AMM transcript

Session One
Session Two
Session Three
Session Four

Session One

Friday 7 September 2007
0900-1100

Welcome

PAUL WILSON:

Well, good morning, everybody. It's 9:30, which I think is 9:00 in Indian time, and I think we'd better get started now so we can move through today's agenda.

I'm Paul Wilson, Director-General of APNIC, as I'm sure you know, and, as you also know, I'm here in New Delhi for the 24th APNIC Open Policy Meeting, which is being held jointly with SANOG 10.

I'm here with quite a number of APNIC staff, who I'm sure most of you have met, but, if you haven't, then please, by the end of the day, feel free to approach any of the APNIC staff, who are generally well uniformed today in the blue and black T-shirts, and please feel very free to call on the APNIC staff for anything you need, but also to say hello and introduce yourselves to us, because that's one of the most important things about this meeting.

So I think I would like to start by thanking the sponsors and hosts of this meeting. There's quite a number, because of the - particularly because of the joint meeting with SANOG. The list is here, but I'd like to especially mention SANOG itself, because this has been quite a hard effort on the part of SANOG to work together with APNIC and to bring this meeting to you, and I think, for the most part, it's been pretty successful.

The local host is ISPAI, the Internet Service Providers Association of India, who've provided fantastic support as the local host and worked also very closely with us, with SANOG on the local preparations. NIXI, the National Internet Exchange of India is the diamond sponsor, so they made a very substantial contribution to the cost of this meeting.

In the gold sponsor category, we have Reliance.

Ruby sponsors are Afilias, Google and I'll give a suspension mention here to the Internet Society, who are a ruby sponsor on account of a large contribution to the fellowship program. And, unfortunately for the Internet Society, their logo hasn't yet appeared in this list of hosts and sponsors, so I'd like to give a special thanks to the Internet Society and try to compensate a little.

I've put the Internet Society on this list for the first time today, but previously they've not been on the list just to clarify for the sake of those with an eye for attention to detail. Thank you, Sam.

But just to give the Internet Society a little bit of compensation for the low profile they've been given so far, I'd like to recognise that very substantial contribution to the fellow program for the SANOG meeting and the APNIC meeting, which has been very important in helping to bring people to this meeting who may not have found it so easy without that type of assistance.

I'll just jump to the bottom of the sponsors list and just mention in particular the APNIC silver sponsors for this meeting, who've come in, most of them as usual, and thanks very much for the repeated contribution from CNNIC, JPNIC, KRNIC and TWNIC.

So I would invite you all to express your thanks to all of those sponsors for all the support that they've given to this meeting today. Thank you.

APPLAUSE

OK. On to some equally important business. The question of prizes. We've got a couple of prize draws happening today. The first is to anyone who would like to go and sign up for an APNIC digital certificate or update your details at the APNIC Helpdesk. And by doing that, you won't just go into the draw, you will actually get an APNIC Eco-stapler, which is a very handy little device that pins bits of paper together without the aid of little pieces of metal. It's quite an interesting thing and quite a nice little gift, so please make use of that and also go and help us out by making sure that we've got up-to-date details for all the APNIC members here who are here.

Secondly, there is a survey in relation to the MyAPNIC service and Sunny, I think, will be distributing forms, survey forms, for you to fill out during the day, and there will be a prize draw which, I believe, is a digital multimedia frame.

OK, on to an overview of the agenda for today. As usual, we've got some reporting from the APNIC Secretariat and from the RIRs between now and the morning teatime. If we have time, we'll open the microphone for discussion, but I'd like to emphasise that this meeting, although there will be quite a number of reports today, it's not supposed to be all one way, there's really ample opportunity and great encouragement to everyone here to please participate raising issues and asking questions any time you like, but particularly during those open microphone slots.

After morning tea, we've got a session on the status of the APNIC fee structure discussions. There's been a lot of discussion during the week. That fee structure session was held on Wednesday and Randy will be reporting back from that and hopefully will be continuing the discussion, particularly about the issue of the future fee structure for APNIC.

In the afternoon, we have reports from the APNIC EC from the SIGs, which have gone on this week. We have a report, a panel session on the progress that APNIC Secretariat has made on the outcomes of the member survey and, if you recall, in March this year, we announced the results of the latest APNIC members survey, as regards to where we go in future and the Secretariat has been responding to that. And we'll be talking about that.

We have a report from the IANA, from the NRO and from the Address Council, more open-microphone sessions and then hearing the result of the APNIC fee structure vote and we'll be hearing about the next meetings, APNIC 25 and 26. So this is the agenda bashing. Can you suggest anything else that we need to discuss or fit into the schedule today? If not, I'll go straight on.

Voting procedure for interim fees proposal

One of the first things I'd like to talk about today is the voting procedure for this interim fee structure proposal that is under way at the moment. The voting, the onsite voting is open and APNIC members who have registered to come into this room and receive your registration details will have ample opportunity to cast your vote, if you haven't done so already.

I'd like to go through that now in case there is anyone, for instance, who would like to vote early and not wait. But I would encourage anyone who is going to be here for the rest of the day - and I hope most of us are - you can wait and vote a little later on, particularly, in particular after the APNIC fee structure session, which is at the end of this morning.

This vote is open to APNIC members only. It is an APNIC member business, an issue of APNIC member business. The proposal has been on the APNIC website for quite some time and you'll references to it and links to it from the APNIC website. The vote is basically, "Do you agree that APNIC should adopt the proposed interim APNIC fee structure adjustments?"

We have an authorisation system for voting contact within the APNIC membership. So we are asking that, or suggesting that only registered voting contact for APNIC members can vote. Either online - the online period has ended but we did have, as is normal now, we had the online voting period open for two weeks up until the - ten days or so up until the 5th of September. You may also be carrying proxies for other APNIC members and if so, you should have ballot papers for other APNIC members who have signed their proxy to you and, of course, what we're doing today is voting on site for anyone who hasn't voted online. Of course, you're not allowed to vote twice and you won't have a ballot paper in the case that, for instance, you have already voted in the online ballot.

So the voting is open now and it closes at 2pm, which is after the lunch break and, as I mentioned, it's fine for you to wait until the fee structure session has been - until we've been through that session and even into lunch, but make sure that you have voted by 2pm at the very latest, because ballot papers after that won't be accepted.

Now one piece of good news, particularly for the volunteers who are generally called on to count these ballot papers is that we have a new system for on site voting here, where there is a single ballot paper for each member and depending on your membership category, that ballot paper will be worth anything from one vote to 64 votes. If you recall, in the past, if you were an extra large paper, you had 64 papers to fill out and the scrutineers had 64 to count for every extra large member. I don't think this is terribly difficult to understand or to explain, but you will have, as I mentioned, a single ballot paper corresponding to your membership category and, as I've said, if you are carrying proxy votes for anyone else, then you will have a ballot paper for each of the other members who you are representing here today.

It has always been possible in the past for a member to split their votes, to take 32 votes and have one of their representatives fill out those 32 out of 64 and have someone else fill out the other 32 to vote in any combination that you like. If you would like to do that, then you can, in this case, you can trade in the ballot paper which you received for a set of individual ballot papers at the APNIC registration desk and that's just to allow anyone who does wish to split the vote or to distribute ballot papers among representatives they have here to still be able to do that as you may have done in the past.

The ballot form itself is quite simple and hopefully self-explanatory. It's a simple yes/no question, so you're being asked to simply mark one of those boxes with an X. And ballots will be invalid if you forget to mark any box, mark more nan than one or don't make a clear mark that allows the scrutineers to count your ballot unambiguously.

The ballot box is at the front of the room right now for anyone who is impatient to cast their vote. I will be calling for scrutineers before the lunchtime period and we'll be announcing the result by the close of the meeting today.

So just a reminder - the voting is open now and it will close at 2 pm sharp today for those who want to cast your ballots after 2 pm.

APNIC Secretariat report 'Big picture'

So moving right along then, we have some reports from the Secretariat here about Secretariat activities which have been under way, with a focus on the last six months since the APNIC member meeting, which was held in Bali last March.

I would like to just remind us all of the structure of the APNIC Secretariat these days. The structure was changed within the last year in order to create a collection of - a small collection of major areas of activity within APNIC and for each of those activity areas to have an area manager who is a senior manager within the APNIC staff.

At the centre of our structure is the Services area and that includes resource services, membership services and training services, and that reflects the fact that APNIC is a service organisation and services are in the centre of everything that we do. Around that Services area, and supporting it to do its work, is the Communications area, which includes documentation, policy and external relations, the Technical area, which includes network operations, software and security, and the Business area, which includes finance, office support and human resources.

So that's the way the APNIC Secretariat looks these days and we're going to have some reports now, which are structured according to the areas of APNIC, and they will be presented by the people responsible for those areas, namely myself as Director-General, Sanjaya as the Technical Area Manager and Acting Services Area Manager, Donna McLaren as the Communications Area Manager, and we don't have a Business Area Manager at this stage, so those will be covered in my own report and in the financial reporting that's later on. I'd like to mention that the other senior manager at APNIC is Geoff Huston, the Chief Scientist.

Unfortunately, Donna is sick today. Quite a number of the APNIC staff at different times have come down with various health problems of one kind or another, and unfortunately Donna's not able to be with us, so I'll be presenting her report today. So, in fact, there's just two of us up here on the podium to present these reports, myself and Sanjaya. And we'll be doing that over the next half an hour.

So Sanjaya will do it's service areas. Thank you.

Services Area

SANJAYA:

Good morning, everyone. My name is Sanjaya, I'm the acting services area manager. My name is Indian, but I'm Indonesian and I have a great respect to the Indian culture and it's an honour to present here in front of our colleagues from all over the world and India in particular.

In the services area, the service area, as Paul mentioned, is the core of APNIC area that delivers the service to the members. So this is a point for delivering service. We have four functions and units within the services area. So I'm going to go through my presentation according to the unit structure. The first one is the resource services and then member services, followed by training and then by the key projects we have.

Resource services is headed by Guangliang Pan. He's been working very hard. We are the only - going in to three quarter of the year and already exceeding the 2005-2006 allocation figure. As of August 2007, we have allocated about close to 3.5 times /8s. I have a feeling that we will still grow to the end of the year.

On IPv6, although the green bar there, although you can see that there's a huge demand in 2004 and 2005 and that somehow it probably because those who care about IPv6 already got theirs, so there's nothing much on 2006 but 2007 showed some growth again. ASN numbers are growing very fast. This is an indication of independent networks that is being brought out in this region. So it's a good indication about whether there are new networks being built, new ISPs, new companies getting hooked to the Internet in a multi-homing fashion. So it's encouraging to see that more networks come out in 2007. I think we're going to exceed 2006 this year.

In the Resource Services area, we have a few priorities that we're going to focus on the next 6-12 months. One is we will continue streamlining our procedures to ensure that people are clear when they request, well-informed - it gets done in a great manner. When people need more IP addresses, that means they're growing and they urgently need to run out their networks.

We will also be improving NIR process. I think it's already good at the moment. We have a one-day turnaround already. But any possible improvements will be explored and implemented in the next 6-12 months.

We also started to look at the resource certification service planning. At the moment there's a lot of technology being designed and developed on the resource certification but service provisioning of the certificates itself is currently being planned and designed. And I think anticipating the IPv4 address consumption, we will also start to look seriously about claiming historical IPv4 address that hasn't been routed, because it will be a waste to have a shortage on one hand but then on the other hand we have allocated resources that are not being used. So we will be focusing on that.

The next unit we have is Member Services, which is lead by George Kuo. He's outside at the registration desk. Member Services take care of registration of new members, maintaining the current members and making sure everything is being serviced properly. As you can see from the chart there, that we are growing, even not reaching the end of August, we have more, you know, I think already the growth is the same from 2005 to 2006 and 2006 to 2007 current year to date. We already see the same growth. So by the end of the year I think we will see a larger growth in the membership. The Member Services operate many hours to service different time zones. In India, we have 4.5 hours time difference so we wait in Brisbane to make sure the people in the South Asia can still contact us when they open the office. We also pride ourselves for being able to resolve urgent issues on the spot, both on technical as well as administration. But as of lately, the most technical issues we can we get requests for is - the measurement realise more and more on diversity. So we get lots of calls and urgent requests from all members to update the reverse DNS so that they can send mail properly.

The priorities for George Kuo's team are listed here. We will focus on enhancing the membership support, both for the new members as well as the existing members. MyAPNIC being the primary part of our Member Services. We will keep on adding new features on that platform.

To make it easier for new members, new ISPs, new companies that wants to roll out the network to join in becoming APNIC members, we are going to install first a set of procedures and system support for fast and easy account opening, simple resource request form and for the first time doing the online membership agreements. So no more sending back and forth paperwork to be signed for the APNIC members. We will also work on establishing a knowledge base. This is a very useful tool for members or prospective members or public inquiries to first go in to the knowledge base and get the most famously asked questions. Last but not least we will focus on the ICONS community building. The ISP portal community building, getting more and more, getting people more involved to share Internet service knowledge throughout the region. And globally too.

Alright - the third unit we have is Training Services, lead by Cecil Goldstein. Can you please stand up? He's done a very good job this year, as you can see from the graph. Even before reaching the end of the year, we are already way over delivering training to different countries. So the part on the left is the number of courses that has been delivered. 43 courses already so far. And there will be more coming this year. The green bar shows the economies, the number of countries we visited for training. We have reached 70 countries and economies so far. And the blue bar is also very important in the number of attendees that got trained by our training team. So we're already over 1,000 people trained by the APNIC training team.

In the next 6-12 months we will keep on focusing on increasing training coverage, both in terms of content as well as the geographical coverage. We will keep on building partnerships with different countries and economies to leverage the local knowledge there, to support us in delivering training. We will soon start training - a training survey. We will announce it on our website. We will mail people to please take time to fill in the training survey. Cecil, when are we going to launch it? Probably October?

CECIL GOLDSTEIN:

By the end of the month.

SANJAYA:

We will be running an online training survey by the end of the month. Please take your time to fill in so we know what your training needs are and be able to address that. And for the future, we will work on the curriculum development and blended learning for enhanced training.

This is the last slide. The key projects we have for the whole area, service area are these. So the first is we are going to continue improvements of our resource management system. Mainly focusing on improving IPv6 support. We are also embarking on Certification Authority v2, which allows us to do it faster and stronger authorisation checks. The last one is the resource certification. It's the future work that is very important. We are doing some business impact assessments and starting the service design and planning. So that's my update on the services area.

PAUL WILSON:

We will have plenty of time for questions afterwards, so I think we'll push straight on for these reports.

SANJAYA:

This is my home base. This is my permanent role here, the technical manager of APNIC. We are a supporting unit, so we provide IT facilities for members and other parts in the APNIC organisation. We have four units and functions within technical services. The first one is network and operations, which has systems software and network. And research and development which does advanced research and statistical analysis to help with APNIC in supplying more information to members for policies, decisions and technical work. And the third one is security, which is focusing on protecting APNIC's information assets and the last one is the software engineering that develops software to support APNIC operations.

The network and operations looks like this. We have from the left - sorry if it's unreadable - on the left is the APNIC main office data centre and we have data connecting the office to a local facility. And then that is located in Brisbane, it then connects to the Internet and then we have three other locations, so far one in Japan, one in Hong Kong and one in the US. Mostly to run DNS to make sure that even if the network in Australia gets down, then the others can cover the important DNS queries.

In the last six months we've been improving our DNS software. We've been rolling out a software called AMS which handles DNS and handles volume better than the current system we have. And we have moved the publicly visible servers to the local collocation. It's in the data centre of the main APNIC office but because it has less coverage in terms of power generator, UPS and so on, we move everything to all the major ones to the local collocation and done in the first quarter of this year. After moving most of the important services to the local collocation, then we have time to build or rebuild a new data centre in the APNIC office to improve service to the internal organisation.

Realising there's a lot of historical data and critical information needed by members and by APNIC operations, we implement the intended backup server. We have to do it in both our - it does snapshots of all the important data.

Last but not least is the root server activities. There's been quite a lot of activities this year so far. We did some hardware switch replacement in Hong Kong. There's a replacement of Juniper routers in New Zealand. I-root intention to install for the first time in Sri Lanka. And also discussing the possibilities of adding more I-root servers in China. And we have to deal with some issues in Malaysia.

For the next 6-12 months, the network and operations team, which is lead by Terry, I forgot to introduce Terry. Can you stand up? The network operations team operates the web cast service that you are seeing this week by the way. So Terry's team is going to look in to improving their processes, starting by implementing the ITIL service desk. It is a framework for establishing a good IT support process within the organisation. So we are going to use that discipline to improve our IT services.

We will also be providing the new infrastructure data - the content management system, probably presented by Paul to explain what it is later. We are going to implement this later this year. We will also be looking at adding more robust document and web search interface. Part of the feedback we got from the members, or the public are that there is this, it's a bit hard to find APNIC information. So we're thinking of improving the search engine to allow for better finding of important documents by the members. And, lastly, thinking about how we can provide a good resource certification repository. We are going to put all the resource certificates that have been issued by APNIC as well as by other parties in the repository. It will be a database that the operators can quickly fetch and check for the validity of the certificates.

Alright, next is research and development, lead by George Michaelson over there. Please stand up, George. He's our research and development officer who has been busy with three mage projects. The first one main projects. The first one is the DNS measurement. It's a long-standing project we're doing. The reverse DNS being one of the critical services in APNIC, we watch our DNS carefully, look at the types of queries. So we're implementing a new DNS measurement system by installing taps in Japan on the left hand-side there, where the information gets collected to the DNS collector, and with a transmitter to both APNIC and the OARC project in the ISC, which will deliver some very interesting statistics that hopefully we can get more publicly in the future.

Another one that George has achieved this far is to introduce - since January we have started allocating 4-byte ASs, one in Brisbane and BGP nodes in Japan, to see if the 4-byte AS works. The third project that George is heavily involved in, in fact, most of his time is actually involved in is the resource certification work where we have to collaboration with other RIRs, NIRs and other organisations to work out the design, the protocols of the resource certification, which also involves IETF activities. We are designing three service models for the members. So when we're ready to launch this service, there will be three types of services. One is fill service to the members and this is given to every members with no additional charge through MyAPNIC. Through MyAPNIC it has the ability to certificates through MyAPNIC. But some of the larger members may wish to run their own software so the resource certification software. We will provide our software as open source codes, so you can download the code and run your own resource certification system. The third one, which is not committed, it is a hosted services. This allows large ISPs who wishes to issue a lower level certificates to a second tier ISPs for example. But let's say they do not have the expertise or do not wish to spend resources on maintaining their own certification system, then they could, in theory, outsource to APNIC and we will run the certification engine for them. But again it's complicated. We have no committed deliverables yet but stay tuned, we will update you if there's any progress on that service.

So the projects that George Michaelson is going to focus on in the next 6-12 months is consumption in IPv4 in conjunction with Geoff Huston's work. We are also seeking 4-byte AS peers in Tokyo and Brisbane. If you are from that area and somehow connected to the JPIX or - what's our peering point in Brisbane, Terry? PIPE. If anyone peers with PIPE in Brisbane or JPIX in Tokyo, please contact George Michaelson and see if you can peer your 4-byte AS with us.

We are also going to work on better information presentation and access and thinking of deploying more DNS data collectors.

The next unit is a function we have with security. We are implementing log monitoring and analysis, which is an intrusion detection and log analysis tool that we found on the Internet. So if you want to share - if you use the same tool and want to share it with us, please do so. By the way, this function is lead by Siamak Hadinia, who unfortunately is not available in Delhi at this time. Siamak also work on the new certification authority manager software and we have chosen that software, EJBCA, which is written in Java. Again, if you have any experience or wishing to know more about that, please contact us and let's share information.

Last but not least is the software engineering department. Sorry for the complex lines but this is how our application infrastructure looks like. On the left - in the middle is the integrated data management that we have. So that's the sort of data and information. That's the primary database that we have. The most important information is the registry data. On the left is the internal applications, the applications we use internally to update whois data and manage information. On the right side are the external services that makes use of the data and presented as a public service. So the darker-shaded colours are the ones we've done work in the past six months. The resource management system that is being used by our host masters. We did a lot of development, as you can see there. IPv4 allocations, supporting IPv6 allocations, billing and various big fixes. Events management is the software we use for events such as this one, for registration and management the schedule and so on.

We have started making changes to anticipate the next meeting in Taiwan for APRICOT 2008. So there's a lot of advance work we have to do before every event. MyAPNIC, the most important portal as far as members are concerned. We added some more features there, allowing for easier online payment, invoice generation, upload and download your information easily, more control of Whois objects, more improvements in voting system and so on.

We also did a small patch to Whois to support 4-byte ASN support, not much there. And this is also quite important. As you know, the reverse DNS is an important, is a critical service in APNIC. We are going to implement on October 9, as soon as we get back from here, the new DNS generation system that potentially allows you to update your reverse DNS record within two minutes after you submit the updates. At the moment it's delayed by about two hours. So the almost-online update is not yet publicly exposed, we're still tidying up the authentication and authorisation schema, but, rest assured, we will announce it to the public whenever it's ready.

That's it.

Thank you.

PAUL WILSON:

Thank you very much, Sanjaya. I hope that report gives you a good idea of how busy the Services and Technical areas are these days.

I have a question, I think.

By all means, fine.

Could you use the microphone, please, Dr Govind?

DR GOVIND:

Thank you.

PAUL WILSON:

Thank you.

DR GOVIND:

Sanjaya, I just wanted to know that you mentioned about the IPv4 addresses which has not been allocated so far and that is it going to be used or given again. How that will impact the IPv4, you know, extension - that it will take some more time it can exist? The other thing is how will it affect the IPv6 allocation also? Will it be prolonged? Days or months? How will it impact?

SANJAYA:

Thank you. I think the intention is to recover as much of unused IPv4 address exactly to address what you suggested there, that it may prolong the availability of IPv4, new IPv4 allocations, so people, especially the still-growing regions, you know, they can still get these unused IPv4 address given to them, instead of sitting there and not being used by anyone. So it may help in relieving the IPv4 address consumption.

How it will affect IPv6, I don't know. I mean, people - I don't think that it will matter, really, because there's - even if we recovered all the IPv4, it will run out again eventually anyway, you know? And I don't expect that it will affect the run-out time significantly. Did I answer your question?

DR GOVIND:

OK. The other thing is in NIR you said there some improvements you are going to suggest. What are those kind of improvements, specific improvements, you are suggesting on that?

SANJAYA:

Sorry, I didn't get... Improvements on...

DR GOVIND:

NIR you -

SANJAYA:

NIRs?

DR GOVIND:

Yeah.

SANJAYA:

Oh.

DR GOVIND:

What are the specific improvements you are suggesting, as per the NIRs?

SANJAYA:

For the NIRs?

DR GOVIND:

The NIRS:

SANJAYA:

Starting with the reverse DNS system that we're going to deploy in October, we will probably start with the NIRs to allow them to update their results within two minutes. They would be the first one that gets the facilities. That's one example.

Another example would be...what did we discuss in the NIR...?

GUANGLIANG PAN:

The response time.

SANJAYA:

The response time? OK. Improved response time in allocating to NIRs.

DR GOVIND:

ok

OK.

SANJAYA:

So thank you, Guangliang, for the additional information, which matters a lot.

So, yes, improving the response time of allocations to the NIRs.

DR GOVIND:

OK, thank you.

SANJAYA:

Thank you very much for the question.

PAUL WILSON:

Thank you, Dr Govind. The next questioner, could you state your name please? Thanks.

SURESH KATUKAM:

Sure. This is Suresh form Cisco. You were talking about 4-byte ASNs you started issuing. Of those - who are the people asking for 4-byte ASNs now?

SANJAYA:

Who? Yes!

SURESH KATUKAM:

So who are the people asking for the 4-byte ASNs? Is it enterprises or service providers? Who are the people asking for 4-byte ASes?

SANJAYA:

Guangliang, do you have the profile?

GUANGLIANG PAN:

We only assigned two AS. And, yeah, it is not very for the... I think one is assigned to Japan and the APNIC one is for research. And also JPNIC got a small block allocated to their members.

SURESH KATUKAM:

So when do you expect to see 4-byte ASN proliferation? Would you expect to see them, like, in the next three or four years? When do you expect to see 4-byte ASN proliferation?

SANJAYA:

Proliferating? Well, maybe, Geoff, can you help us out here? You're the oracle of APNIC. He can usually predict the future better than I can.

RAJESH CHHARIA:

My name is Rajesh Chharia.

SANJAYA:

Yeah.

RAJESH CHHARIA:

My question is also about the AS 4. First of all, I want to ask what is the difference between the AS-2 and the AS-4.

SANJAYA:

OK. Good question.

RAJESH CHHARIA:

While applying for the membership into the APNIC registry, I requested for the AS-4 number and I have been allotted the AS-4 but it's very unfortunate on our part in India where the upstream provider doesn't know about the AS-4 and when I allocated them my AS-4 number for the announcement to their network, they clearly told me that this is the wrong number and you have to come out with - with the AS-2. What I request or suggest to the APNIC, at least start some workshops, especially in India, to make our stream provider to know what is the difference between the AS-2 and the AS-4 and what are those benefits which we are going to get from the AS-4.

SANJAYA:

Thank you.

RAJESH CHHARIA:

And better our equipment, like the Cisco and from which number, this Cisco equipment or any equipments are capable to handle this AS-4 number. OK. Geoff, would you like to respond to some of the questions, please? Thanks.

GEOFF HUSTON:

Well, you know - Geoff Huston, APNIC - the wonderful thing is that we archive all of the proceedings of our meetings, so the first thing I would actually encourage you to do is go and look at the archive. You will find at least three presentations about 4-byte ASNs that clearly describe precisely what's entailed here. So I won't answer here and now. I will simply say that information is available already in a massive amount of forms, both written and in slide ware. Next thing that came from the original question - the current consumption of ASes continues at an extremely predictable rate so at the 16th of November 2010, notwithstanding any other factor, you're going to run out.

RAJESH CHHARIA:

When?

GEOFF HUSTON:

The end of November, 2010, but we have already put forward policies, so don't forget, 2007 and 2008, you will get a 2-byte number by default if you say nothing and you'll get a 4-byte number if you actually ask. More than two folk actually have asked in the APNIC region and there are about 504-byte ASes out there already worldwide. 4-byte AS support exists on implementations of OpenBGPD, on Quagga, on certain types of Cisco gear and on certain types of Juniper gear. So the stuff is already out there.

For those people who actually get a 4-byte AS number, the world doesn't change. You can see them. They can see you. Alright? So that's not an issue. But what you do need is to run an independent BGP that knows about them. That's the only factor.

And it's not ubiquitous, but it is entirely backwards compatible, so it's really not a very big issue at all but you need to deploy it on gear that understands it. As for the question you had from the Cisco side, you and I need to sit down and figure out where you're going to put it in the rest of your products, which seems to be a very good conversation.

PAUL WILSON:

Could we have one quick comment please? I think maybe this conversation could go on for some time. It should be, if it's going to continue, we can take it to the afternoon open-mic sessions. Brief comment, Rob.

ROB SEASTROM:

The comment is very quick. The phenomenon of people getting 4-byte ASNs and not being quite sure what to do with them is by no means limited to this region. Would encourage you - and I would encourage my colleagues and friends in all of the RIRs - to, when they send out a 4-byte ASN, which people sometimes request simply because it's bigger and it must be better, right? - a white paper that leads to places where you can get information about, you know, explaining to your upstream ISP what this new twice-as-big number that you have is, and also some pointers on the latest software. It's all on slides from presentations, but it needs to be brought together into sort of a 'here's one of these newfangled 4-byte ASNs and here's what you need to know to make use of it.'

PAUL WILSON:

OK, thanks and thanks to our friends who asked the questions. It's obviously an issue to be focusing on in the training area as well.

I'll move along into the report from Donna on the Communications area. A brief report before we then move on into some reports from our RIR colleagues.

We have reports from four RIR colleagues.

Let me highlight a few things in the Communications area. This is the team here. And, in Bali, we have Louise and Vania from the external relations team. We don't have a picture of Louise. She's a very new recruit at APNIC.

In our publications area, we have James and Tina who are both in New Delhi with us and Sunny and Sam from the policy area are both here as well.

In the events area, one highlight of course was APNIC 23 in Bali and this meeting itself in New Delhi. The next meeting will be with APRICOT 2008 in Taipei and we'll be hearing a little more about that meeting by the end of today. We also will have an announcement about APNIC 26, which is in a year's time, I think the APRICOT - the APIA is ready to also mention the APRICOT after next in 2009, so you'll hear some more news about these by the end of the day.

The liaison team is a team of staff not all located within the communications area. In fact, liaison officers come from different parts of APNIC and such as the hostmaster area and Training area in particular, and they are employed as liaison officers as well because of their own particular expertise in the areas that are assigned to them. So Guangliang, Elly, Anna and Kapil are our liaison officers for China, Pacific, South East Asia and south Asia particularly. And through the liaison officers we've been working with our network operator groups intensively and successfully, so far, PacNOG, SANOG, NZNOG, PHNO GCNNOG and others seem to be forming in the wings as well and it seems that the liaison and the work between APNIC and these network operator groups is really quite an appreciated activity in this liaison area.

We've also been coordinating visits to APNIC from staff of NIRs and four NIRs have done or are in the process of visiting at the moment. We've participated in other major events such as the China IPv6 Summit.

In the project area here we do have a new and very comprehensive contact management system, which is an open source things called SugarCRM.

The Policy Unit is responsible for the coordination of policy activities of APNIC, in particular the policy agenda of this meeting, and also the coordination of policy implementations that happen as policies or are approved by the APNIC community and membership and then they come for implementation to the Secretariat.

So as of the 9th of March this year, we had the implementations of policies 32, 33 and 35, the first one being to amend the APNIC IPv6 assignment and utilisation requirements, 33 being the end-site Assignment Policy for IPv6 and 35 the IPv6 portable Assignment Policy for multihoming. So those policies have been implemented with the appropriate procedures and so forth within the Secretariat.

There's been quite a lot of work also in the policy unit to clarify, simplify, to provide more support on the policy development process itself. So this diagram is one that's taken off the website and it illustrates in broad terms what the policy process at APNIC is and you'll find in connection with this that there is more information these days about the APNIC policy process.

I'll just stress this does not involve any changes to the policy development process itself, because that requires policy change to do that. But what we do find is that more support and explanation is needed for the policy development process and it's something that's come to us through the member survey as well.

You might also notice some more information about that in the latest issue of Apster.

And talking about which, in the publications area, Apster is the quarterly newsletter, which we continue to publish. We are undertaking an overhaul of the website at the moment, which is a member survey request. We're also looking at a lot of internal documentation, which has to do with streamlining and simplifying the APNIC procedures. There have been some activities in the multimedia area, providing information about APNIC in other formats that are more, possibly more interesting and more multipurpose than our website our self. We are also in this area providing a lot of support to the N RO through our role as the NRO Secretariat, so the publications team and the communications area team in general are looking at the IGF in 2007, which is coming up in November, the revamp of the ASO website and the brochure materials that are planned to be released in connection with the IGF.

So that's a brief update from the communications area and, again, if there are any questions then please feel free to raise those.

APNIC Secretariat report 'Big picture'

I will then to move on to a few notes from myself as the Director-General of APNIC, looking at some of the - just a brief overview of some of the bigger-picture issues we are looking Atwell APNIC at the moment.

So you've heard quite a lot of operational reporting, which I hope has been interesting for you from the various areas of APNIC.

But there's more to APNIC and this meeting is about some of the bigger-picture issues that we face together as a Regional Internet Registry. Some of those include issues of RIR coordination through the Number Resource Organization, which is an important component in the global address management structure. Our activities in connection with Internet governance and the Internet Governance Forum and not just limited to that forum. IP addressing has been a major theme of this meeting and I expect, as you would predict yourselves, that it's going to be a major thing for some time to come and we'll hopefully have some very substantial developments along the lines of both - in both v4 and the v6 area.

Also as APNIC grows, we've hit a size of approximately 50 staff at APNIC. I've mentioned the organisational restructure that was undertaken in the last year in response to that. We have, I think, some challenges in the organisation development of APNIC, which I'd like to address briefly as well.

So firstly on the NRO side of things, one of the discussions that you may recall has been going on for quite some years is in connection with forming a formal agreement with ICANN, both for our support of ICANN and for ICANN's provision of services to us.

Now, discussions about contracts with ICANN have been under way for quite some time and the acronym OBE here means 'overtaken by events'. We have, for a number of reasons, which are common amongst the RIRs well back from the original intention of forming a formal contract with ICANN. Are numerous reasons for doing that, but those of you who've been watching the ICANN situation for some time will have seen that the contractual arrangements with ICANN can sometimes be quite complex and interesting and whether it is in connection with ccTLD contracts with ICANN, with RIR, with other members of the ICANN community, for instance, the root server operators, contractual discussions seem to go on and on without end with ICANN.

What we're looking at now is a more lightweight structure, which is in lieu of a contract, instead of a contract, looking at an exchange of letters with ICANN which is more formalistic and more symbolic way of expresses our relationship but it at least puts on paper something about the future understandings and intentions of our - around our relationship with ICANN.

In - because of the likelihood of a formal contract with ICANN, we have not actually paid the full amount of the RIR contributions, the voluntary contributions, which have been agreed with ICANN. Now, these are quite substantial sums of money. The overall NRO contribution - that is the collective contribution from all of the RIRs - is just over $800,000 US per annum and, of that, APNIC is responsible for approximately 25%. We've recently paid another 50% instalment of some of those outstanding ICANN contributions and the common intention among the RIRs is not to finalise and complete all of the payment of outstanding ICANN contributions until we do actually finalise this exchange of letters arrangement that's being discussed at the moment.

Now, within the NRO, also, there are global policy discussions, which are being coordinated and overseen by the Address Council of the Address Supporting Organisation. Those include two policies which we've heard a lot of talk about this week, which are the ASN allocation policy, not so much talk about that, actually, it's a fairly minor matter, and the large one being the interesting proposal from JPNIC about the remaining IPv4 space.

And last, but not least, APNIC has been under some additional load this year because we are the Secretariat and I personally am the secretary of the NRO and the NRO Executive Council so, as I mentioned before and particularly in the Communications area, we've been undertaking quite a few - some fairly laborious and time-consuming - activities on behalf of the NRO. So that will end at the end of this year, when we pass on the NRO Secretariat to AfriNIC.

Internet governance. The NRO has been very active in this area, most particularly through the WSIS and the following Internet Governance Forum processes. We really have worked hard and we have achieved a high level of visibility and recognition within the - this whole set of processes and that's, that's very clearly indicated by the fact that two of my counterparts within the NRO, namely Adiel from AfriNIC and Raul from LACNIC, they are members of the multistakeholder advisory group, the MAG, of the IGF and that does represent quite a substantial amount of influence that - or a relatively amount of influence that can be brought to bear and at least recognition and the ability to bring issues to the rather closed group of that environment.

The NRO has decided to make, in the past, financial contributions to the IGF Secretariat in the name of making sure that that Secretariat can do its job well and properly support the I GF meetings, so we have done that in the last year and this year, a total of $50,000 US, which is a shared contribution among the RIRs.

The IGF, the Internet Governance Forum in Brazil in 2007, November, is something that we're also following closely at the APNIC staff have been working quite hard on, particularly as the Secretariat of the NRO, so there'll be, an exhibition presence of the NRO, information semination presence at the IGF. We'll be participating in workshops on IP addressing. We're producing our version of one of the - of the continuing cooperation of report which was requested and which was one of the outcomes of the Tunis summit, that is that all players involved with the Internet governance area are asked to produce reports on their cooperation activities and we're undertaking that at the moment.

There have been a number of questions about the process of the IGF in Brazil, the way the multistakeholder advisory group has been formed and the way it's continued in its mandate without too much consultation. There are also some questions about the way the group is being chaired for the Brazil summit. So there are a few question marks, I think, over the future of the IGF and the widespread nature of support that the IGF has enjoyed so far. But we do know, at least, IGF 2008 is going to be right here in New Delhi in India and APNIC - I've had some interesting conversations already this week about the role that APNIC could play in making sure, in helping to make sure that that event is as successful as it possibly can be and I hope to avoid any of the difficulties that we might be seeing in the Brazil round of the IGF meetings.

The next issue I mentioned is IP addressing. We've heard a lot about that in this meeting and I'm not going to start rehashing all of the discussions but I've characterised what we're doing in IPv4 as projections, policies and politics, because these are three quite separate areas that have become - in which we're becoming quite active. The political area is quite interesting, particularly in the lead-up to the IGF, it's something that we'll be representing through participation, through the NRO, in workshops of the IGF, where this issue of IPv4 addressing is starting to gain some prominence. I think it's a lesson for us that we need to be keeping up with the debate very much because there is a huge amount of interest in this area and we need to be following it. Following it is quite a time-consuming process, but it's something that's an expense that we just need to incur.

The politics of IPv4 addressing isn't just restricted to the IGF and the UN world. There's starting to be a lot of interest in this area in the EU, and thanks to the RIPE NCC, we're seeing that part of the world very well covered. Also the OECD is also starting to take a big from in this and is projecting to release a major report at the - in the middle of 2008. So we know now that that's - that work is under way and that it's going to produce some very important results that we need to follow as well.

IPv6, I think, is the message is the same as it's been for about ten years, which is that we really need to promote it. There's not a great deal that needs to happen at the policy level at all these days. It's fairly well covered, but we need to get moving and help people within this region to get moving and make IPv6 happen as soon as it possibly can. We can't alone in this region. It's something we need to coordinate across the world and we can do that particularly through the RIRs and other global activities we're involved with.

Organisational development. It's a little internal but I think it's very important at the time of life of APNIC at the moment. I initiated a Secretariat restructuring about a year ago. That's still, actually, an ongoing process because, as I mentioned before, we've got two major senior management positions, which are again to be recruited. The APNIC finances at the moment are making it a little bit difficult to be confidently going out recruiting those positions, I'm afraid, so we're in a slightly limbo position at the moment, but I would hopefully have the fee structure voted at the end of this day in the current week and that would give us some certainty about some of those aspects of APNIC's fundamental sustainability and how that reflects on our ability to really develop the organisation properly.

I'm looking also at business continuity. Am hoping to have some assistance from the RIPE NCC in this regard because they've undertaken a business continuity planning process and it's an interesting set of processes on behalf of the organisation.

Activity planning and budgeting has come up this week and it's something, which is under way internally within APNIC. There are discussions about that a little bit later this morning.

OK, with that not so brief overview of the big-picture issues, I'd welcome some discussion about that during the day today.

I think at this time I'll hand straight on to the next report from the Secretariat. In fact, from our Treasurer, Kuo-Wei Wu and he's going to provide the report of APNIC financial statuses.

Financial Reports

KUO-WEI WU:

OK, this is our financial status for the APNIC right now, from the EC.

First of all, the first half of the financial status of APNIC is a surplus for $247,000. The expenditure is about $3.3 million, the revenue is about $3.5 million. Our continuous membership growth is about 110 increase in the first half. Membership status right now is 1,472 total by June of the 30 this year. But actually, as you know, the APNIC revenue is based on the US dollar. Our expenditure is actually based on the Australian dollars. So you will see some variation, and what's happened now.

Right now, we try to project for this situation by end of the 2007. It's very possible we might be in a negative deficit for close to $1 million. It's about $930,000.

This is based on the exchange rate of 0.79. By September 4, the current exchange rate is one Australian dollar is 0.82 US dollars and this projection is based on 0.89, because it seems that the US dollar depreciation is going in such a change.

So over the budget is we - expenditure, we are controlled 8% over the budget. This is based on the US dollar. But we are 1% below the budget in the Australian dollars. The revenue right now is we project for the $6.8 million, it's 2% above the budget.

The exchange rate is still, in this situation, as you maybe see in the recently in the last six months, so that is what we project by end of the year is 0.89. When we do the budget of the 2007, actually we based on 0.7889, so you can see from the budget 2007, we did, but earlier this year, from that time till now, actually, there is already a big change in the exchange rate between the Australian dollar and the US dollars.

OK, here is a statement, and actually you can get a hard copy, I believe you can get a hard copy somewhere, and it will be put on the website. You also can download it.

So you can see that, on the first column, there is actually it is 0.8131, that is average exchange rate from the first half of the year, because it is moving around. So the total expenditure by US dollars is $3.29 million, and project by the whole year, 2007, we expect the exchange rate will keep going down in USD, so there will be, that is what we expect is 0.8613 and the total expenditure will be up to $7.7 million. So the budget 2007 is what we passed by the earlier of this year. I think you remember that is reported in the Bali meeting. So that was $7.1 million, but you look at the exchange rate, it's about 15% changing when we set up the budget. So that is a reflect to our project happen this year.

So right now, we expect to have $573,000 budget differences.

For the revenue part, the same thing is actually right now we are - we have the total revenue $3.5 million. We project by the whole year is about $6.7 million. And here you can see we have one row is in second last two rows is the exchange rate gain and loss. That is the first time we tried to assimilate what is the situation. Because when we get the US dollars we put it in the bank but we didn't convert it. So if we convert also the US dollars to the Australian dollars right now, you can see we have some loss there because we project by the 0.7889 by Bali meeting in February of this year.

So right now, we are looking around the $6.781 US dollars and we project the budget would be up 2% of the income in USD.

So when we talk about the operating profit and loss. So we have $247,352 gain, but actually, by end of the year, we project we have - it is very possible we have a close to $1 million loss. Of course, it is still very depends on the exchange rate. The exchange rate not going to be even worse, than we might have a very different resolution about that.

But, for the budget we approved by the member at the Bali meeting in February of this year, is - it seems like that is what we're working out. And actually in the Monday, the EC spent a whole day, we had discussion how to work in together with APNIC to make sure the financial end of the year would be maintained on the budget we approved by the Bali meetings.

OK, the balance sheet right now, you can see that it is - you know, because we remember in the very beginning in, I think it is a long time ago, we agreed to, you know, the APNIC, to keep that the reserve at least for 1.5 years to maintain operations. So that is, you can see that in the past several years, we already have some reserve there. We still have about $1.1 million US, and non-current assets is about $3.8 million, and total liabilities is about $5 million and total equity is about $7.8 million, so this is our currently assets of APNIC. So of course, we don't want to run the operation on a loss.

OK, and this is the membership status. I already tell you, and that is just based on different classifications of the memberships.

And also, the memberships changing. You can see the bottom line is the leave us members, and then we have new member come in. And so on the first part in the yellow line, that is actually track the member leaving the APNIC and plus the new members, that is what is our member changing.

OK, currently, first of all, of course, we are trying to improve the fee collection procedure to reduce the overdue accounts. And second of all, of course, we try to enhance the payment facilities. And number three, we try to enhance the integration between accounts and member data. And the most important right now is that we try to keep working on the fee structure and also work together with the APNIC office to how we can work together to make sure these operations will be kept as the budget approval by the Bali meeting as we can.

OK. Any questions about that?

OK, thank you very much.

PAUL WILSON:

Thank you very much, Kuo-Wei.

OK. That concludes the reporting from the Secretariat. We're running a little late, but it is India. Son what I'd like to do, although it's now the morning tea time, I'd like to continue with two of our four RIR reports. The first two will be from AfriNIC, Hisham, and from ARIN, Ray. And the remaining two, from LACNIC and RIPE NCC will be deferred until after lunch.

RIR Reports - AfriNIC

HISHAM ROJOA:

Good morning, everyone. I'm Hisham from the Membership and Communications Department of AfriNIC.

So since we're already running a little bit late, I'll be probably a bit faster than usual.

This just shows the membership growth in our region. As of end of June 2007, we have 48 new members, so, as you can see from the graph, the growth is still increasing in our region. We have more and more members joining, new ISPs being set up in Africa.

And this increased growth, of course, will impact on the allocation of resources. We are using more and more IPv4 and ASNs. We are also increasing the allocation of IPv6, although the take-up is not that great in our region.

We are trying to increase the take-up by increasing the training and awareness of IPv6 in our region through more training and meetings, open policy meetings, which are focused on IPv6.

So recently, we've started an IPv6 campaign, which started with the board saying that, because of the imminent exhaustion of the available pool of IPv4, we have to increase the IPv6 activities, training and outreach. We've reviewed the fee schedule for IPv6. We've done a press conference during a regional ICT Conference in Mauritius, and we've informed members about the IPv4 exhaustion and IPv6. We've also launched a webpage on IPv6 and we are planning to cover all countries within our region by the end of 2009.

This year, we've carried out IPv6 and LIR training in Abuja and Dar es Salaam and Abidjan and Luanda. We're going to have three more countries by the end of this year, South Africa, Algeria, Tunisia.

So the changes to the IPv6 fees, for existing LIRs, we're not going to count the IPv6 allocation, so it's only based on the IPv4 allocations.

For new LIRs, we give them a discount on set-up and membership fees and this discount is over the three subsequent years.

We had a request from research networks and the education networks, they wanted to have an incentive when they get resources from us, so we gave them a 50% discount on sign-up and membership fees. We want to encourage research on IPv6 in our region. And we're currently working on a new fee schedule for IPv4 and IPv6 for 2008.

MyAfriNIC is the equivalent of MyAPNIC. It should be launched during our next meeting in AfriNIC-7. It has more or less the same features, but probably less as - this is version one of MyAfriNIC. We have come through the trial and we are continuing the final testing and functioning.

Some policies recently we've implemented, three different policies. The IPv6 provider independent assignment for end-sites. We've changed the allocation and assignment period to 12 months. And the HD-ratio, the IPv6 HD-ratio to 0.94. The last two is to align with the other regions.

There are currently six policies under discussion in our region. These will be presented at our next meeting. The first one is we're revising our policy development process. The second one is the global ASN policy. Next one is the IPv6 Address Allocation and Assignment Policy I. Then you have the global policy for the allocation of the remaining IPv4 address space. IPv6 ULA-Central and the end policy for IANA IPv4 allocations to RIRs.

Some of the policies are also being discussed in other regions. We had two of these - well, three of these are also discussed in this region.

Public policy meetings. The last meeting we had was in Abuja in Nigeria, where we had nearly 200 attendees from a wide range of countries and a wide range of sector of activities, ISPs, education and governments. We tried a few new things, like newcomer meetings, BoFs on I've four and the policy development process, which ended up with us revising - proposing a new policy development process, on ICONS and anti-spam. We also had for the first time the hest master consultation. And six policies were presented at the meeting. Three reached consensus, two were withdrawn or to be amended and one didn't reach consensus.

Other outcomes of the meeting. Like I said, the policy development process is being revisited. We had IPv6 workshop, thanks to Philip and Jordi, where we also trained some trainers within the AfriNIC team. So these will be used now, also, to deliver training.

We also increased the awareness and had discussions on IPv4 exhaustion and especially with regards to the impact of the exhaustion on emerging markets like LACNIC and AfriNIC. And also we had a round-table to prepare for the IGF in Rio.

Our next meeting is in Durban. It's very soon. In two tweaks, I think. So we're going to have IPv6 training, one day is going to be dedicated to policy-makers. This is also for our outreach to regional governments and we are having two and a half days of conference and global and policy meeting. So you're all welcome to attend this meeting.

AfriNIC-8 is going to be in Rabat, Morocco, from 3 1 May to 6 June 2008. It's going to be held together with AfNOG and INET Africa meetings.

That's it.

Thank you.

PAUL WILSON:

Thank you, very much, Hisham. Are there any questions for Hisham?

OK, well Ray is coming now to the podium, so before Hisham goes, I'd like to present him with a small gift of appreciation.

APPLAUSE

ARIN

RAY PLZAK:

Good morning. I'm Ray Plzak, president and CEO of ARIN. I do not use Power Point slides for this presentation. Instead, being passed out now is a newsletter for you to read. It is in English. If there are those of you in the audience that would prefer to read that in Hindi, please raise your hand and we will distribute it in Hindi as well.

Anybody want it in Hindi, please raise your hand.

These presentations in both English and in Hindi are available on the APNIC Web at the meetings page for this presentation. What I'm going to do is just highlight a few areas in this report and then you can read it at your leisure and then any questions you can e-mail me and I'd be glad to respond.

Things of interest to note in the ARIN region - discussions around the Omega state of IPv4. The ARIN board in May and then again in August has issued two statements regarding these matters.

In May we said that at some point in time in the future, ARIN will no longer be able to provide large contiguous blocks of IPv4 address space and that people should be taking measures nought to move to IPv6.

Further, the board directed staff to undertake some outreach activities to this area and one of the manifestations of that is also noted in this newsletter, is we have set up an IPv6 Wiki, which in fact will be registered as a domain name for it. It's again, IPv6.info. And there you can contribute to things you may know about implementing IPv6. It's a resource page for getting information and so forth. And the last thing this resolution directed was for the Advisory Council to take into consideration matters of policy formation that may assist in the transition.

The second resolution basically reaffirmed the policy development process. The ARIN board sees that as a well-established and stable means of dealing with the current situation and that no other process is really needed to do so.

Now, this will obviously mean that calls for unrestricted markets and so forth are not within that policy process but it doesn't preclude that policy process from generating some sort of rendatory aspects to a market.

It also reaffirmed the principles that were established in two RFCs and those RFCs basically documented long-established principles with regards to IP address management. Those are RFCs 2008 and RFC 2050. 2008 as a reminder for you, is the RFC which basically states the principle that numbers are not property. and they're-to-not to be bought, sold, traded, transferred, etc. And 2050 is the first codification, if you will, of address management policy for the RIRs. There had been previous policy-type statements done in RFCs but those were pertaining to the Internet registry, which presided the RIRs, such as the DDN-NIC and the InterNIC.

Other things of note - and actually not in this bulletin is a report from ARIN 19, but the results of ARIN 19 proposals were adopted and the implementation of those proposals is highlighted in the newsletter. I will point out that there were 13 proposals dealt with at that meeting. One was continued on and will be discussed in the upcoming ARIN 20 meeting and seven were abandoned. Now, three of those seven actually went all the way through the policy process and when they arrived at the board and, we discussed them and said, "These are not really policy matters. These are really operational matters," and so the board said just that and, in turn, instead of turning them back into the policy process saying, "Hey, these are not policy matters, think of something else about how to discuss these things," instead directed the staff to implement them and these three policies had to do with crypt graphic authentication. To that end, the board actually went beyond the proposed policy and, besides directing staff to implement crypt graphic authentication, the first one by PGP authentication, which by the way will be rolled o out on 15 September, also to produce training materials and so forth to go with it.

So this is a clear example, though, of matters that probably could have gone through the ARIN suggestion program. We have implemented a suggestion program. There's a report on that in this newsletter as well. And in that suggestion program, to date, we've had 37 suggestions that have been worked on. Some have been worked forward in terms of being implemented. A few have gone out to consultation and so there have been - it's been a very successful program. Been one modification that we've made to the program based upon use and that is the one that deals with the fact that we now have put a time limit which basically says that, once a person submits a suggestion, they will get an answer within ten days as far as what is the proposed action to be taken, or if it is going to take a little longer, what is the expected completion date and so forth.

Lastly - second lastly, we have established an RFS for the public policy mailing list, which is a quite active list, and our object is we've expanded them and I've been present at a lot more of the industry gatherings. One of the things that we have undertaken at these outreach activities is to bring along our registration services personnel. We actually established what amounts to a meeting Helpdesk there. People that are ARIN potential customers or ARIN customers come by. An IP analyst is there, can answer their questions, do a consultation on records. We have actually - people that didn't know they qualified from address space from ARIN have walked away with appointments and, in some cases, have gotten address space on the spot because the application that was that simple.

So besides providing informational outreach, we are also working to expand our membership and registration services.

I don't think there is time for questions this morning, at this moment, but, as I said, after you read through this, you can always send me an e-mail and I'd be glad to answer your questions. Thank you.

PAUL WILSON:

Thank you, Ray. I'd like to open the floor briefly for any questions for Ray or, indeed, for Hisham. And if there are none, then I'd like to thank Ray very much for his presentation.

APPLAUSE

And I think we can break for morning coffee and come back in half an hour's time, please.

Thanks.

(End of session)

Back to top

AMM - Session Two

Friday 7 September 2007
1130-1300

APNIC fee discussions

PAUL WILSON:

Welcome back, everyone. Now we'll move straight on in to the session which will run from now until lunch time. We allocated 90 minutes for it. And of course it's the APNIC fees working group. Up here I have the co-chairs of the fees working group, Ming-Cheng Liang who is from the APNIC EC Council and Randy Bush from IIJ. I'll hand over to which ever would like to launch, Randy Bush or Ming-Cheng Liang. Thank you.

RANDY BUSH:

I'm going to try and be dull and boring so that maybe we can catch up with some time and not take the full 90 minutes. But we'll see. So the fees working group met on Wednesday for 90 minutes and this was the agenda we had and we made it to six. OK. So we reviewed the agenda and, in fact, the treasurer of the Executive Committee gave a presentation on the interim fees proposal, which you are voting on now. JPNIC and a number of people asked for why 7%? Was that magic pulled out of the air? And so the EC and the Secretariat explained the 7% as it's mostly to bring salaries up to competitive levels because APNIC was losing people because of salaries.

Questions - that was the main question there. And KPMG had a report on their review of the fees and I had to give it because Michael Hiller of KPMG has an illness in his family and that's why he's not here today. And I'll do another bit of another of his presentations in a minute. And then we had an open discussion where essentially the EC is realising that more detailed and longer-term planning is something that's going to be a change that's going to happen over the next year. So even though this environment of change - IPv4 run out etc, etc, planning three years ahead is tough. But that's another matter. We kind of discussed all this stuff and it was a very cooperative atmosphere, which I think is important and I think we made a fair bit of progress and we're trying to converge so at least everybody understood each other as much as possible and as much information as could be given was.

Now I'll give you a little bit about - and so you see, we made it through the past and didn't make it to the future. 8 and 9, those are the tough issues. The proposals and what you're voting on today and during the week, is the interim fee structure, to hold us so that we can actually get in to the rather difficult issues of long-term planning? And so I would like to focus on that now, the long-term issues for a minute, and then we'll have open discussion and we'll discuss whatever you want to discuss.

So KPMG kind of reviewed the long-term options. So there's activity, the issues of having an activity plan and an adopted budget. The interim proposal addresses what currency should the fee be charged in? It would be smart if it was the same as that of which the expenses occur. How do we review fee and how do we escalate that process? What kind of application fees are there as opposed to per address fees or maintenance fees, etc? What are the memberships tiers classes, should those change under the NIRs, the per address fees which we've been discussing. Do we give discounts for NIRs for other things they do? Currently our address allocations are 2 bits for IPv4 - so, it's not. Should that change? What's the service model and how much does it cost? Should we have a continuous formula for total address holding? What should be done for lesser developed economies? What the bright idea of ageing of address holdings? What will happen in v4 run-out? What will happen when people want other bits of address space and what will happen as we discussed yesterday on transfers? These are the long-term and difficult issues that, you know, will take us a year or two to try and understand the new physics and the new infrastructure under them.

And maybe that what we might move to is a budget set according to the activity plan which is costed and chaired with the EC. That's kind of what happens now but does it go to longer term? So they take member surveys and stuff like that, that goes to the EC, then there's an activity plan and actually it's a cycle, because then there's, "This is the plan, what's the budget? Get rid of cost. Plan again." It goes here and here. Then once the costs and the expenses have been rationalised to services, then what are the fees?

Again, here are those issues that are really the long-term difficult issues. This is only some of them. I think Geoff Huston, I saw the other week, had another list which is overlaps this list considerably. I don't know what else I can say? The fees working group kind of discussed the current proposed interim fee structure and I'm not sure if some people here want to speak to that? Izumi-san as usual was always very eloquent. So maybe we can make her. Or anybody either want to speak to the current fee proposal or I'd like to also start talking about the physics of the long-term issues.

Did I make it sufficiently boring that we can go straight to lunch?

HYUN-JOON KWON:

I have one question - is this a kind of service proposal for is interim policy.

RANDY BUSH:

My understanding is that the vote today or this week is the interim, so we can discuss and work on this. And the interim fees are - the proposal you have to vote on is the interim fees as they were discussed in the fees working group. Did I answer your question? No.

MING-CHENG LIANG:

I think you are right that the current fee, the current proposal that you are going to vote on today, were applied until we find maybe a permanent model or longer-term model comes out. The current model will still apply continuously if it gets passed today. Then that model will be used continuously for the next several years.

HYUN-JOON KWON:

I suggest I don't know if there's a way to suggest, but if I suggest if we use the interim, maybe we need some kind of timeline for this policy. If it is effective - which means there could be no more policies. If there is a new revised policy coming up, then it can be replaced. If you're using the word interim, I think we maybe need a time limit for this. That's my opinion.

RANDY BUSH:

It's probably too late administratively to change the wording of the vote, but my personal understanding is we're looking at one or two years because we hope to solve the long-term problem in that time. I don't know what the EC's responsibilities are. This is an EC responsibility. The Secretariat provides information to the EC to make these decisions. So what the EC feels about saying about time limits on the interim policy.

HYUN-JOON KWON:

Maybe this policy pass and maybe you should consider to add something.

RANDY BUSH:

I understand your point and I'm hoping that Maemura-san will speak about this.

AKINORI MAEMURA:

I'm not sure what the question is to me?

RANDY BUSH:

I believe what the gentleman from KRNIC is saying that can we realise we cannot change the words of the vote, but could you please give us a statement from the EC on what timeline is meant by the word 'interim'? Is that a fair statement? Thank you.

AKINORI MAEMURA:

I'm chair of the EC. It is ambiguous to tell how long this interim policy lasts. But for our understanding, as Randy says, that the interim is just until the long-term fix of the fee structure - so we naturally assume that will be lasting just one year, in the best case, in the shortest term, for the long-term fee structure. Then I hope and hopefully one year and in some other worse situation, if we need some more time to discuss among the membership, but the longest would be two years or three or four meetings at the most. Right now the personal prospective on this issue but I agree this is shared by all EC members. Is that OK?

RANDY BUSH:

I think that's as good an answer as I could expect. I think the important part of what you said is that we have to realise that in longer-term fee structure, it addresses these kind of complex issues, will have to be passed by the membership and when these complex issues, the relationships of NIR, the service levels, IPv4 run out, etc, are complex, the membership will control the discussion and the discussion could also be long. That's why I think Maemura-san says it could be two, three or four meetings before we know and that's a couple of years. I think Maemura-san, to put words in your mouth, would it be fair to say that by this time next year, that the EC would have some serious proposals, trade-offs and their recommendations in the space?

AKINORI MAEMURA:

Randy, one question from myself.

RAJESH CHHARIA:

In to the present condition, total of the working ISP, 50 persons - you are very small, the membership is so high that they cannot able to pay that amount. That's the reason they are being monopolised by the upstream provider. What I suggest you are increasing the 7% on to the current fee, what I'm suggesting is especially looking at the India and the very tiny sector of the ISP, after very small membership, you should come out with a tiny membership and we have the resources of the IPv4, you are allocating /21s to the very small. What I suggest you can look at /22 or /23, for the very tiny sector?

RANDY BUSH:

I hear what you're saying and what you're addressing is this point, classes of members, and how fees are applied to them. The problem is what you're doing is taking one point of the 42 difficult points and saying we should solve that one now first. And somebody else will say that I want my point solved and somebody else will say, "I want my point solved." That's why we said for the minute while we're discussing those, APNIC has to be able to eat next year. So that's why we close our eyes flat. 7%.

RAJESH CHHARIA:

We can close our eyes, flat 7%, but the fee we're paying right now is not being affordable for the smaller ISPs of India. In that case they have to have the upstream provider and they are monopolising this address for the smaller ISPs.

PAUL WILSON:

Could I just say in response to that what you've just mentioned there is very good fodder, a very good subject for a policy proposal. And, firstly, it's a policy proposal about IPv4 allocation policies and it's then a fee structure proposal and there's certainly no reason why you couldn't bring that proposal to the next meeting which is coming up in next March. And potentially have it considered and approved by the meeting to reduce the allocation size and consequently you could include some fee recommendations which could apply. These things don't necessarily have to all be solved together. They can be solved independently, in parallel and potentially with the agreement of the community, in the relatively short term. Thank you.

AKINORI MAEMURA:

Answering your question, Randy - yes, the EC of APNIC is now keen to discuss about a long-term fee structure fix and that's why we commissioned the KPMG for their external expertise to see an analysis of the current APNIC operations. And I do understand that throughout the discussion for the fees session this time, even the short fix by the fee raise and need to have more complete explanation on to the membership. So EC thinks that we need to present quite concrete, easy to understand, convincing proposal in front of the membership to get approval from the membership. And that would be done as soon as possible if it is possible in the next time we would like to bring the complete proposal to the membership. I mean at the next meeting. Am I clear?

RANDY BUSH:

I think I understood.

AKINORI MAEMURA:

Thank you very much.

SUMON AHMED SABIR:

I will add something to my friend from India - in Bangladesh we have a lot of smaller ISP and our situation is a bit worse than India, actually. Paul here is saying that dollar rate is elevating and the Australian dollar is very strong here so the complete income is reducing. In Bangladesh, in fact, Bangladesh is even devaluing against US dollars. So we are actually paying more every year because our currency is worse than the dollar. So all the time, the small ISPs and if fees increase 7%, it will really be difficult for them to pay actually. So even though APNIC needs to increase it for their reason but these issues should be considered as well if you can make something else different.

PAUL WILSON:

I sympathise with your position very strongly, personally. It is a shame that we don't at this time have a lot more progress on the issues that have been discussed at this fee structure discussion for a long time now. In presentations that I have given several years ago, or several meetings ago - there were suggestions that the APNIC community could make, that would address some of the unfairness in our situation. Personally I'm quite disappointed after such a long time we still have not got sufficient discussion of these issues that we are really even close yet to having a new fee structure. The APNIC EC one year ago, at this time, the time of our meeting prior to the last, recognised that we were facing an urgent situation. An increasingly urgent situation that we had the exchange rate issue, that we had a need for a new fee structure. And the EC result that time that we would have a new fee structure completed within a year. Now, we still don't have that so the interim fee structure is something that is necessary in order to make sure APNIC is sustainable. But it's certainly not an optimal solution. As I say, if we are able to actively continue this discussion with all stakeholders, all members representing all of the different concerns that we have and find a way to address these solutions and to do so sooner rather than later, then it will certainly be better for many of us. And I can only sympathise but express some frustration in the lack of progress that we've been making in a long period of just discussing and discussing and discussing.

RANDY BUSH:

May I insert for a second. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe in the membership survey there was very, very strong support for some kind of fee reduction, assistance, whatever, for developing economies. So I would think that between now and the Taiwan meeting, working on a proposal, that just addressed that issue, might be successful. And I'm sure the fees working group would help that process if members would care to work on that.

PAUL WILSON:

If I could add, you may be referring to not the member survey but the fee structure vote, the informal or non-binding vote that was held last year as well which revealed strong support for a discount of either 25% or 50% as the two options that are provided, well over 50% of the respondents to that survey supported one or other of those discount levels.

RANDY BUSH:

There's a path. And if we can help, please tell us.

VINH NGO:

I hope that I can clarify a few details for those who are not familiar. In the proposal we're trying to do there, we're trying to balance the budget for running APNIC at the moment. Some of you attended the working fee group yesterday, you might be aware of the increase in terms of salary for staff. In this day and age, the IT industry is very competitive. We're losing our good staff to other commercial entities. So we commission survey - what is the realistic salary for an IT staff and based on that working group yesterday, we recognised that there was a salary increase for APNIC staff. Apart from that, if you run a business yourself from day to day, OK, from my point of view we're running a non-profit organisation, but for you you're running an enterprise on a day-to-day basis. In your contract, when you sign it up, the basic increase every year is the consumer price index, which is roughly 4.5%. Looking at this figure for the last 10 years, APNIC have not increased any fee whatsoever. 4.5% in terms of consumer price index and on top of that 2.5% for the dollar fluctuation, and also the salary increase for staff. I think that justifies. Thank you.

RANDY BUSH:

I was just talking to Paul and it might be interesting to get input for people to say, given all these complex issues and the 10 that aren't on that page, which are the most, what's the priority? In other words, lesser developed economies? Small ISPs? Small members? The change that will come upon us in v4 run-out of the free pool, the relationship to NIRs, the service levels - should APNIC be doing more? ARIN does a whole lot, I'm sorry, RIPE, does a whole lot of research and deployment of infrastructure and so on and so forth. I'm not recommending it, it all I'm saying the difference between the RIRs and the service dimension is large. From the members, what are the most important issues which should be addressed first?

BILL MANNING:

As a member, I would suggest adjusting the income and outflow in to the same currency will remove some of the surprise elements which will make things a little easier to predict and that's something that ought to be relatively straight forward to do. That would be a relatively simple first step.

RANDY BUSH:

I am presuming that. OK, I have no idea how the vote is going, but I am presuming that the interim change to have the expensive Australian dollar, where the income in Australian dollars with the expenses and for the levelling increase will be passed, otherwise there's going to be a whole - we'll have to deal with a whole lot of other issues. The next step, I'm talking about Bill, which is more important - membership categories and the sizes, NIRs, and we'll have to address them all, but there's a two gentlemen saying, in fact, that lesser developed economies, small ISPs are maybe something that we can isolate well enough to start addressing immediately instead of, you know, with everything else. Early lunch?

MING-CHENG LIANG:

I think - I just talked to Paul, that, in here, that remember, in, I think in the last meeting or I think it's in the last meeting - I have proposed a continuous formula which is based on the current fee - I mean, the fee structure we are using now. But just making it become continuous. And, of course, in my assessment, at that time, I think that APNIC can get about 30% - I don't remember how many per cent, but I think it was 30% of increase. And the members will have to pay more in between, but I think the incremental would be less and maybe this gives room to increase the income and maybe something that can be discussed. I don't know whether the people think this type of idea is acceptable, because it's - the reason I think that may be more feasible is that it doesn't involve a change of any label or anything. I mean it's not going to change the structure too much, but it effectively gives us some leverage. So I would like to hear if any support or objection to this type of idea from the floor. Thank you.

Is there any comment on that?

PHILIP SMITH:

Philip Smith, Cisco. I'm not going to comment on a specific thing. I'm just going to comment on my general disappointment that we have to go round this merry-go-round every six months. We don't have any - OK, apart from the last six months, we have virtually no activity within the membership to actually try and figure out how to solve this particular impasse.

At APRICOT in Bali, we had several meetings. There has been some work done since then. But it all seems to have - well, at least from a wider membership point of view, the few good people who have been working very hard to try to solve the problem, but the fact that the rest of the membership doesn't seem to contribute kind of implies to me that they simply don't care. And that worries me quite a lot. And we end up going round and round this particular circle with trying to get what seems to me extreme positions resolved.

And I've been in the region for ten years and this discussion has been going on all the time. So we have to resolve it. And I think just trying to resolve it every six months at these sort of meetings and this kind of forum, it's just going to carry on for another ten years. And I think what we need to try and do is get bigger community involvement. In other words, the people who are standing up saying, "Oh, but it doesn't do this," and, "Oh, it doesn't do that," and, " Oh, I want this," they actually need to participate, rather than standing up at the microphone and whingeing, because you get people complaining about what is not good for them but nobody is looking at trying to resolve the actual problem.

I mean, I participate in three other Regional Internet Registry meetings and we don't seem to have this complete stuck-ness as we have here.

People from the community are actually participating. They care about it and they do stuff, and it just doesn't seem to happen in this part of the world, which I find disappointing.

Oh, by the way, a quick specific comment, I just want to echo that what Bill said, that APNIC's incomings and outgoings should be in the same currency, because the US dollar has basically plummeted. The Australian dollar, has not got stronger - I want to make that clear. It seems to have weakened against the euro and the British pound. It's the US dollar that is worth nothing these days. So the move to the Australian dollar is blatantly obvious in my book.

RANDY BUSH:

I believe you will see the US dollar go down further, so it's not worth nothing yet. You can't spend your life invading the world and blowing stuff up and not have some negative effects on your economy.

How do we do it, Philip? How do we get more people involved? At the next meeting, there will be no cookies during the break and the cookies will be in the Fees working group meeting. You have to come and you get cookies if you participate. You can't just sit there.

PHILIP SMITH:

Here's a radical idea. Those who actually actively participate, maybe they can get a discount on the new fees structure!

LAUGHTER

PAUL WILSON:

Line up, everyone.

RANDY BUSH:

But seriously, this is an important matter, this is how we are running our community as a business. Sir.

SHENGYONG DING:

I am from China Telecom. I understand that there should be an increasement in the fee, so I am wondering if you can provide some kind of new services for our ISPs. I think the fee increasement will be accepted more willingly, I mean, if you can provide some new kind of service, we would be glad to accept the new fee structure or increasement. That's my comment. Thank you.

PAUL WILSON:

If I could answer that, the Secretariat reports this morning were supposed to give some indication of the sorts of activities which are under way at APNIC. But we do have another related session this afternoon, which is a review of the last member survey and an analysis or a report of how APNIC services are being developed directly in response to that member survey.

So that survey did, in general - as we reported last time - it did, in general, request a lot of particular activities from the Secretariat and those have been reported.

At this stage, that is the primary direction that APNIC takes in determining those services and so I hope it will be quite informative about what we're doing to respond directly to member requests in that area. Thank you.

RANDY BUSH:

The interim fee - 7% - my understanding - and I don't do the mechanics, this is just me listening to the discussion - is essentially fees have not changed in the region for 11 years. In those 11 years, the difference between the US and the Australian dollar has changed seriously. And salaries in the industry and costs have gone up seriously and inflation has gone up seriously.

Given those, I'm surprised the number is not 30% instead of 7%. You know? So I'm not - I was not expecting a big increase in service to be - a tactless and rude American, as usual - when a year ago I saw APNIC lose senior talent to a university over salary. It was obvious there was a problem. So I believe APNIC did a - brought in a consultant to compare salaries, found they were exceedingly low, and the 7%, half of it, is to address that issue.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

PAUL WILSON:

It wasn't a consultant. It was a consulting organisation, the Hay Group, which is the international human resources consulting company, which has been used by many companies all around the world for this sort of exercise, including RIPE NCC, actually, in recent years.

RANDY BUSH:

Philip?

PHILIP SMITH:

Yeah, it's Philip Smith again from Cisco. Just to make an observation on the salaries in Australia and especially in Queensland and Brisbane where APNIC is based, people coming from overseas are always surprised at how low salaries are in Australia. So I want to make that observation. What you can buy in Australia, say, the number value, it's the same number if you go shopping in the US and it's the same number if you go shopping in Europe. Now, the pound to Australian dollar exchange rate is about 2.2:1. People don't realise the cost of living is relatively lower.

And even then - so, with the US dollar collapsing so far, Australia is still a very, very cheap place to be but, hey, people still need to be able to live and work and eat-so-and so forth. So I echo what Randy said, the increase could have been hugely more than the 7% that's being proposed.

VINH NGO:

Hi, this is Vinh again here. Just reminding all the members that in the seven EC representing you as the whole body here, all the EC coming from various regions. I'm from Australia. We've got India. We've got Hong Kong. Taiwan, China, this is the entire spectrum of AsiaPac. We take this serious - this matter seriously. We work together. We discuss. We look at the expenditure. We look at the budget. We look - we discuss the budget seriously at the beginning of this year. We looked, we tracked it regularly and we come up with this 7% solution. It's based on the financial tracking we do at the moment, OK? I said earlier, and I repeat it again, look at the Hay Group report. If you do a search on the Internet, look at the increase in terms of salary for your staff. Let's forget about APNIC staff for one second, but look at your staff. Can you retain your good and senior staff in your organisation? Are you being pinched by other competitors within your industry? OK, that's what we're facing here. Let alone - I've got to take the opportunity to thank all the APNIC staff here. They've done a very good job. We don't retain them, we don't look after them, we will lose them. Thank you.

RANDY BUSH:

Axel.

AXEL PAWLIK:

Axel Pawlik, from the RIPE NCC.

I would like to reflect what was just said about staffing and salaries. We have been using the Hay Group for several years now and we had good acceptance within our board and our community about this. After all, APNIC is serving you as its members and its community. And I think you need to be able to pay decent salaries for these guys serving you. Otherwise, it will fade away and we're standing there without a service organisation like this.

Another thing - to be very blunt and possibly quite undiplomatic European - the one thing that seems to me to be very, very obvious and a little bit strange maybe for several years already is that you have NIRs, which is, in itself, an interesting point, but I see that very many NIRs are represented on the EC, the Executive Council, on the EC. And, to me, it's quite clear that there is tremendous potential for a conflict of interest, in that obviously the NIRs and the people within the NIRs need to make sure that they run a good and stable business. On the other hand, you are also then addressing the EC, responsible for ensuring that APNIC is run responsibly and financially stable. Of course, there are various factors that make it very difficult, more difficult, maybe, than in the European region. But that's something that strikes me as exceedingly obvious and a major difference from how we run our business. And maybe you would think about that.

Sorry about being so blunt.

RANDY BUSH:

I have one point. Sanjaya, could you stand up?

This is what a senior APNIC engineer looks like. This is what a real engineer looks like.

LAUGHTER

KUSUMBA SRIDHAR:

Randy. There's a difference between Australia and Japan.

I'm on the EC of APNIC. Axel, I just want to clarify to the all group here that the scenario of NIR members dominating the EC of APNIC is only a virtual one.

In reality, after I have become an EC, it's now for eight months, I have very cooperative EC with me, especially those who are from NIRs.

On the other side, I have to tell you here that, OK, I'm a non-NIR member and Vinh Ngo is also from non-NIR here. We have not had any situation of a conflict of interest, and I have to give you one example here that, when we were discussing about the fee, yes, as a non-NIR representative, if that is what you would like to classify me at this moment, India, again, is the second largest membership contribution to the APNIC and in NIR, if you see, it's only the discussion that happens within the NIR. But if you look at my situation in India, we have 160 members who talk to me almost on - in fact, I have a separate mailbox for them now to talk to me, OK. And that's how we have been addressing.

Whenever there is a conflict of interest, or we feel that there is a conflict of interest, or we feel that we are not able to arrive at consensus, we are taking external help. Paul has been very good in contributing. Randy has also been very good in contributing.

The classic example I'll leave you here with is the recent exercise when we started discussing about the fees, we had to go and bring in KPMG in the picture, because it's not that the NIR members or non-NIR representatives on the EC are not able to take the decision, we are aware of the fact that the community is taking a long time to discuss about this. We're also aware about the financial situation of the APNIC, which needs to be fixed fast. To be able to talk, what do we need to do better? If the situation goes more worse, there is nothing to talk about. When we called KPMG into the picture, being a neutral party, we have also proposed them to look at the fee structure in two different angles. Let us look at NIR and non-NIR. So only on the KPMG analysis, done on a 100 neutral level.

KPMG has not just done analysis of APNIC. With information available in the public domain, they have also taken the data from all the RIRs and that was beautifully presented to us in Singapore. That's when we have arrived at this interim. Thank you.

AXEL PAWLIK:

Don't get me wrong. I don't think I'm qualified to comment on the EC work's obviously. It's just the existence of the EC/NIRs, actually, NIRs in this region, is a major difference from how we are doing it in Europe and I do also see that this fee discussion is going on for a very, very long time already, so I thought I'd make the comment and hope that all goes well. And I'm happy to see that the work is done calling in KPMG and others. I think that is a major step forward already.

RANDY BUSH:

In the last months, I have had the pleasure of sitting in on EC meetings regarding fees, Axel, and I think that the problems of that kind of conflict of interest have not set off my alarms in transactions with them, but I believe the issue you raise is, you know, I sit on boards of businesses and the issue you raised formally is one.

But I think what we have in our culture here is an EC that is moving from the founding parents to a business board. And this is a transition and will take some years. It's a cultural change. And I don't know how it will be resolved. And, indeed, the most difficult - one of the two most difficult issues underlying the fee discussion, the long-term fee discussion, in my mind, the two biggest issues, are the relationships between NIRs and APNIC, and the change in financial model that free pool will run-out in v4 will cause.

So a direct day-to-day conversation with people who are wearing both hats is going to happen no matter what. And my experience in the time I've been doing this, which is since the last two meetings, since Kaohsiung, is that the discussion between the EC and the NIRs and APNIC and the Fees working group has changed from aggressive and difficult, and everybody was being aggressive and difficult except me, of course, and to cooperative and realising we are all part of the same community, the same family, and the Internet is about cooperation.

So, you know, I'm impressed and I think this is going culturally very well. And I think the EC and APNIC and the NIRs are all to be thanked and congratulated for moving forward in a very constructive direction.

VINH NGO:

Thanks, Randy.

Let's look at it this way for the smaller ISP. If you remember, when I first did my speech about four years ago when I got elected, I am standing here trying to represent the smaller ISP community out there. I understand the hurt from a financial point of view, but look at it from a much bigger picture. Extract yourself from your day-to-day business and look at it from the point of view of our community, not as an individual. We run a business, like it or not it's a non-profit organisation. If we take all those money and we invest to make a lot more money, by all means, we can come back here and say, "Forget about the fee," but the reality of the fact is we are running a non-profit organisation, OK? Everything costs. We have a dilemma. On one side, we recognise from a smaller ISP point of view, increasing 7% might be a significant increase for your annual budget, OK.

But, on the same side, we are trying to facilitate a discussion here within all members. We are trying to reach a consensus in a diplomatic words that is not easy to try and reach a consensus. We tried for the last ten years.

Do we carry on this message forever? Or do we try to achieve something at the moment?

If we don't, instead of APNIC, we do the global community now, we might go broke. That's the reality of the fact. We take it seriously. All EC, all members, we discuss, we consider seriously.

So put that in your mind. Look at it through that spectrum here when you make your decision between one another and try to understand it from that point of view.

RS PERHAR:

Randy, you know, I am reminded of something.

What happens - a man checks into a hotel and he goes to his room and he finds a PC, computer, is there in the room. And he could send e-mail messages. So what does he do? He sends off an e-mail to his wife. Unfortunately, when he is typing out the e-mail address, he makes a mistake and that e-mail lands up somewhere else.

A lady in a different town who has just got back from a funeral, which was of her husband, rests for a while and then gets up to look at her e-mail messages because she wanted to reply to all the condolences messages. So the very first message she reads, she faints and falls. Her son comes. He sees the screen. The e-mail which was on the screen read, "Dear Jane," subject - "I have reached" dated 6 September 2007, "Dear Jane, you will be glad to know that I have reached. I was just checked in. I find that have good computers here. The preparations for your arrival are all ready. Waiting for you tomorrow. Thank you, your husband."

Now, why I was reminded of this is that when, from APNIC, we got the first indication of fee hikes, it was like this e-mail to us, and to the smaller ISPs. We just about fainted. Right? So anyway, Kusumba was there. He gave us the inputs and convinced the members that, in the overall interest of the community and APNIC, there are changes which are being done and they are justified and reasonable and, yes, later on, we worked out to help out smaller ISPs. So we go by that and I'm sure we will be able to get over this debate very soon and let the voting go ahead and I'm sure the results should be indicating that.

Now, before sitting down, I heard a remark by Paul a little while earlier before we went for a tea break. He said we are running a little late in our programs and it's India. Right? Right, Paul?

PAUL WILSON:

We normally do run late in these programs so it's not just India and I'm sorry if I caused any...

RS PERHAR:

Well, you know, I am reminded of another thing. You know, a man is deserted on an island. He has been there for 20 years and since he has nothing to do, he keeps praying. So the fairy godmother comes to him after 20 years and she says, "What do you want? "you have got three wishes." So he says, " Fine." Finally in his mind, the bubbly champagne comes. He used to love champagne. He asks for one, two, three cases but then he says, "Why not turn this river into champagne?" she says done and the river turns into champagne. Suddenly in his mind, the picture of Brigitte Bardot comes and he says, "I must have a woman to keep me company." He says, "Fairy godmother, I would love to have the best woman in this world." So she says, "Done," and down comes Mother Teresa. It's a matter of perception.

RANDY BUSH:

With Brigitte Bardot, you're showing your age.

KUSUMBA SRIDHAR:

Just quickly two points for everybody to remember. One thing that the class - the normal perception that we are trying to hear all the time that APNIC is different by having NIRs. Yes, it is different, but during my experience of the last eight months, I have seen that it is an advantage for APNIC. Why?

APNIC cannot be conducted as just an organisation. We are trying to look at it as a business. We are trying to look at it as an enterprise that should be there. What we are carrying as EC members is the business expertise that we have to conduct the business properly.

Now, you all know that NIR actually has similar functionality as what RIR does, more or less. So what I have noticed is that the expertise that the member services coming from JPNIC and TWNIC, that is actually helping us visualise certain policies and certain procedures and the way we conduct the business in APNIC. So we are using that as a kind of a knowledge pool for us, rather than somebody saying that it's different.

Yes, it's different but, for us, our experience is it's been an advantage.

The second point, please understand, yesterday Randy was also mentioning that if there is any change that can happen, it can happen only in membership because APNIC is for membership. Please understand that RIR do not have equity to go and ask for loans from bank. We cannot go to bank and ask for loan. The revenue source is membership. If anything can happen, it's only at the membership. We cannot go and put our stake in a bank and get a loan. So please understand that. That's a fundamental difference between a non-profit organisation and a profit organisation.

JONNY MARTIN:

Jonny Martin from FX Networks in New Zealand. We support this proposal. It seems to be a pretty Conservative increase and, to be pretty frank, we're putting fibre in the ground, buying routers and paying for staff at home, this is nothing. The cost of obtaining resource from APNIC really is nothing. And I think it would be nice if we can reach some sort of consensus and not have to revisit this every six months.

It's quite fun the first time. Second and third time, I'm guessing it's not going to be anywhere near as fun.

GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA:

Gaurab, Upadhaya. Actually, I do support this proposal to change the APNIC accounting from US dollars to Australian dollars. I actually think it's saner because the income