have recommended (Recommendation 7) that Council give final approval to the amended Business Plan and budget, subject to members approval at the AGM in July.

Structural Review:

There was significant interest in the Westlake Consulting presentations on its strawman model. As with any conceptual and incomplete plan, there were some who were reluctant to voice approval without full details at their disposal, but generally there was an acceptance that the model looked more useful than the status quo, and that members are looking forward to further consultation on  the completed plan in due course. There were some critics of the plan in Wellington only, and Don Hollander has followed up with a written submission, which is included in council papers for consideration.

Structural Review

The Tiger Team met on Thursday 8 March, the key points from that meeting included:

• The need for Westlake Consulting to hold a special consultation session with the InternetNZ. “kaumatua”, namely the Fellows and the ex-Presidents – who have been invited to a meeting on Tuesday 13 March.
• That the “charitable status” be separated as its own issue, separate from the structural revision
• That there be a further meeting of the TT before the end of March.
• That a special Council meeting be held in April to discuss the final model. The suggestion is noon to 3.00pm on Thursday 12^th April, as this is also the afternoon of the next scheduled Public Policy Committee meeting. (See Recommendation 2).
  

IPv6

Nick Wallingford attended the Australian IPv6 forum in December last year. While in Australia, he also attended the Australia, NZ, Korea Broadband Forum. His report on these meetings is appended to this report.

Following on from NZNOG meeting and their subsequent email list discussions on IPv6, it should be noted that there has been a slight shift and warming in attitude to IPv6 from the technical community. Our IPv6 hui will now become an issue of priority with a commitment to holding the event during the current calendar year. I am also following up discussions with a well respected leader in the technical community over possible InternetNZ involvement in IPv6 training.

Peering

Following from the outcomes of the Foo Camp discussions on peering and the input from our members, I am in the process of establishing a small group to undertake work on peering, on the following basis:

• The input documents will include the Azimuth draft report on peering, Neil Bertram’s 2006 Honours paper on peering, Bill Norton’s white paper on peering, and ISPANZ’s position paper on peering
• The group will specifically exclude people working in the ISP / telco environment
• The group will seek to establish some principles on peering
• The principles will be tested against various stakeholder groups including ISPANZ, TCF, content providers and Government
• The outcome will either be the InternetNZ position on peering, or more desirably, the industry position on peering.
  

I took advantage of the opportunity at APRICOT to get Bill Norton’s agreement that he would be available to “peer review” the outputs of our group.

I will bring a Terms of Reference and composition recommendation to Council for e-vote shortly.

Liz Dengate Thrush Foundation

Useful progress has been made over the past week, with a trust deed just awaiting the final minor amendments from Peter.  As previously discussed with Council, InternetNZ is not seeking to be the dominant force in the Trust, but the INZ President will be one of the (up to) 5 trustees (note Recommendation 3).  Peter is selecting the other trustees, on the basis of their ability and knowledge, and commitment to ideals held special to Liz.

The trust is on track to become operational by 31 March, thereby having the ability to issue receipts to donors, for tax rebate purposes.

2020 Communications Trust

The smaller room on the 10^th Floor is now occupied by 2020. The arrangement has been established with InternetNZ providing the space gratis, but recognition from 2020 that InternetNZ is a partner. The equivalent rental would be around $5,000 per annum, and 2020 have agreed that InternetNZ will receive partnership status accordingly.

Pacific Internet Partnership

I am negotiating with 2020 Trust for them to be the administrators of the process for evaluating PIP funding applications, and subsequent reporting back from recipients. Don Hollander currently completes this work on an unpaid basis, but given it is the equivalent of around 2 weeks work per annum, it would seem reasonable that payment be made for these efforts, and Don is happy that this occur to 2020 Trust rather than to himself. Under the arrangement, InternetNZ will continue to manage the funding aspects for PIP. The cost to InternetNZ will be $4,000 per annum, and will remove the current uncertainty of administrative responsibilities previously experienced, due to Don’s useful knowledge of the UNESCO and UNDP methodologies and his extensive knowledge of the technical community in the Pacific Islands.

ICT-NZ

I attended the ICT-NZ board meeting on 9 March. The final shape and form for organizational and personal membership to ICT-NZ is now agreed, and it should be noted that the personal membership subscription has been set at $200 per year. Their new website is entering the final stages of testing, and will be released during April. ICT-NZ is tentatively due to formally launch on 1 May.

Discussions are continuing between ICT-NZ and the various ICT organisations. The Computer Society continues to run hot and cold, but will be having a final decision special general meeting in the next few weeks. There is some further warming from other groups to a fuller immersion into the ICT-NZ structure.

I have continued discussions on InternetNZ’s engagement into ICT-NZ and will report further to Council at the meeting.

Netsafe

I have relayed to Netsafe our members acceptance of increasing our sponsorship of Netsafe to $100,000 per year for the next 3 years during our recent members consultations.

I have also volunteered to assist Liz Butterfield with some small aspects of her “Hector” project.

Richard Wood attended the NetSafe AGM in February, as both Jordan and I were overseas. There was discussion about changes planned to the Internet Safety Group name (to NetSafe), joining criteria (taking away the monthly meeting requirement) and Board selection process (moving to a three year rolling replacement). The repackaging of the schools material into a DVD format was shown off.  It includes the InternetNZ logo on the front and will be distributed to schools. NetSafe chair Rick Shera led a discussion on privacy online, explaining the high hurdles that are needed in New Zealand to prove your privacy has been breached.

TUANZ

I have continued meetings and discussions with Ernie Newman on a number of issues between TUANZ and InternetNZ which I will discuss at the Council meeting.

NZ Computer Society

The joint InternetNZ / NZCS technical scholarships process which was accepted by Council early last year has finally come to fruition. Some excellent applications for the scholarships were received, and as a result I increased our commitment from $10,000 to $12,500, to ensure none of the worthwhile applications missed out. (See Recommendation 6)

A function with some INZ representation and the scholarship recipients will be held in due course.

Ian Thompson

I approved a funding request from Ian Thompson (InternetNZ member and 2020 Communications Trust) to assist with costs of his travel to Canada, to undertake some research into indigenous people usage of the Internet. Ian was the project leader for the successful Tuhoe Internet project, and also in conjunction with WAND played a major role in the establishment of a wi-fi network for Samoa as part of the attendance at last years PICISOC meeting. Our contribution was $2,500, which I have allocated to the Special Projects Fund. Ian will provide a report on this trip in due course. (See Recommendation 5)

TCF Customer Complaints / Internet Code of Practice

Just prior to Christmas the TCF released its finalized “Customer Complaints Code of Practice”, available on line from www.tcf.org.nz/outputs/?doc=f.

We had stalled work on our own Internet Code of Practice, as during the development of the TCF code, it appeared that our code may become superfluous. However the final TCF code is primarily aimed to be a dispute resolution and complaint handling process, whereas the INZ code is primarily about best practice behaviours for ISP’s.  Our current draft of our code is at:

www.internetnz.net.nz/pdfs/issues/current/icop/2005-03-23_icop_draft.rtf

It is therefore now an appropriate time to pick up our code, and see if ISPANZ and TCF members still perceive the need for this code, and if so, make the necessary amendments possibly recognizing the TCF dispute resolution process as a vehicle for the settlement of customer complaints under our code (rather than the establishment of a separate complaints authority as is currently articulated in our code). A sub-group of the Public Policy Committee will be reviewing these aspects.

Communications Plan

Following on from Councils endorsement in principle in December of our Communications Plan, further work especially in terms of recording resource usage, and auditing of results has been completed by Richard, and a copy of the updated plan is attached for Council’s sign off (See Recommendation 4).

Digital Strategy ICT Summit

There has been some discussion in the media in recent weeks about a Digital Strategy Summit, to be held later this year. I would like some discussion in camera with Council on this issue.

Internet Governance Task Force

The inaugural meeting of our TF will occur on Thursday before the Council meeting, and will be seeking to establish the process for discussions with NZ Government in the forthcoming months, and with ICANN at the Lisbon meeting (since 75% of the TF will be present in Lisbon).

Cyberlaw Fellow

Philip Greene will provide a brief introduction at the Council meeting, and will be with Council for lunch.

Staffing

Having further reviewed the operational aspects of the business plan and budget for the forthcoming year, I am of the opinion that I will not require the services of a full time technical policy officer, but will contract resource on an as required basis during the year.

I am delighted that Jordan has accepted the position of Deputy Executive Director, and this change will assist in streamlining the office.

We will be having our annual staff retreat for 2 days during April (already postponed from March), to operationalise the budget and business plan.

New General Ledger / Council Reports

Progress on the new general ledger (to take effect from 1 April) has been slow, but the chart of accounts is now almost at a finished stage. Significant effort is required on this project over the next month. Staff will be taking the opportunity of the change in financial recording to also review the entire reporting methods used for Council.

It is my intention also to have a session for Councillors as part of the June Council meeting, to provide some “Accounting for Non-Accountants” training, which I hope Council will find useful.

APTLD Bali Meeting

I attended the Bali meeting, and was declared elected to the APTLD board, essentially replacing Peter Dengate Thrush as the .nz board member. Shariya Zilkifli from Malaysia was elected to the position of Chair. Tribute was paid to Peter Dengate Thrush on the completion of his term with APTLD and a presentation made to Peter by Yumi Osashi on behalf of the APTLD community.

The 2 days of  non-technical workshops were well attended by ccTLD managers and some excellent presentations ensued, although somewhat Australian(.au)-centric. The agenda and links to the presentations are online at www.aptld.org/meeting/2007/02_Bali/index.htm. The 3 issues possibly of greatest interest to INZ Council might be:

• Danny McPherson from Arbor Networks, and a noted IETF participant, outlined the escalation and changing nature of DDoS attacks primarily on the DNS. There are aspects that will be of significance to NZRS. Bill Manning’s presentation on signing the DNS (DNSSec etc) was also of some relevance, particularly with one ccTLD now having DNSSec fully enabled and live.
  

• I presented on the ICANN regions issues, and received some positive inputs from and subsequent to the meeting. There are 9 ccTLD’s geographically located within ICANN’s AP region who have been removed from the region e.g. Guam and American Samoa to North America, French Polynesia to Europe.
  

• Indonesia’s presentation on its .id ccTLD operation provided an insight into a cc which is emerging strongly from a developing nation. The usefulness of hosting an APRICOT meeting was very apparent, with nearly 50% of APRICOT registrations coming from Indonesia. Looking at the difficulties of telecommunications infrastructure, with thousands of inhabited islands, it occurred to me that Indonesia is ideally poised to leapfrog NZ in terms of fibre network rollout.
  

During the APTLD meeting I raised the issue of conflicts of interest and the operation of a register of interests, particularly due to the nature of InternetNZ being the contracted secretariat to APTLD, and my election as a director. As part of Jordan Carters promotion to the role of Deputy Executive Director, he will have full autonomy in dealing with any issues relating to the APTLD secretariat. Likewise, any issues arising at APTLD board level relating to the operation of the secretariat will require me to declare the conflict and abstain from participation. Obviously though, when it comes to the logistics and execution of the secretariat duties, I am happy to be Jordan’s “helper”.

It seems likely that the APTLD board will adopt a register of interests, at least as a voluntary declaration by its directors.

Jordan’s more detailed APTLD / APRICOT report is appended to this report.

InternetNZ was approached by Nathan Ward for financial assistance to attend APRICOT, and we provided a travel subsidy of $2,133, from the Technical Capability Development Fund (See Recommendation 5). Nathan will provide a report on the trip in due course.

APRICOT

It appears that the APRICOT organizing committee is having trouble finding hosts for future APRICOT meetings, and both before and at the meeting I was lobbied hard to see if IntertnetNZ would consider a further bid to host a meeting.  I have declined, but will examine their new meetings RFP, to see if there is any chance hosting could be affordable to InternetNZ.

ICANN Lisbon Meeting

I will be attending the ICANN Lisbon meeting and will be out of the office from the afternoon of Thursday 22 March, and back at work on Monday 2 April. The ccNSO/GAC working group, which I co-chair, has a considerable workload for this meeting, with presentations by ccNSO to the GAC on .IDN for ccTLD’s and discussion on the ICANN regions.

Council agreed at the December meeting that InternetNZ would nominate Chris Disspain for the ccNSO Council, which I have attended to.

Future International Travel

The next APTLD meeting is set for Dubai in the first week of June, to allow attendees to leverage from this trip to attend the CENTR meeting later in the same week. As I have never previously attended a CENTR meeting I would like to use this opportunity.

I am also giving consideration to attending the following meetings:

·         CeBit Sydney / May

·         PICISOC / PACINET Solomon Islands / August

·         Internet Governance Forum in Brazil / November

I am reticent about attending the June ICANN meeting due to its location, but it may be that GAC/ccNSO work will require my attendance.

Recommendations:

1.                   That this Executive Directors report, along with staff travel reports, communications plan, and monthly project reports for January and February 2007 be received.
 

2.                   That Council note the special Council Meeting on the structural review – Thursday 12 April from 12.00pm to 3.00pm.
 

3.                   That the President be appointed as a trustee to the Liz Dengate Thrush Foundation.
 

4.                   That the Communications Plan be adopted.
 

5.                   That the travel subsidies for Nathan Wards attendance at APRICOT and Ian Thompsons Canadian travel be noted.
 

6.                   That Council approve expenditure of  $12,500 from the Technical Capability for the joint NZCS / InternetNZ technical scholarships.
 

7.                   That the Strategic Plan for 2007/09, Business Plan and Budget for 2007/08 as amended be adopted and be referred to the members for approval at the 2007 AGM.

Keith Davidson

12 March 2007
 

 

Communications Plan 2007/08

Author: Richard Wood

Date: 25 January 2007

Introduction

I’ve been tasked with producing a Communications Plan for InternetNZ in my role as Communications Officer for the Society. Note that my role covers Comms and Research as well as separate work for ISPANZ. Therefore the existence of this role does not mean we have a full time resource on Communications.

I have drawn from an earlier report in 2005 by Chris Lipscombe, which was designed to scope and cost a communications plan. This is of value as a framework but it is clear circumstances have changed somewhat - for example InternetNZ’s standing in many circles is riding high following work on the Telecommunications Act in 2006 and membership is on the increase due to other initiatives.

In preparing this report I’ve considered the current state of communications in the organisation and the degree to which the various audiences are served.

Note that the communications needs of DNC and NZRS deserve specific considerations that are not specifically addressed in this plan, albeit some of their communications needs are covered.
 

Audience, purpose and goals

The audiences for communications of InternetNZ are:

Staff, Council, Members, Stakeholders, Government, Media and Public.

Deriving, but varying slightly, from the Comms Review, various types of communications, their purpose, audience and goals are summarised here:

 

	Purpose	Audience	Goals
Internal communications	To share information amongst staff and elected officials, coordinate the allocation of communications resources and prioritise related tasks.	Staff, Council, Members in some instances.	Improve effectiveness, efficiency, and understanding through clear and transparent processes.
External communications: General	To strengthen the InternetNZ brand by closing any gaps between the perception of, and performance of InternetNZ, so as to strengthen the brand and increase understanding of the organisation.	Members, Stakeholders, Government, Media and Public	For the organization to be seen as credible and trustworthy, for membership to be seen as high value and desirable, and for the organisations’ mission to be widely understood as the protection and promotion of an open and uncapturable Internet.
External communications: Targeting new members	To increase the membership of InternetNZ so as to increase credibility, influence, and sources of expertise.	Technology and internet industry professionals, ISPs, Government employees, political operators.	A continually increasing quantity of members, through a thorough audience understanding of the role and achievements of InternetNZ and how the individual and organisations can assist the society towards its goals.

  
Communications activities

The Comms Review suggests resources and budgets should be allocated on the basis of maximum bang for buck and proposes five campaigns – industry communications, brand development and stakeholder communications, member communications, member event programme, and consultation programme. To this I’ve added public education.

More recently brainstorming sessions at InternetNZ have identified a number of projects that can be addressed in the course of this year and these can be related both to these campaign proposals, utilizing them as a framework, and the communications purposes and goals mentioned above.

Further the appointment of a Communications Officer means there is now some “business-as-usual” communications work underway, which again can be related to the campaign proposals, communications purposes and goals. Business-as-usual includes press releases, briefings, monthly newsletter, website posting, weekly news digest, annual report, member consultations and journalist contact.

 
Projects for 2007/08

 

Project	Relates to audience:	Relates to campaign:	Estimated cost	Avg internal hours per month
Business-as-usual	All	All	Internal resources - 70 hours a month	70 hours
Public collateral Web accessible including logos and marketing materials	External: Staff, Council, Members, Stakeholders, Government, Media, Public	Brand development and stakeholder communications	$15,000 p.a. ongoing
Powerpoint collateral Slides about us and where we fit nationally/globally	External: Staff, Council, Stakeholders, Government, Media	Brand development and stakeholder communications	Internal resources – 12 hours twice-a-year + $5,000	2 hours
Media guide A list of spokes-people and experts for listing on the website	External: Media	Industry Communications	Internal resources – 12 hours twice-a-year	2 hours
Show stands Attending industry events such as NZNOG to promote membership	External Membership: Public	Industry Communications	Internal resources – 60 hours four-times-a-year	20 hours
Council meeting highlights Immediately following council meetings	Internal: Staff, Council, Members	Membership Communications	Internal resources	2 hours
Event highlights Immediately following attendance at events	Internal: Staff, Council, Members	Membership Communications	Internal resources – 2 hours a month	2 hours
StopSpam website Updating surrounding Bill	External: Stakeholders, Media, Public	Public education	Already done, further development using internal resources – 12 hours twice-a-year	2 hours
Website Post a weekly news update from content of newsletter and other initiatives	External: Staff, Council, Members, Stakeholders, Government, Media, Public	Membership Communications	Internal resources – 10 hours a month	10 hours
Blog	External: Staff, Council, Members, Stakeholders, Government, Media, Public	Membership Communications	Councilors contributions
Contributed Columns Articles for niche publications	External: Media, Public	Public education	Internal resources – 12 hours a quarter	4 hours
Speaker/Networking events Quarterly	External: Staff, Council, Members, Stakeholders, Government, Media, Public	Member Communications, Consultation	$25,000 p.a. ongoing
Podcasts A series of Podcasts on the basics of the Internet, utilizing but expanding upon material produced by AuDA	External: Public	Public education	$10,000

 

Indicative Timeline

 

2007/08

A

M

J

J

A

S

O

N

D

J

F

M

Public collateral

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

Powerpoint collateral

*

*

Media Guide

*

*

Show stands

*

*

*

*

Council highlights

*

*

*

*

*

*

Event highlights

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

StopSpam website

*

*

Website

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

Blog

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

Contributed Columns

*

*

*

*

Networking events

*

Podcasts

*

*

*

 

APRICOT Bali, February 2007

Travel Report – Jordan Carter

I attended the APRICOT Conference in Bali, Indonesia from the afternoon of Monday 26 February to the close of the conference on Friday 2 March. I attended the following meetings:

l        APTLD Members Meeting

l        APTLD Board Meeting (both as APTLD Secretariat)

l        DNS SIG in the APNIC Stream (presenting for Keith Davidson on the .nz DRS)

l        APNIC 23 Annual Members Meeting (representing InternetNZ with David Farrar)

This report details activity on each day of the trip.

Monday 26 February

I arrived in Bali around midday and proceeded to the conference venue, checked in, had lunch, and spent the afternoon preparing papers packs for the APTLD Meeting the following day.

Tuesday 27 February

The APTLD meeting took up the entire day, with useful presentations on a range of topics. The Communique of the meeting (attached at Appendix 1) summarises discussions. The meeting was well attended, and marked the end of Peter Dengate Thrush’s time on the Board and as Chairman. He was thanked heartily by members for his enormous contribution over his years in the role.

Keith Davidson has now joined the Board as a .nz director. Shariya (.my) has been elected Chair; Jonathan (.hk) vice-Chair, Yumi (.jp) Secretary and Jaeyoun (.kr) returned as Treasurer.

APTLD has commissioned InternetNZ to provide administrative services, and attendance as meetings, assisting the General Manager, Don Hollander, who now holds the official designation as the Secretariat of APTLD. We were thanked for our service over the past two years.

AUDA sponsored a very nice meal in a Balinese restaurant for delegates to reflect on the meeting and enjoy the local cuisine.

Wednesday 28 February

This day was spent in tidying up administrative matters from the APTLD meeting, and progressing a range of InternetNZ reading and email matters.

Thursday 1 March

In the absence of Debbie Monahan as DNC, I was tasked with presenting a brief explanation of the .nz dispute resolution system in the course of the APNIC Special Interest Group (SIG) on DNS policy. An outline of part of the session follows below. Aside from this, I continued with other InternetNZ work and the evening saw the farewell reception for APRICOT Bali, on the beach at the Grand Hyatt resort. This was a spectacular setting.

DNS SIG – 1 March 2007, at 11am.

All presentations and agenda online at:

http://www.apnic.net/meetings/23/programme/sigs/dns.html

 
1. Chair

A co-chair election is required to fill a vacancy.

2. ISC BIND – status and future. Joao Damas, ISC.

Current versions discussed. 9.4 includes new performance improvements – additional cache, architecture dependent lock relief.

Range of new items being worked on.

There was an interesting discussion of the impact of the Taiwan earthquake on root services (esp. F root), which was minimal. Also of the February DDoS attack on the root servers – data in the presentation shows that only two of the thirteen root servers were particularly affected, and users would likely not have noticed any effects at all had the media not picked the attack up. Anycast does therefore seem to work.

3. DNS SEC and CADR – Johan Ihren

DNS SEC means that people are likely to move to dns management tools, rather than the flat text file approach. Management of delegations so far is a lot of work in TLDs, and so will need “Registries” further down the chain.

4. APNIC DNSSEC deployment consids – George Michaelson, APNIC

Outlined DNSSEC benefits, what has been done, and what needs to be done. Adds trust to DNS lookup operations. Signed delegations at the core of the system. Drive is limited due to limited benefits – it is of benefit.

APNIC has been doing extensive testing of DNSSEC. Propose a regional agreement to be ready for 2008 to deploy DNSSEC. Active promotion and assistance through this year.

There was some support and a few questions, forward zones not yet considered for signing (but could and should be done, just not considered).

5. BGP anycast in the region - Masato Minda (JPRS)

JPRS are running an experiment to test running a.dns.jp in New York, before rolling out a real service from end 2007. Explained network topology, and outlined the results of the experiment.

6. .CZ dispute resolution – Tomas Marsalek

Tomas outlined the structure of the ccTLD. Insourced technical development. ARD makes use of the Czech Arbitration Court – full online platform for use. 600 complaints as of October 2006. Also used for .eu (in all European languates) and for Romania, Bulgaria from 1 January 2007.

There followed my presentation, and then a few brief others. All powerpoints as linked above.
 

Friday 2 March

This day was spent attending the APNIC members' meeting, details from which are below. David Farrar and I attended the first part of the meeting, and I returned after lunch. The discussion at that point (see agenda linked below) did not have much relevance to InternetNZ and so I did not pursue it. I returned home the following day.

APNIC Members Meeting – 2 March 2007

Paul Wilson opened the meeting at 9:15am. Agenda and presentations are available online:

http://www.apnic.net/meetings/23/programme/amm.html

Secretariat Report

Has restructured in the current year.  New level of management to help coordinate what is happening. Services, comms, technical and business divisions each with a manager. Also a researcher, plus Paul = executive team.

APNIC Member Survey 2007

Fourth survey of membership, externally conducted. Paul went through the results of the survey, noting increased participation over the years and the progress made in resolving the issues raised in each survey.

Area Reports

The managers of the various divisions presented reports on their areas of work within the organsiation. As the presentations are online no summary is presented here. The key area is Services, as this is where the bulk of APNIC's activity occurs.

The communications team noted that the CD handed out to attendees has a large amount of information about APNIC on it, including some training presentations. I have a copy of this available in the office.

The finance report for 2006 was also presented, surplus of USD 135k, with 1,362 members at close of year (+205). Assets at end of year were USD 12.2m. There are some risks to the financial position relating to the USD/AUD exchange rate and the fact that members fees are paid in (depreciating) US Dollars. The work of the Fees WG in reviewing the structure of APNIC membership fees will be reported this afternoon and is important to the organisation's future. The aim is to keep an operating reserve of 1 years' funds.

Paul Wilson spoke about the budget for 2007, noting the issue for revenue is the foreign exchange rate. Salaries line has had to increase as turnover had risen; the cause as diagnosed by an external review was below-market staff salaries.

Projection for 2007 Budget is a loss of USD 490k (approx).

EC Report

APNIC's Executive Council report, presented by the Chair. There are seven members.

The issue of fee review is about long-term financial stability for APNIC, and fairness between NIR and non-NIR members. It is said not to be about increased budgets for APNIC. A number of other items were also covered. The report is available on the website.

RIR Reports

AfriNIC – steadily growing, and a new focus on IPv6 rollout.

ARIN – a paper copy has been distributed. Starting outreach to the Caribbean region which has not been done so much in the recent past.

LACNIC – allocations increasing,

RIPE – has reorganised, after an external review. Helping focus on customer service (a new department), and refocused other divisions. Issues include certification, membership liaison, some government engagement.

EC Election Preparations

Four positions being elected. InternetNZ cast its votes online prior to the meeting and so we did not have to take part in the election. The various candidates made speeches or had these made on their behalf.

The meeting broke for lunch at 12.31pm and returned at 2.06pm.

IANA Report

The report from Leo Vegoda covered IANA’s function, current projects (which are focusing on registry data improvement, process improvements etc), and upcoming work. Questions were invited. A comment from Randy Bush indicated that registries are largely now happy with the performance of IANA, for the first time in many years.

Voting System in APNIC Bylaws

Hyunjoon Kwon (KRNIC) presented on this, motivated by the review of Membership fees. This presentation deserves close review as it may affect InternetNZ voting rights in future.

Fee Working Group Report

This was a reportback on the half-day meeting held yesterday on the future fees structure for APNIC.

RIPE’s fee model looks at a member’s holdings and “age it” – recent allocations have more weight than older allocations. Points to a ‘service’ model; it costs more to do new allocations than to maintain old ones. Away from a ‘we are renting address space’ model. Allows a way to let in legacy allocations at a fair low cost (avoid a war with holders of legacy space). They then quota this into a range of membership bands. The charge is then applied on a cost ratio.

LACNIC’s fee model – take 30% of NIR’s income. All the NIR members are also voting members of LACNIC.

Randy sought discussion from the room on these matters. JPNIC, TWNIC etc had breakfast, and there will be further discussion after today’s meeting. Aim perhaps to come up with a new and different proposal for people to consider it.

Ming-Cheng – 3 bit model is same as current model, but different to the proposed two-bit model. Less impact than a 2-bit approach.

Questions – asked if other LIRs have had much input. Randy noted the costs have to be shared across the community, including non-NIRs.

 

Reports on Attendance at Two Conferences in December 2006 – IPv6 and Australia/Korea/NZ Broadband Forum

 

Provided by Nick Wallingford, Technical Analyst

Version: 21 December 2006

Ipv6 Summit

Canberra, Australia

5 and 6 December 2006

This was the second such conference held, and many of the attendees had been at the meeting held last year.  Attendees were predominantly Australian, but with a substantial numbers Americans as well.  There were relatively few New Zealanders.

The Australian government people, particularly defence related, were large in numbers but tended to keep to themselves somewhat.

The conference was organised and hosted by the Internet Society of Australia, and as it was the 10th anniversary of that organisation, quite a few of their original members were in attendance.

The programme was directed toward the 'business case for Ipv6 implementation, though a number of talks ranged well away from that topic.

From their website:

Following the first Australian IPv6 Summit in 2005 the Australian IPv6 Summit 2006 examined the business case for IPv6 implementation.

Internet Protocol Version 6 is already being deployed by Australian trading and defence partners in Asia, America and Europe. Ipv6 has the potential for enhanced mobility, easier management, built-in security and an almost unlimited range of new Internet addresses for next-generation devices.

From the core of the Internet through to the desktop...

What are the economic and strategic benefits of IPv6?

What is the status of local and international IPv6 activity?

How does IPv6 affect government, trade and defence?

What are the service provider, addressing, and security issues?

Where are the useful tools, checklists, training and support?

Australian enterprises need to understand what opportunities IPv6 can provide, in order to decide the business case for themselves. The IPv6 Summit offered two days of International and Australian experts that addressed these questions and more, plus a new technology showcase and an optional one-day IPv6 Deployment Workshop, a hands-on guide to easy implementation.

Quite a few of the people have been involved with aspects of IPv6 for some time, and there was the usual “why is this still taking us so long to get underway?”.  There was, however, quite a lot of “what arguments are needed to move this to the next stage?”, rather than simply enthusiastic wish to implement.

Speakers seemed to re-iterate the point that IPv6 will not provide much of anything apart from larger number space as a given.  That is, the aspects of security and better routing, etc, can only end up as advantages if all things are working well together and configured right – the comment was quoted from a hacker website that they did not, automatically, have a great deal to fear from IPv6, that they could potentially still continue many of their activities!  IPv6 may well provide many advantages, but should not be over-sold in the process.

Similarly, the security aspects of IPsec will only really be achieved if there are adequate and appropriate certifying authorities available – IPv6 itself does not do that, but only allows for the use...

Several speakers described applications and uses that would help to encourage IPv6 uptake.  Two in particular – mobile telephony/internet and the emergency services aspects – appear to have been pretty well developed and provided better argument than the typical 'we won't have enough IP addresses' for many people...

The US defense department people played a major role in the sessions.  They did not appear to, for the most part, be as far down the track of real implementation as I had thought they might be.  They were doing major projects, but given the other things I had heard re: their timetable, I thought they might have been even more advanced.  They did not seem aware of the general audience belief that their role in the world was to protect everyone.  One US guy broke down in brief tears at the podium, remembering 9/11...

I participated (listened, in fact) to a BOF organised to discuss the process of IPv6 implementation in the Australian registry.  It sounded like they were a little ahead of us, but not all that far.  Issues identified tended to relate more to connectivity and actual routing, rather than the 'correctness' of the DNS in serving up AAAA records.

Speakers at the forum are described at

http://www.isoc-au.org.au/ipv6summit/speakers.html
 

Abstracts of the talks are available at

http://www.isoc-au.org.au/ipv6summit/abstracts.html

Australia-Korea-New Zealand Broadband Summit

Adelaide, Australia

7-8 December 2006

This was the third summit in this series, and again a number of the participants appeared to know each other and had a shared expectation of outcomes.

The website described the summit as:

The Australia-Korea Foundation, the Department of Communication IT and the Arts and the Department of Further Education, Employment, Science and Technology is pleased to present the Australia-Korea-New Zealand Broadband Summit.

To be held in Adelaide this year, the Broadband Summit gathers the information technology and communications ministers and leaders within the broadband industry from Korea, New Zealand and Australia to encourage international collaboration in broadband.

The Australia-Korea-New Zealand Broadband Summit is the third in an annual series of Summits, and has the objectives of:

l     promoting collaboration between ICT and digital content companies and research organisations of the three countries

l     enhancing learnings between Australia, Korea and New Zealand in the fixed and mobile broadband communications segments of the ICT and digital content industries

l     enhancing cultural and business awareness between the three countries.

Building on the success of the two previous Summits, it is an ideal forum for telecommunications carriers, electronics companies, research organisations, telecommunications equipment providers, broadband applications and services developers to discuss and negotiate business and research interests across the three countries.

From the point of the Australians, a lot of that appeared to me to be simply trying 'sell themselves' to the Koreans, hoping to find potential partners for various operations.  I'd have to say the New Zealanders participating were more subdued and considerate overall...

The opening session involved IT ministers from the three countries and, sadly, they were probably the most interesting and genuine of the speakers overall!  Hon David Cunliffe made a particularly well received impression, though the content of his speech was not new in any way.  One line he did use was referring to PROBE as having achieved broadband provision to every school in New Zealand.  Hmmmm...

Many of the speakers were simply delivering marketing/feature demonstrations of their products.  The Korean presentations in particular were interesting, but were only describing what their various hardware and software capabilities were.

A heavy emphasis was placed on mobile provision, along the lines of “now that broadband in Korea is near saturation, we need to find another set of products to sell, so mobile phones it is...”  WiBRO rollout featured significantly, and again the use of emergency services as a motivator to get other applications underway.

Several of the New Zealand speakers did particularly well.  Scott Houston (Intergrid, Weta/Telecom) had by far the most entertaining/professional presentation, but had interesting and useful content to it as well.  Donald Clark (KAREN/REANNZ) did a good show, but again it did not contain anything very new if you had heard him before.  Fortunately, none of the New Zealanders attempted to do such a blatant 'selling' job of themselves.

The words entrepreneurial, innovative and synergies figured heavily in many of the talks.  In practice, I did not hear all that much that was remarkable or particularly enlightening.

There is an expectation that the forum might well be hosted in New Zealand next year.

While the participation was probably useful, and many of the contacts I made were valuable, I was overall disappointed with the content of the talks.  I do not feel that they were focused on strategies to improve broadband provision or uptake, or aimed at discussing needs and methods of provision.  It was, for certain, not a technical forum, but I feel it lost a bit of focus in not clarifying what it really was set to aim for.

A copy of the programme is available at

www.plevin.com.au/aknzbbs2006/program.htm