AMM session transcript
APNIC Member Meeting Session 1
0900-1030
Start of meeting
AKINORI MAEMURA:
Good morning everyone. Welcome to the APNIC Member Meeting. My name is Akinori Maemura, the Chair of the Executive Council of APNIC and usually, we have the AMM have been chaired by Paul Wilson, the Executive General, but recently, the EC reviewed the by-laws and we decided to comply more with the by-laws and the reason why I am here is that the by-laws say that the AMM should be chaired by the EC. That is why I'm here. But maybe you'll find almost all the other things will be unchanged. As it was, almost all parts are coordinated by Paul Wilson.
Then today, we will start with the report from the APNIC Secretariat and then afterwards, we have some other agenda in the second session, and after lunch, we will have the SIG reports and some other announcements and an NIR report or something and we will start with the Secretariat's report. So Paul?
PAUL WILSON:
Thank you, very much. Yes, I'm Paul, the DG of APNIC - I think you all know me by now.
I would just like to start with the thanks and a few housekeeping notes. So the silver sponsors are CNNIC, KRNIC, and TWNIC and JPNIC and thank you to all of them for providing sponsorship for today, it is very much appreciated. I would also like to give a thanks to the local technical sponsors, FX Networks for the meeting today as well.
There is a little bit more housekeeping here to be done. The Helpdesk is in Meeting room 7, so this being the last day of the APNIC open policy meeting, today will be your last chance to see APNIC Helpdesk staff in person, so please take that opportunity if you need to.
There is a Prayer Room in the Star Room next to Hall C just here. Lunch is provided. Again today, one of the important functions of today is the election of the NC, Number Council member from the APNIC region who serves on the Number Council and also on the address council of the Address Supporting Organization, so there will be more details about that as the morning goes on. But, as I mentioned earlier, if you don't have a ballot paper, then as a registered participant in this meeting, you can collect one from the registration desk.
That is available to every individual in this room. You can vote as an individual in this session. So even if your membership has cast a line in the online ballot, then you are still entitled to vote here in person on your own behalf if you wish to do that. It is important to note that the ballot box will close at 2 pm, so if you're going anywhere else this morning, please either vote beforehand or be able to vote in any case by 2 pm and the ballot box is outside on the registration desk.
We do have another dinner tonight which is at your own cost and I'll get more details about that later on. We will have a newcomers event prize draw before the afternoon tea break, so please hang around at least until the afternoon tea break and you stand to win as a newcomer, I suppose an iPod Shuffle.
OK, I would just like to overview the agenda. As usual this morning's session before morning tea is taken up with reports from the Secretariat and the Executive Council.
After morning tea break, there will be a couple of things happening including the RIR reports, reports from the NRO Number Council, from the IANA, from the NRO itself and some more on the NC, the Number Council election before lunch.
In the afternoon, we'll be hearing about and discussing the results from the SIGs which have happened this week.
Also looking at where our next meetings are going to be, and there's also plenty of opportunity during the schedule, particularly this afternoon as well for open discussion, open microphone etc. So please, you're encouraged to speak up if you've got anything to say through the agenda at any point and you'll be encouraged in particular during the open mic sessions to have your say.
Now, in yesterday's meeting, we had some remote participants from Manila and from Hanoi. It being rather early in the morning in those cities right now, they haven't joined us yet but they will be joining us a little later on in the morning again.
OK, here is the session called Agenda Bashing, so if anybody would like to bash the agenda, make some ideas or suggestions, please let us know now.
And in the absence of any agenda bashing, then I will move straight on into the Secretariat reporting - if I could drive my Mac here, I would be able to pull up the first of the reports which will be an overview from myself before moving into the area reports.
This is the series of reports for the next half an hour or so. I would just like to remind you of the APNIC structure and you will be seeing the reporting according to the structure this morning. There are currently three APNIC areas. Services, communications, and business. Out there on his own is the Chief Scientist, also in the executive team of APNIC which is represented by the five positions here.
We have in the past had a separate services area and technical area. These days, Sanjaya is managing all of those functions under the services area, so he'll be presenting a report covering all of those areas.
In a little more detail, this is what the overall team of staff looks like these days. A lot of friendly faces here. Because the meeting here in Christchurch is relatively close to the head office in Brisbane, there have been a few more staff than usual at this meeting and I do hope that you've got to and had the chance to meet more than one of the APNIC staff. And if not, then today is probably your last chance. If there's anything that we can do to help you as a member of APNIC or a protective member or a respected individual, then please just feel free to join us and we're all very friendly.
And today, I think most of us are dressed in the corporate uniform for the meeting which is the white T-shirt, so we're all easily identified.
Now, I had a few topics to just briefly run over. Not a lot of detail here but we don't want to fill the entire day, so a few highlights from the Secretariat before we get into the detail of the area reports. The first of those is the ongoing process of the APNIC free structure review and potential reform. This is the subject of a study by KPMG which was commissioned by the EC initially last year and they completed the first phase of that report last year delivering the results of that report a year ago, and those results including the initial Australian dollar fee structure reform have been implemented as of 2008. But that's not the end of this process, because the second phase of that process is under way now.
There will be more on that process and where we're up to in the Treasury report which is coming just shortly.
I'm just recapping here on the reasons for that fee structure change which was implemented for this year, and that is to do with the devaluation of the US dollar which had been the fee currency for APNIC traditionally since the beginning of the fee structure about 12 years ago.
However, when APNIC was relocated to Australia about 10 years ago, we of course started expanding member funds in Australian dollars so the exchange rate became quite critical and it was quite favourable in the earlier part of this decade which allowed APNIC to really become well established and to maintain a capital reserve which we still have today. But in recent years, the US dollar has devalued and the exchange rate expected for last year was $1.27 and it never even reached that point during the course of last year, so it did become a quite urgent thing to review that situation, and the recommend nation from KPMG is that we really should be receiving income and currency of which it is predominantly spent and that's the change to the Australian dollar structure, and that was decided by the EC and it was implemented at that exchange rate which was expected for 2007 which was $1.27 .
Now, the implications of that throughout the region were quite complex and that was written up in an Apster report. You can see that the actual impact in local currency was quite variable across the region, but in the substantial majority of cases, the fees now paid for APNIC are still lower than they have been for much of the last decade in almost every one of the currencies around.
So, that's just a recap on one of the major things. It is good to see, having made that change and having it well accepted by the APNIC membership community that the finances APNIC are more stable and more predictable now and it is certainly in everyone's interest to have seen that and probably the Treasurer will be showing you the evidence of that in the financial reports coming up.
Moving along, support activity of the entire Secretariat collectively, another strong focus area is the issue of resource certification, which is something that has been under discussion at APNIC meetings for quite some years. I think the first time this was reported externally was way back in the early part, and it's been an ongoing investment since that time. It's become implementation which has happened recently, it's become the focus of quite a lot of increased resource allocations, but we're at a stage now where the MyAPNIC implementation of the user end or member end functionality of the resource implication system is ready to be released really soon now.
Unfortunately, we must missed a deadline for being able to launch at that meeting, but it's coming in coming weeks and that will allow certificate management and also support router which is the ROA.
So, this is quite a widespread activity, not only in the IETF through the stands process, but also through co-ordination activities among others, an informal working group among the RIRs. The formal co-ordination of the NRO's Engineering Coordinator's Group and work under the IETF RPSEC group. And among the APNIC membership community, there is of course increasing interest in moving towards and considering implementation. So there was a recent intense visit by JPNIC staff to APNIC for a detailed discussion about implementation.
So, most of the implementation work has been in MyAPNIC and in the back end behind that, but the open PGP implementation was supported by a substantial contribution by ARIN. So, this is a true inter-RIR project which is, as I say, not only across most areas of APNIC, but across the RIR system as a whole.
I think I've covered the details on that following slide.
Moving along again, one of the main priorities under a very increasingly broad banner these days is that of Internet governance, not only for APNIC, but for the RIRs and for the wider community that we have working here. So, there have been a number of particular activities and as I say, this is increasing all the time, so we've become used to the IGF meetings, which are happening annually and will happen annually for a couple of years, and the next meeting is in Hyderabad. We're not only participating as the NRO and we'll touch on that later, but we've offered APNIC resources to co-ordinate the online participation at the IGF which is a fairly substantial job for us to be moving into between now and December.
The ITU is taking a great interest in this area of Internet governance, and in particular, resource management, and we're working both through a promotional type of avenue through meetings like the telecom world and telecom regional meetings, and next week, in fact, we've got telecom Asia in fact and some of us will be going to Bangkok to be involved in workshops and the exhibition.
But also, the ITU has recently announced a workshop on IPv6, which is happening in parallel with that meeting next week in Geneva, and that's something that was unfortunately for the RIRs and the NRO to be directly involved with. Some members of the RIR, our staff will be going there to observe what it is that comes out of that. And keeping a close eye on that of course.
And a fairly new one this year has been the interest of the other group, the OECD in Internet governance matters and they had the 10-year ministerial meeting in Seoul in June this year where they were discussing the future of the Internet economy and that had a very large focus on Internet resource management in an economic context, so we had a presence there, workshops, and Geoff Huston spoke with the ministerial meeting, which was quite a significant event, and we also had quite a lot of promotional outreach activities through promotional agencies, in particular with RIPE NCC.
And that of course will be ongoing and it seems to be increasing year by year in terms of the scope and the number of actors, the number of different organizations that we have to deal with, and I suspect the overheads for APNIC, because in a sense, this is certainly an overhead on top of the core operational activities and services that APNIC provides, but I suspect those overheads will be continuing to increase, particularly in the next couple of years.
I would like to mention a project which APNIC has taken on under funding with the projects and activity that has been funded by an external body, and this is a project called the ISIF, the information Society Innovation Fund and something we've been involved with for quite some time but not as the administrative body and that is the regional RIR, research, and development grants program. It is a competitive grants program and that is by a process of application of funds. That is proposals for implementation for research into innovation and technology, so we're working now with the IDRC which is funding to co-ordinate the Secretariat and we've taken on one staff member for that purpose, Sylvia, who is not here in the room. She's left early this week but she is working on that project. So with the APNIC coordination and also with dotAsia, we've taken more on and there's more there on the website.
Finally from me, would like to mention the APNIC survey for 2009. It's called the survey for 2009 rather than 2008, because the report will be delivered in time for the annual meeting in Manila next year, so the survey is now a regular twice yearly or two yearly event. It's conducted independently by KPMG, entirely independently, that is so the responses that anyone provides to that survey are entirely anonymous and anonymised and the report that the KPMG will give to us next year will be based on the responses of course and the detailed analysis without revealing anything at all.
Now, this survey as you all know or should know by now, the survey is conducted by Dr John Earls of KPMG who is not with us right now, but he has been here in this meeting this week talking about the survey with many of you and I hope that if you happen to want to contact John, his KPMG e-mail address is there.
Apart from the standard or regular APNIC member and stakeholder survey, this survey will have a second half which was endorsed by the meeting this week, the second part which will be about IP addressing; in particular, will the implementation of v4 and the conceptions and the planning for v4 consumption amongst our community, and also the plans for the transition to IPv6, because of course, we're not seeing very much evidence of v6 deployment in either address allocation figures or in the routing tables, but there's a lot more that we know is going on in terms of planning, perceptions, and so forth amongst the members and the stakeholders and we do feel the need to find out more about that.
So preparations are under way. John will be having some face-to-face group meetings in the coming months to nail down with respect to the main survey, what are the current issues that the community wants to be able to express opinions on for APNIC and also to see the v6 surveys and the survey will be released in December and keep an eye out for that and your participation, either as a member or as an interested party in APNIC is really appreciated and please, I do hope you'll take the time to participate in that so that we have a good report which is available in the APNIC 27 meeting in Manila in 2009.
So, those are a few major points that I wanted to highlight across the Secretariat function. We now have some reports from each of the three APNIC areas and first up is going to be Sanjaya.
GEOFF HUSTON:
Excuse me Paul, I do have a comment on your report. My name is Geoff Huston with APNIC. It may sound pedantic and petty to lots of the people in the room that there were two errors in your description of the resource allocation which for those doing the work are significant in terms of what this applies to. You said that it used open PGP and it does not, it uses open... it uses open SSA and the entire certification system allows the resource holder to have the right to hold the resource.
PAUL WILSON:
I could say that you spotted the deliberate mistake and it was a deliberate mistake and it is not open PGP.
GEOFF HUSTON:
And the IETF working group is concentrated more on inter-domain routing.
PAUL WILSON:
OK, thank you Geoff.
GEOFF HUSTON:
Thank you.
SANJAYA SANJAYA:
Hi everyone, my name is Sanjaya, the services area manager. As Paul mentioned, the services area at the moment covers both, previously two areas, one technical area and the other one is the services area. There's no guarantee that it will always be like this, but at the moment, I'm doing my best to cover both areas and they are combined as the service area.
By all measurements, the workload we're having has increased significantly, but I'm happy to report that we have been able to do and to serve you all with other significant increases in resources. All right, there are several functional units within services and these are all of them. I'm going to go through them one by one on what we have been doing this year, during the first half and what we're going to do in the second half of this year.
Start with the resource services, this is where we deliver the delegation requests to our members. There are three number resources. The IPv4 ASN and the IPv6. As you can see, this is all statistics up to July 31, 2008. So, it is more than half of a year's work. We can see on the left, the top left side, there's the IPv4. It is already close to what we are handing out in 2007. So, we expect that by the end of this year, it will be - the growth will be linear if looking back to 2004. So, significantly more than 2007.
The ASN is about the same rate as well. We're halfway in 2008, so by the end of 2008, it will be slightly more than 2007.
And interesting statistics are happening in IPv6. I've got two charts on the left side of my slide. The top chart is the size of IPv6 we have delegated in 2008. It will be interesting that it is significantly lower than the previous years. This is primarily caused by the HD ratio policy change from 0.8 to 0.94, and the default assigned and size from /48 to /56. So this has led to allocation size that is consistently around a /32 and the largest being, I think a /28. While in the previous year, we actually had allocated up to /20 IPv6. So, that is actually the effect of the two policies being implemented. But, in terms of numbers of members being served, the number of allocations being handed out.
At the bottom right chart, you can see that it has increased, and again, I suspect that this will increase even more significantly now that the awareness of IPv6 has increased, and also, the recent approval of the removal of the 200 customer requirement in the initial IPv6 allocation. So the removal of the 200 customer assign would further push up the number of IPv6 requests coming to APNIC.
On the IPv4, we increasingly see large blocks of IPv4 requests, because of the end consumer broadband penetration, particularly in countries like China and India that has a very high population. So, the technology and 3G, xDSL, and some have converted the previously used ten and now convert to IP, so we're seeing a lot of requests for it. Without changing the policy, APNIC has implemented an internal improvement in evaluating the requests, so now we have for a certain size, you would escalate the request to that. Anything larger than /15, sorry, /15 and larger requests would go in. The total escalation we have so far is 109 escalations. There has been, because of this, there has been a bit of an additional processing time, 1-3 days but that is because of the allocation and even with this, we are still committed to our service level response line that we will have within one working day. This will be reviewed from time to time.
Moving on to member services, this is the unit that handles Helpdesk and general assistance to members who need to update their records and their database. There has been a bit of a challenge to member services earlier this year because of a staffing issue. Helpdesk is a very - it is quite hard for Helpdesk because they have to have both technical skill as well as a strong administrative skill. The strong administrative skill is harder these days because of the number of mergers and acquisitions happening within this region, so we have to follow a very good procedure in administering the changes in the membership. As you can see, the membership has grown from 2007, 1,584 and by August 19 this year, we had reached 1,778, so this is going to grow some more by the end of this year.
This is the first report I made that includes the number of NIR members and I think I'm going to try to do this in the following meetings as well to keep track of the growth in the NIR membership, so you get a good picture of the total entity that we're surveying in this region combined by APNIC as well as the National Internet Registries.
So, there's a total of 1,107 members being served by all the National Internet Registries combined. All right, Members Services is also in charge of MyAPNIC project. We will be launching the public availability of MyAPNIC Version 2, the BETA release in September 2008, so next month.
The main features are the user ID and password authentication, this is to help - at the moment, MyAPNIC only supports X.509 certificate authentication and we've heard that people would like slightly easier for day-to-day applications like updating records, updating customer assignments, changing DNSs and so on, so we have incorporated the user and password authentication, in addition to the X.509 certificates. But the X.509 certificate are still used and required for high privilege operations like voting and resource application.
Also in MyAPNIC v2 is the new resources that Paul has mentioned. Basically, there are three features in there, one is the ability to activate or deactivate a service. The second one is to issue RFC 3779 for a collection of resources that you have. And the third feature is to generate route origin authorization, or more commonly known as the ROA. Do have a look at this and when it is available next month and inform you all of the mailing list announcements.
The third unit we have is project and system services. I call them the outsourcing central. These are the people who integrate all the various APNIC systems and make sure that they work, they all work in the right manner. So, what they've done in the first half of 2008 is finance the supporting system implication. We have surveyed our e-mail ticketing system to the latest release. We made some improvements to the events managing systems and also, this unit co-ordinates the MyAPNIC v2.
The second half of this year, there will be more IPv6 enhancements on the resource management system and improvements also.
The fourth unit is software engineering. OK, I was told to slow down a bit. The fourth unit is software engineering. Software engineering in APNIC covers three main applications, one is My APNIC, the second one is our internal resource management system and the third one is the events managing system, so the software that we use to manage the events are actually an internally built application. So, for the software engineering team in the first half of 2008, they are busy with MyAPNIC v2 development and making improvements on the events managing system by allowing people to check bar codes and implementing the first part and hopefully this experience will be users to improve the system in time for a larger meeting coming up in the Philippines for APRICOT 2009. And the software team is also working on IPv6, on improving IPv6 support.
The second half of 2008, I think we will be focusing more on MyAPNIC user experience, based on the feedback we will be getting from the BETA release. So do use the BETA as much as you can and give us feedback on what you would like to see improvements on and we will do our best to implement those in the second half of 2008.
Again, resource requests are an important feature in MyAPNIC and we haven't been to be much in this, so it will be a focus in the second half of 2008.
Resource certification, we will expand the three features I've just mentioned before with one more feature called the end customer certification in MyAPNIC. This allows our member to create further downstream certificates for their members. So basically, it is a host of services in MyAPNIC, so the ISPs for example need to cut certification downstream, they can do so via MyAPNIC.
The fifth unit we have is the network and operations. These are the teams that maintain our 50-plus servers all over the world. And also the network in the Secretariat, as well as in our core locations outside of Australia. During the first half of 2008, they have been helping the resource certification team to install the servers and devices that are needed to operate the resource certification. They have put on the better redundancy road balancing and so on for the web and DNS services and we have made the reverse DNS web services available to the NIR. At least one NIR has been successfully migrated to this system that is KRNIC.
The second half of 2008, we want to improve the Internet connectivity to the Secretariat, adding more transit provider, both native IPv4 as well as native IPv6. We also want to improve our database resilience by doing clustering on our database and also start working on the DNSSEC support.
The sixth unit is the research and development. This has been quite a busy activity for our RND.
The first half of 2008, we participated in the DITL - Day in the Life of the Internet. We took part in sending about 50 TB of data into OARC and CAIDA from Hong Kong, Japan, and Australia DNS logs.
R and D have been involved with the resource certification design and produced eight drafts in the IETF SIDR working group and had the second quarter deliverable of MyAPNIC futures. And we have also deployed TTM now that we are thinking of providing public NTP server to the general public.
In the second half of 2008, R and D will improve the TTM deployment. Continuing their input into reporting and strategy planning and continuing their work on resource certification.
Last, but not least, the seventh unit we have is security. As you know, MyAPNIC stores confidential information from our members so we are taking your information data very seriously and that extends, not only for our information technology, but also on the physical protection of your information. So, we have improvements in the first half of 2008, we installed a CCTV system in APNIC to improve our physical security. And in the second half of 2008, we will be implementing a new certification authority system that will, that is designed to handle both resource certification as well as the My APNIC X.509 certificates equally. And in the future, APNIC will provide multiple services to our members. For example, one is MyAPNIC, another one is icons and then e-learning and APNIC will provide more and more portals that interface to the members and to make sure that the experience would be seamless to the members, we are going to have authentication systems that are integrated, so it is a single sign on, so with the user name and password, you can go into MyAPNIC and so on, and this is an exciting project of security to work by the end of this year. That is my report for the service area manager.
PAUL WILSON:
So the next report will be from German Valdez for the communications area.
GERMAN VALDEZ:
Thank you, Paul. My name is German Valdez. I realize that we have a delay in the agenda, so I'm going to try to go as quickly as possible so we can catch up with the next presentations. I have this overview of the representation and a staff update news. Some reference to our members survey from the last one in 2007 regarding to the priorities for the COMS area and some activities of priority that have been done inside the area.
In the last meeting, there were some changes inside the COMS area. Events and became an independent unit led by Vivian Yang. And a new External Relations led by Sunny. We started this new program and we realized the level of the IPv6 transition so we started IPv6 program led by Miwa Fujii who is very well known around the region. Marketing and Public Relations is led by Louise Flynn. And Policy also has a new manager in the face of Sam Dickinson and Publications is Adam Gosling and Training by Cecil Goldstein. A lot of changes since the last meeting.
This report is based on the top resource priorities and that we recovered from the last member surveys, which includes some activities released to the COMS area and is increase accessibility of APNIC meetings and policy process. Represent the needs of the ISP community and governments and regulators. Improve the APNIC website and expand external activities.
So in this report, you will see all these activities related to these priorities according to the member survey.
We got into the events and had some meeting highlights for this meeting. I am very happy to let you know that we broke records in the number of attendees in a stand-alone meeting with 237 attendees. Fifty-seven were from New Zealand, 180 from 32 other economies. We received 113 APNIC members. Eleven fellows; 103 newcomers. That makes more than 40% of the participants of this meeting are people who are coming for the first time to this meeting. And an amazing number, more than 1,000 people who accessed our web cast services who picked up the number by Google analytics and this is the total from Monday to Thursday and then with the access to the different URL with the webcasting.
Also for this meeting, we have two remote participation locations in Hanoi and Vietnam. We have 25 people in Hanoi and 20 people in Manila. Both locations were assisted by APNIC staff and I would like to extend my appreciation for the local hosts VNNIC and ASTI for organizing this. We still need to improve our level of communication with them, but I think it was a worthy effort to bring more people to discussions in the operational staff and the policy processes as well.
So, we counted the number of people who were here in the face-to-face meeting and also people from Manila and the Philippines, we could bring people to the discussions, around 290 people which is a very good number.
Some activities engaged by external relations units. We were keeping it about the importance of IPv6 and also to the adoption of the transition of 4-byte ASN. We had the different operational group meetings around the region, South Asia, New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan, and Japan and the Pacific regions and we also had a CEO visit to our facilities in Brisbane. A group of Pacific Island CEOs where we organized a meeting there in order to let them know about the importance of the transition of IPv6.
Later today, we are going to sign to a new MoU with AUSNOG and NZNOG and PACNOG. And we spoke about the active participation of the ITU in Africa and Korea and the very good coverage in the press and it of very successful participation from the last APNIC.
Some future priorities will be to sign new MoUs with NSP from Pakistan and ITI from Papua New Guinea. We're going to keep the wider promotion of IPv6 for 4 byte ASNs. As I said before, we are going to keep working with new tools so we can bring more people into participation in the APNIC processes.
This week is very special as well for us because we are working at the same time here in New Zealand but we started to say that we are going to have a stand in the ITU telecommunication in Bangkok. Paul Wilson will also have a space in the program there. So, we're keeping an eye on both the Internet high-level meetings.
And we are preparing as well for remote participants in the IGF meeting in conjunction with the NRO. The NRO will have a booth there and we are going to be involved in different workshops relate today critical resources in the developing regions.
We started the IPv6 program, we realized that the IPv6 is one of the most relevant things we are dealing with right now and this program will co-ordinate all the APNIC regulations related to IPv6. As I said before, it will be led by Miwa Fujii. Some areas of responsibility that Miwa will have now is going to conduct research into the national regulatory and policy framework models that most effectively facilitate the transition from IPv4 to IPv6. Field research to identify commonly asked technical questions and management questions faced by ISPs and many of this stuff is already done in some ways inside APNIC. This is only an effort to bring a more organized way and the different efforts and activities that APNIC is engaged in related to IPv6 transitions.
Some highlights about the policy activities, we implemented at the beginning of this month, three different policies which were discussed in the last APNIC meeting. We implemented a prop-053, which is changing the minimum IPv4 allocation size to /22. We implement prop-054, NIR operational policy document provision and also the proposal to change IPv6 initial allocation criteria.
We also adopted a one-week administrative buffer between proposal deadlines and a minimum four-week comment period before the APNIC meeting. This is to facilitate the recommendation of the proposals, so it can be presented to a community in an effective way. And also the commitment to offer you the best policy available process and would like to take a look to the current PDP and find ways to improve the proposals according to the experience that we have had in previous meetings.
Regarding the publications area, some highlights for 2008 is that for APNIC meetings, we revamped the designs. I know that the sign for this meeting has operated some changes according to the last meetings.
We worked very hard in providing a speedily and trusted access. And also working in the ICONS relaunch, I would like to extend an invitation to you to visit ICONS. It provides materials to the portal and we added a Twiki section regarding the bytes transition. Some future priorities is the redesign of Apster and also we're engaged in an ambitious project which is the CMS project which is, we are targeting for that to be implemented in the next meeting so hopefully we can have more information on the CMS at the next meeting. At this moment, the information architecture is complete.
Finally, training services as you can see, we are in the process to have as many courses as we had last year. At this moment, we have 50 different courses at 18 different locations around the region.
So, the work that has been done here that we can highlight is the eLearning pilot project, which is completed for launch and we have a new training lab, which is extended, and we are offering this for the use of our partners. Two or three months ago, we offered our labs in order to have a IPv6 training session in Kenya. We are willing to share our equipment for anybody that can need it.
We deployed a new course which is forensics and we're planning for more advanced IPv6 course which we've named IPv6 Deployment before the end of the year.
For the first time, we have a session in Guam and Brunei. We conducted a training session in these countries and by September, we're going to launch a new collaboration program in universities.
So, priorities for this area will be the exchanges of eLearning in integration with the blended training delivery environment. Keep working with the training program and in collaboration with the member partners. We are working to develop training in different regions and for different organizations. Just last week or two weeks ago, we conducted a training session for APTLD members and following that, we went to work well with the Pacific Islands telecommunications association for the Pacific Islands Internet service provider. And also, we are committed to work with 6-DEPLOY, which is a very ambitious program funded by the European Union in order to train and disseminate information about IPv6. We are members of this program and we are wanting to provide feedback in the position in the Asia-Pacific.
Thank you very much.
PAUL WILSON:
Next we have the business area report from Richard Brown.
RICHARD BROWN:
Thank you, Paul. I'll introduce myself. My name is Richard Brown and I look after the business area. This is my first APNIC meeting and it's been a great opportunity for me to come here to Christchurch and see how these things work and get to meet members of the community. I've really enjoyed it so far. It's a little bit tiring and it's been a long week and I'll try to keep this brief. We're creeping well into getting well out of whack with our agenda so I'll try to keep this as brief as possible.
To start with, I'd just like to introduce you to the business area team. We have two new staff starting in the next couple of weeks, Jyothi, and Helen. The business team is very well represented at this meeting. Sylvia who is looking after the ISIF program actually went home last night, but we have Irene, Connie, and Louise still here at this meeting, so Connie and Irene in particular have been in the community for a long time and they're very well known. Louise has been around for a long time but I think this is her first APNIC meeting as well.
What I would like to do is give you a brief overview of some of the achievements that the business area has come up with in the first half of the year and talk about some of the things we're planning to do around activities for the second half.
I'll start with the finance unit. As Sanjaya mentioned before, working with the project team, Frank, and his guys, so we've actually developed an in-house reporting application for managers to get a handle and track their expenses and really monitor their performance of the budget. This will give us real opportunities going forward as we step into the budget-setting process for next year. It really enables all the low level managers to have access to all the information and of course, that rolls up the top right up to Paul's level. So we're really happy with how that's going. We're going to expand that to incorporate our activity base costing. We've done a lot of work in there and we have some preliminary results, so when we set the budget this year, we can really drive our activities so we can get a picture of what activities cost APNIC. We've also spent a bit of time on the risk management, particularly around the banking facilities. We found that to go out to the market and engage a number of financial institutions has really helped us achieve much better rates for investment than we had before.
We spent a lot of time also developing some very complex models so we can more accurately forecast some of our key drivers and membership revenue and some of the major expense lines.
We've also made sure that the risk area in areas like payroll have developed redundancy. As Paul mentioned before, in the ISIF project, there's quite a bit of work for us in actually getting that grant application in, and that's going very well. Irene and I attended the joint RIR finance meeting in Amsterdam in July.
Looking ahead for this second half of the year for the finance unit, we're developing some revised travel expense policies and procedures. This is to try to make more efficient for those travelling and make it a better experience and also to try to make it easier for the finance and admin people to process, etc.
We're also working on developing a web-based purchasing and asset management application to help us better manage APNIC resources. We're moving our payroll system to a host environment, and of course, as we move towards the end of the year, pretty much straight after this meeting, we'll get heavily involved in preparing the budget and activity plan submission for next year.
One of the projects that Paul's given us to do by the end of the year is also to develop a comprehensive business continuity plan, and we'll also be continually reviewing what kind of solutions are out there to help us better understand our business.
If I move on to the office unit, Connie's area has been very busy. They've implemented procedures and managed the acquisition of assets and how we dispose of them. An update of the office procedures manual. We hosted face-to-face EC and ISIF meetings in Brisbane so far this year. There's been a fair bit of work around office alterations as the way APNIC operates changes, there's continual requirement for change in the way the office is set up.
We donated some old laptops and projectors to the DUMBO project, and one of the other areas we're really focused on is what we call eco-APNIC, which is really getting an understanding of whether we are best practising in what we do and how it affects the environment, so with the Queensland Government Environment Protection Agency, they have a program called Eco Biz, base, and we expect them to report back to us in the next few weeks but we're confident that we're close to best practice today and we would be really looking forward to getting that accreditation as soon as possible.
And APNIC signed up for Earth Hour in March 2008.
Plans for the second half of the year, we're going to do a strategic review of the office layout, just so we can get a feel for where we're going in the future and make sure that we're set up in a way that we can do that most efficiently. Changes in storage space etc. We have a process now for rolling auctions to keep old equipment and whatever from sitting around the office. We have a process now where we can dispose of those very efficiently. Also doing some procedures to help with events like this event here, and it's been particularly good for me to come to a meeting to actually see how it all works. And actually enjoy that. So we're planning to achieve the Eco APNIC accreditation and the travel planning and budget preparation for 2009 will be a large piece of work.
If I move on to Louise's area which is the Human Resource Management. Louise has provided a lot of in-house training so far this year. We have a very comprehensive induction program for new staff. We have conducted a number of workshops in-house, so cross cultural awareness, business writing, etc. And that continues to be a part of our approach which is to really focus on providing as much training to give our staff the skills they need. We have two APNIC staff qualified as certified health and safety officers so far this year. We've done a lot of work on how we handle staff coming to work for APNIC on immigration visas. We have new medical insurance arrangements set up for those and we also have a service that helps be orientated when they make their move, so there's been a lot of work going on there and we're really happy with how that's going. From a risk management perspective, we really needed to sort out that medical insurance, so we're really happy with how that's gone.
Louise has developed a web-enabled wall chart that basically ties everything together with position descriptions, etc, so that's working really well. Since 2007, all our positions have been benchmarked against an independent consulting body, so you know, the salaries are tied to a structure. And also, going forward, they developed a staff resourcing management which helps us run the meetings very smoothly.
Heading into the back half of the year, continuing to focus on in-house training. Some of the areas that we're really going to focus is work place health and service, it is really important that we create a safe environment for our staff, so we've got a new steering committee, we've got new representatives from each area and we're currently undertaking a review of all the facilities and processes and we've got a program where we're going to have extensive communication to staff around the issues and a big piece of this work will be training and identification needs as part of the budget process for 2009.
That's it from me.
PAUL WILSON:
OK, thank you very much, Richard. As we see, we're running a little late in the program. We started late and we're going a little bit slower than expected. So we do have next on the agenda, reports from the EC Treasurer and from the EC chair, but we will defer these until after the coffee break so that we can move straight on now with the member council election process.
So, I think by this stage, most who have been to these meetings will clearly know what the election is all about, but let me summarize for the benefit of newcomers and as a reminder. The NRO which is the correlation of the RIRs serves under an agreement with ICANN as the Address Supporting Organization of the ICANN structure.
The NRO has an elected body called the Number Council which under that agreement serves as the ASO address council which is also designed under the ICANN structure.
There are three Number Council members in each of the RIR regions making a total of 15 on the council and in each region, three are appointed by the RIRs' own methods, so in the APNIC region, the appointment process determined is that two of the members are appointed for two-year terms. In each year, we have an election for one of the elections on staggered one-year terms.
If I can bring up the election webpage here. We did have a call for nominations in accordance with that process. It closed on July 25 and we've got a large number and unusually large number of nominees in the election. So, in this election, anyone can vote who is in the room as an individual, and in addition, we've been receiving online votes via MyAPNIC. One vote per APNIC member. Now, what we would normally do at this stage is give each of the nominees the opportunity to speak to this group if they are in the room and if they wish to do so. So I'll just take the names in order of the screen and ask if Andy Linton is here and would like to say a few words.
And for anyone else who is here and on the list, I'll be calling you in order. So if you can be ready if you can.
ANDY LINTON:
I'll try to keep this brief. Most of the access to the web so you can read the stuff that's there if you like. I've had a long interest and involvement with the Internet and networking. I'm currently a board member of the Internet NZ's commission and I've also been a Board member of the public interest registry which it manages. So I believe I have a background in the Internet governance space but also a strong background in working in operational space with ISPs and telcos so I understand some of the pressures that people will have with addresses so I think you can bring a balance there between operational experience and a background in some policy work as well. And I would appreciate your support. Thank you.
PAUL WILSON:
Thank you, Andy. The next on the list is Dave Woodgate approaching the microphone.
DAVID WOODGATE:
Good morning everyone. David Woodgate from Telstra. I think over the past months, you will have seen the sort of style I bring to debating in terms of my active participation on the policy mailing lists of APNIC. And indeed, sessions yesterday. I'm very passionate about the correct things that should be happening, especially as we're moving towards IPv4 exhaustion and moving into a new world of IPv6. I'm very much hoping that you will give me the honour of serving you on the NRO. I'm particularly interested as to how the co-ordination is going to happen between ICANN, IANA, and the RIRs into the future as we enter into this unknown territory. I think yesterday, it could show that I'm quite prepared to take unpopular sentence if necessary, but I also assure everyone that I will represent the wishes of the region to my best endeavours. Thank you very much.
PAUL WILSON:
Thank you, David. OK, continuing to run through the list. Is Hassan Zaheer in the room? OK, I'll point out that on the APNIC website here which I'm showing on the screen, there are links to the nomination statements and details for each of the candidates. So if you're interested in seeing those details, please just visit the APNIC meeting website and I hope you can find those. The next is Ivan Tan?
Keith Williams?
Billy Cheon? Thanks, Billy.
BILLY CHEON:
Nice to meet you. My name is Billy Cheon from Korea. In the 2001 APNIC meeting was my first time to join this community and for APNIC 26, I'm standing here to run for the position. The position I run for, the role of the NRO NC is to repeat the recommendations on IP issues and advise on these matters and I think I'm the right person for this position, because policy-wise, I have some experience. From March 2005 to March 2007, I was one of the APNIC EC members and being an APNIC EC member allowed me to watch policy making processes very closely and I realized how policy is important because we can actually benefit from policy decisions, especially we are at critical periods. Everybody is aware of IPv4, it is running out and we are to do something, the IPv6 adoption to deal with these matters.
I think having the right policy is the most important thing. If I was given the chance, I'm sure that I can help this region to make their own policy. Also, I worked for National Internet Registry in Korea, serving one hundred members, I listened to them and worked in co-operation with APNIC. I think I can address successfully to ICANN as I did for my members. And also, I was involved in many of the IVP activities in my country. I think we have a lot of Internet experts in room. I have a shot at nomination and knowledge and experience, and for this reason, took pride to represent my country, Korea, and hopefully can get your support for myself. Thank you.
PAUL WILSON:
Thank you, Billy. The next on the list is Naresh Ajwani.
NARESH AJWANI:
Good morning everybody. All the three speakers who have spoken before me are very worthy. I have been observing debate in the last three days. I have been watching the mailing list over the policy discussions and feel that situation where we are trying to move to a co-existence, the issues vary from black marketing to a slow speed. The situation gets further complexed without doubt on a worldwide consensus, and in the last three days I've observed that. Actually, I've come back a background that had a similar complexity.
My in-laws and my parents, we live under one roof and the complexity gets better because one set of the parents are vegetarian and the other are non-vegetarian.
Every day, on the table, the dining table, I hear the views in favour of vegetarian and non-vegetarian. I also have three sons who get into competition with the three pets, and the youngest one being a St Bernard feels that he only wants us and nobody else. The complete scenario gives me experience, not only in my organization in my country, but within my family also to manage all such complexities. I am a firm believer that we have to have more stakeholders. Not only the stakeholders from the ISPs and other kinds of current membership that we have, but we need to enhance and we need to engage more other associations like Cyber Cafe. They need to get involved. I'm of the belief that by having this kind of involvement, our policy matters will be presented in a much different way than the way it is being done now.
In no way have I got any criticism of the current system and in the last three days, I saw how well we had managed all complexities with better communication and address in a manner which is an example for me to carry back home. I saw how everything can get addressed by having action theories and I was very impressed in the last three days and I will see this in my representation all across the world.
PAUL WILSON:
The next one on the list is Noe Lana.
Rajib Lochan Mahalik?
Takim Parulasbawa.?
Vinh Ngo?
VINH NGO:
Thank you for the opportunity. I'm sure that most of you have on your minds at the moment, you will ask two questions. One is the NRO NC position. One recommendation on the global IP address, the second question participates in the policy management and the third one is to appoint people to the ICANN board. I've been involved with APNIC for the past 12 years and I attend most APNIC and APRICOT meetings. I've been elected as a member for the past four years and I have seen throughout the whole process to develop of the policy in the region. Apart from that, I also work for a company called CSC Computer Science, which is an outsourcing company with 90,000 staff globally across 18 different countries. I work with different cultures and different experience and so in this role here, you need to be representing APNIC on the NC, on the NRO NC council to facilitate the proposal of the address policy from different RIRs.
And also, for the last few years, I've been involved with the WSIS, the Word Summit Internet Society in Geneva and also in Athens. To be in a position, you have to have a lot of commitment, you have to have the resource to support from the company and have your own time and money and travelling and I have the support from my company. So, in summing up, I have the right experience, and the right support to do the job. Thank you.
And also, I want to remind everybody who is new around this region, you notice that I've got a yellow Daffodil flower on my shirt today. If you walk around today, you'll see a lot of people approaching you. It is Cancer Day today in which people direct money for cancer research, so if you have some spare change or anything like that, approach them and donate for a good cause. Thank you.
PAUL WILSON:
Thank you, Vinh.
*APPLAUSE*.
PAUL WILSON:
The last on the list is Yasir Munir.
OK, I'll just make a final call for anyone who is on the list who hasn't spoken yet.
OK. So, just to recap on the voting system and the method, everyone in this room has got entitlement to a vote and the ballot paper can be collected from the registration desk. The ballot paper looks like this and it is very simple. All you're asked to do is place an "X" into one box indicating the candidate that you are choosing.
So, the ballot papers will be considered invalid if you mark more than one box or if you don't mark one box or if you leave a mess and leave a mark on the paper. What I will do is open the voting now as we break for morning tea.
There will be a ballot box at the registration desk. I would like to call as we normally traditionally do for some independent groups to help supervise the box and counting when the ballot closes at 2 pm immediately after lunch.
Are there any volunteers who are available to help? OK, Axel, James, there's several of you there. Leo, thank you very much everyone. Yes, Karen. If you could gather together to work out what to do. I don't think that there will be quite as many needed as there are volunteers, so if you could gather together make at the back of the room as we break for morning tea.
OK, the result of the vote will be announced at approximately 3:15 this afternoon. If you need to refresh your memory on anyone who has spoken, it is on the website. Is there anything that is not crystal clear about that process? If not, let's break for morning tea for the next 30 minutes. Thank you very much.
(End of session)
APNIC Member Meeting Session 2
Friday, 29 August, 2008
1130-1230
AKINORI MAEMURA:
OK, shall we start the next session? Please be seated. Thank you very much for coming back for the next session. The next section will start with the finance report from the treasurer Kuo-Wei Wu.
KUO-WEI WU:
First of all I like to let you know that the treasurer of the, accountant, I will make a hard copy and outside I think some of you picked up the hard copy. If you do not have a hard copy, there is also an online version you can download. So for the financial update today, I will try to make a summary instead of the complete presentation, which is in the hard copy. OK, I think first of all, I would like to tell you about the financial status of 2008. And by the year end, June, 2008, the financial is basically, we reported a surplus of AUD482K, it is the first time we presented the financial report in AUD. Expenditure is AUD4.6 million and revenue is AUD5.1 million.
We continue the membership growth by 9% for about 148 new members in the first half of 2008. At this moment, by June 30, we have total members of 1,732. The full year projection, we project a profit of AUD184K and projected expenditure is AUD10.4 million and about 1% below the budget.
And a little bit, I will say the effect. And also the projected revenue is AUD10.6 million and AUD1.7 million below budget. The operation profit, basically, you can take a look at that. The total revenue, we about, you know, roughly, AUD5.1 million, compared with the last year, we have AUD15.8, roughly about 16% increase. And compared with the original budget, we are 1.7% negative. But in the expenses we have basically AUD4.6 million, up from 13% compared with the last year. So the total profit, we have just as I mentioned, we have about AUD482K.
The budget was revised in April and update of continued revenue and expenditure projections and the budget is revised from AUD494 to AUD264K. The balance sheet is here, it is basically, we have the current assets, AUD11 million. Up 14%. And non-current assets is AUD4.3K, down about 6%. Currently, the total assets is about AUD15.7 million, up compared with the last year, of 7.7%. We have liabilities of AUD6.8K, up compared with last year of 16.7%. Total equity is roughly AUD9 million and up 1.7. So to, liability and equity is AUD15.7 million, up 7.7%, compared with last year.
The fee structure reform, this is something Paul already mentioned in his presentation. First of all, the AUD fee schedule implemented by the Secretariat as of January 2008 and it is decided by the EC last year. As Paul mentioned, KPMG has been asked to help us to do the fee structure study. Task 1: just reviewing, in the, I think, Monday? And then we will continue task 2 and 3 and 4 and hopefully, by the end of the year, we have some conclusions of the study from KPMG and we will wait for the discussions.
The progress to date is we have especially EC meeting in Brasil in July and we will bring the EC and KPMG will present their study and also the EC will implement our considerations and all the other thinking to provide information to KPMG to go on to the study. We also have progress report to the EC in Christchurch this week. That is what I mentioned about, the task 1 is now complete. So, this is my summary of the financial report. Any questions?
AKINORI MAEMURA:
Any questions?
KUO-WEI WU:
Thank you very much.
AKINORI MAEMURA:
Thank you very much. The next report is from myself about EC report. OK, again, my name is Akinori Maemura, I'm the chair of the EC of APNIC. I am bringing you a brief report of the EC activities.
Current EC members in the year 2008 myself. EC members, please stand up to show your faces to the membership. We have now the Che-Hoo Cheng from Hong Kong, the secretary, Kuo-Wei Wu, the treasurer who has just given you the treasury report from Taiwan, and Ming Cheng from Taiwan and Mao Wei from China and Ma Yan from China and Kusumba Sridhar sends his apologies he is absent from the meeting, there is problem for him. The EC members are quite pleased to have your opinions or comments for the APNIC business, so please feel free to come up to any EC member for your opinion or discussion, thank you very much.
Functions of the APNIC, sorry, APNIC EC, just showing you here, the interim decisions between member meetings, oversight of the activities of APNIC, to consider broad Internet policy issues for APNIC's strategic direction, to establish the basis of the budget for membership approval and to set membership dues. To endorse the policy consensus towards implementation. As you notice, to set the membership dues, it was clarified recently and the first action by, after this clarification was the currency change of the APNIC member fees to Australian dollars.
We had EC meetings after the Taipei meeting, that EC meeting usually held over the conference call, a teleconference but sometimes we have the onsite meeting, other than APNIC meetings which happened in July in Brisbane, APNIC office. At the time we had discussion for the usual agenda, the financial report or some other thing but additionally we had a workshop to work on the fees structure issues with KPMG. Then, we usually have the onsite EC meeting in every APNIC meeting. Then the minutes are available for you all at the EC website.
Financial status. It is already presented by our treasurer and I just skip it.
And right now, EC, this is the biggest project is the fee study. As I briefly said, the EC workshop we held in July to commence the second phase of the APNIC fee study. The objectives of the, are to ensure financial stability and ensuring fairness across members and NIRs and equity across economies. The first phase was reviewed at this EC workshop and first phase was for the setting the base projection for the forthcoming years but financial numbers, then the second phase and the third phase is going to focus on NIR formation and allocations and also the big circumstances change for the Internet by the IPv4 depletion and as you know, this will bring us a big change. Policy endorsement, as I told, policy endorsement is one of the significant jobs for the APNIC EC. This half of the year, we have three proposals which featured to reach consensus and are endorsed by the EC.
NRO number council, as Paul Wilson introduced to you, we have three NRO number council members from APNIC region and the two are openly elected and one is appointed by EC. At the beginning of the year 2008, Toshiyuki Hosaka was the man of the APNIC appointment from the EC in the Asia Pacific region. He just resigned, he is a JPNIC employee but he left JPNIC for his next career. He resigned from the NRO NC also. EC appointed Tomohiro Fujisaki to serve as the EC appointed member for the NRO number council. I would like to thank Toshiyuki Hosaka for his contribution to the NRO number council.
We, the Internet registry, are now encountering the very big change for IPv4. That is why the RIRs need to cooperate much more than we have been.
We had RIR board joint meeting in Denver which during the ARIN meeting in Denver. Then we are now EC, are now travelling more than before to have the increased communication with other RIR members. So EC members, APNIC EC members were at the RIPE meeting, LACNIC meeting, we would like to go AfriNIC meeting also but it is not realized yet. And also ICANN meetings in recent months. We had an informal gathering at APNIC 26 also. Current topics of discussion include the consideration of NRO incorporation because the NRO right now is not incorporated but just MoU body.
Also, the IPv4 legacy address space management, which you might be, have a lot of concerns. APNIC survey. The membership survey has been held periodically until now and we are now conducting another APNIC survey and it is very important, again, for the designing the APNIC business for the forthcoming years. I would like to ask you to complete this survey, and it will help us understand what you value in APNIC services and by that, we can improve our business. Thank you very much. This is all from me, and if you have any questions? Right now? OK, then I would like to have, oh! It is different for me.
PAUL WILSON:
I should mention, Akinori has something to mention to announce now that will require audience participation, optionally.
KUO WEI WU:
In Japanese?
AKINORI MAEMURA:
Of course. Not in Japanese, actually. OK, I'm sorry, I have some problems with the this, managing the PowerPoint. We have one additional item, which is regarding the DNSSEC support. Recently, ICANN announced about the DNSSEC support, which is shown in their website. They are now concerned about implementing the DNSSEC in the root zone, it will very significantly increase the security of the domain system of the Internet. This is ICANN's announcement and the report paper is also available at their site. So we would like to - the Executive Council would like to ask you for the support in this action, and we propose the statement of support from the whole APNIC community. The statement of support is just shown here. I read it, "The APNIC community supports ICANN's proposals to sign the root zone, using the DNSSEC framework in a timely manner.
DNSSEC provides a long-term stable mechanisms that can materially improve the stability and security of the Internet, and this is considered to be a critical improvement in the operation of the DNS."
Then I would like to ask you to approve or agree on this statement of support. Bill, do you have comments.
BILL MANNING:
Yes, I do have a comment. I think this is a fine idea, but I think it is a hollow gesture unless APNIC is prepared to show, like RIPE before it, it is willing to sign the resources it already has. Is there plan to have APNIC sign the delegations it has received from the IANA? If there is a plan, then time that plan or reference to that plan to this statement to ICANN has much more credibility. Because that means that APNIC is willing to do it themselves for their resources and they encourage ICANN to do it for their resources.
PAUL WILSON:
Just to clarify, there is a plan and for that matter, although it may not be relevant to mention in this particular statement, there coordination work under way with the other RIRs through the ECG to establish a plan for that across all of the RIRs, Bill. We support this. Signing your own reports and the root needs to be signed. The root needs to be signed whether you get your own resources to sign. The root being signed means everyone can protect themselves. I also agree that APNIC needs to sign the resources it is responsible for and I think these are two parallel things, both of which are necessary but not independent.
AKINORI MAEMURA:
Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your comments. Still, I'm asking you for your support for this statement.
RANDY BUSH:
Yes.
AKINORI MAEMURA:
Thank you very much. To move, coming to the microphone, I would like to ask you a show of hands for support of this statement? OK, show of hands, please. Thank you very much. Anyone disagreeing? No? OK. Thank you very much. This statement will be made by the APNIC community, thank you very much. Hold on
GEOFF HUSTON:
Excuse me, I was just actually going to remind you as secretary of the august body, we had one more slide and it is missing, it is a voting notification for members.
AKINORI MAEMURA:
Thank you. In the program, I missed it, an important slide, the activity to increase compliance to the bylaws, we trying to have our voting system improved. One of this is as shown, for the voting arrangements. Right now, the membership voting is, you know, member, through attending the APNIC member meeting, they can get their voting envelope in the registration desk and take it in the ballot paper to the box, but it is sometimes having some problems, who is the authorized person to cast a vote from the membership? Then we, after the consideration we are now launching the system to, on the MyAPNIC system to confer for members, for members to conifer voting authority to certain individuals. So it is now implementing, now being implemented by the Secretariat and it will be available from the next APNIC meeting which is APNIC 27 in February 2009.
So the details of the procedure, or the how to do this, will be announced through the channel from the APNIC Secretariat, the membership, but please be noted on this movement and never fail to use this to cast your vote in the next APNIC meeting. That is all from me. For you?
PAUL WILSON:
I think one point might be a clarification that this is in reference to formal membership votes, such as EC elections. It is not, it has no bearing on participation in consensus decision-making through the open policy process. Thanks.
AKINORI MAEMURA:
Thank you very much, an important clarification. Thank you very much. Next agenda, we are now having the two MoU signing, the first one is the MOU with the AUSNOG. So, James?
SUNNY:
Good morning, this is a wonderful opportunity for APNIC and AUSNOG and APNIC and NZNOG communities to sign the Memorandum of Understanding to solidify our cooperation and support for the development in this region. Our cooperation takes the form of sponsorship and training and expertise in the events and on the mailing list, our liaison officer, Elly, will sign, it will provide APNIC services and face-to-face consultation with the stakeholders in the conferences. The MoU is an acknowledgement that we will continue to work together and continue to facilitate the development of the Internet in Australia and New Zealand, which we will be signing soon. APNIC is hoping to coordinate the efforts for the Asia Pacific region for developing activities with the relevant bodies. We are hoping to have this Memorandum of Understanding with as many organizations as possible and if anyone is interested, please approach me or German.
*APPLAUSE*
SRINIVAS CHENDI:
I would now like to invite Jonny Martin and Simon Blake, NZNOG members to sign the MOU on behalf of the network operators who are on the mailing list.
AKINORI MAEMURA:
OK, thank you very much. We move to NRO, reports from the RIRs. The first part of this section is from
GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA:
I have a question about the changing bylaws or change in the voting procedure. My question is so from the next APNIC elections you can only vote through MyAPNIC, is that right?
AKINORI MAEMURA:
No, you need to take the process through MyAPNIC to confer authority of the voting to a certain individual, maybe an employee or something.
GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA:
My follow-up question, what person, what percentage of APNIC members have current working MyAPNIC accounts? It seems to me it might be a small percentage of the total APNIC members.
PAUL WILSON:
It is a large percentage, actually. 70% to 80%, or more. It is a substantial percentage, very good question, but
GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA:
70% do or don't have?
SANJAYA:
Have.
GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA:
All of them have corporate addresses? From where I come from, almost everyone I meet don't have an MyAPNIC account.
PAUL WILSON:
We appreciate your attention to that but the records, the ratio is very high. So if...
GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA:
Can we have 100% of all APNIC members are able to do that? It probably removes the participation of those missing, the percentage of the process. It might be something to consider.
PAUL WILSON:
I should point out, and I am fairly confident in saying this, the bylaws, the bylaws are not being changed by this action, it is an action by the EC to ensure we are complying with the bylaws and the bylaws require the, or allow the vesting of the responsibility to chair the meeting to determine whether someone is appropriately authorized. I think, I have to say that a bylaws change would be necessary to insist that in all cases, MyAPNIC is used the EC doesn't have the power to do that so someone who comes to the meeting with appropriate authorization cannot be refused, however, someone who comes without an appropriate authorization or without a MyAPNIC, without the registration of MyAPNIC, the EC has requested the Secretariat to refuse their participation in the ballots. So perhaps that is a good question we should make clear, if you do not have, some reason, access to MyAPNIC, you do need to bring some authorization which will satisfy the chair of the meeting you are the person to receive the ballot papers. Is that clear enough?
GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA:
Is there something with it on the website? It has to be clear to all the members. If the process, like, if you don't have MyAPNIC, what do I do? It must be publicized well in advance.
PAUL WILSON:
Good point.
AKINORI MAEMURA:
Thank you very much.
RAJESH CHHARIA:
For becoming a EC member of APNIC, whether APNIC membership is required for MyAPNIC? A general person can be an EC member of APNIC.
AKINORI MAEMURA:
A person who does not belong to the APNIC member can be elected to the EC or nominated.
RAJESH CHHARIA:
This is my suggestion, why a person who is not an APNIC member cannot be held responsible for anything? A general public coming to the EC is not a member of the APNIC, how he can be responsible?
PAUL WILSON:
It may be relevant to you that only APNIC members can nominate an individual but they can nominate any individual, regardless of the affiliation of that individual and it is then up to the APNIC membership to decide if that individual is qualified and suitable to be elected. But it is, the nomination process itself is restricted to members.
RANDY BUSH:
To speak to that point, I'm not sure about the Australian legal culture but all members of the board of directors of Ford corporations do not have to own Fords.
AKINORI MAEMURA:
OK. Then for the NRO? As you know, for the year 2008, APNIC is doing the Secretariat function for the NRO. And therefore, is the chair of the EC right now.
PAUL WILSON:
We will have a NRO report shortly but now the resource services manager is reporting on the global statistics in the NRO, thanks.
GUANGLIANG PAN:
My name is Guangliang Pan, APNIC Resource Services Manager. I would like to give you an overview of the global allocation status. The first place to look at the global number resource allocation is Internet number resource status report. This report is published on the NRO website and it is updated by RIR resource service managers every quarter. The data in my report today is up to 30 June 2008. First, let's look at IPv4 address allocation. Part of the 256 /8, there is 39 /8s in the IANA pool for further allocations. This is the pool everyone pays attention to and there is a lot of policy discussion on that as well. A number of the policies say when this pool is down to 5, and then each RIR will get one /8. The first circle is the number of allocations received from IANA.
Let's look at the IR allocations to the members. Since 2004 the IPv4 allocations actually skipped growth. Last year, we allocated just above 12 /8s in total, globally. This year for the first half of the year, we also allocated above six /8s. The allocation is similar to last year. Here is showing the total allocations, since 1999. You can see APNIC actually allocated more than other RIRs since 1999. The number is showing a /8 total allocations.
Second, let's look at the AS number assignments. The AS number assignment globally is about 6,000 per year, for so far, this year, we have assigned 4,417 AS numbers this year. It seems to be high in the first half of the year. This is the total number since 1999 for each RIR. APNIC is not very - have many allocations, we normally make 500 assignments per year. Let's look at IPv6 allocations. This graph shows the global view of the total IPv6.
The first is the first - and the first circle is for the global unicast allocation that is used for IANA to give to RIRs for further allocation. And our, actually, there is 512 /12s in that yellow circle, that is the global unicast address. So far, IANA only used 6 of them and one is from the beginning, give to RIRs for their allocation.
And in October 2006, IANA allocated each RIR /12. That is the number showing there. Each RIR received a /12. And so far, I didn't see the signal, go back to IANA for more IPv6 yet so we actually used it only a little of the IPv6 so far globally compared to the total IPv6 addresses. This is the first time it is shown in an APNIC meeting.
Let's move to the RIR allocations. Look at this year's IPv6 allocation, actually, it is amazing. The number has already reached 405 allocations in the first half of the year, compared to the total number last year, the total number in last year was 377. This means we only took six months and already we have allocated more prefixes than last year. And the final slide showing the RIR allocations in different ways. In the left, is showing the total amount of address space allocated by each RIR. You can see APNIC, sorry, that is in the right-hand side here, yes, showing the total amount of the address space. In terms of /32s. There are some large allocations, large IPv6 allocations in RIPE NCC, APNIC, and ARIN. It is showing the amount is quite large.
And in the left-hand side, showing the number of allocations, this means the prefixes as allocated. So it is a little bit different, counting. This gives you an overview of how many prefixes we allocated in the left-hand side and on the right-hand side, showing the total amount of the address space. As I mentioned, this report is on the NRO website. You can look at it. Every three months we update it. If you have any comments, you can approach me or drop me an email to gpan@apnic.net, we are reviewing the signs to see what information we need to show, if you think what information you want and you can tell us and we would like to show the statistics much better. Any questions? Thank you.
AKINORI MAEMURA:
Thank you very much. OK. Next report is from the RIRs and I would like to change the order a bit. I think invite Raul from LACNIC for the RIR reporting. Raul, do you mind?
PAUL WILSON:
Raul, knowing that you are leaving, if you would like to present first? Yes, now, followed by Lillian after Raul and then Ray and Axel.
RAUL ECHEBERRIA:
Thank you, Mr Chair. OK. Good morning, everybody. I have met most of you on these days, most of you already know me. I will let you read it, the CEO of LACNIC. Whoops! It is not my voice. I am not making noise. Whoops! After all this. OK.
The chart is the typical graph I usually share with you. The membership, LACNIC member continues growing. We are now in 834 members. This is us - not only the membership is growing, it is growing also the organization in many ways.
This is the evolution of the staff. It is supposed the first guy there is me. I have not approved that. But it didn't require my approval for publishing these pictures. So currently we are 19 persons in LACNIC, that is very impressive, unimpressive, 17 full-time people and two part times. We will not have plans for more growth this year but I think we will continue growing, hiring a couple of new positions next year.
Also, the incomes are also growing. We plan to finish this year with incomes of about US$2 million. We have changed our fees schedule in the last member assembly last May because we faced the same problems that APNIC faced in the last few years. Being part of the changes in the, in the value of the dollar, unexpected a few years ago. Unexpected for us, some people surely expected that.
So as you can see, the incomes are evolving very positively but we, while we have responsible management of the our assets, the money we collect, you can see also that we have a policy for investing most of the money that we collect, to ensure the organization is in a safe financial position, we try to spend as more money as possible in development.
The vision of LACNIC grows much more beyond the administration of IP addresses. The organization was created in the region for making a difference and for trying to contribute to the development of the Information Society and the Internet in Latin America and the Caribbean. Part of the process we conducted in 2006, we concluded the vision of the organization is to be a leader in the construction and articulation of collaborative efforts for Internet development and stability in the region.
So in alignment with that vision, we have many, many projects. You already know one of our main programs, that is FRIDA programs, similar to the EC program in APNIC. I take advantage of this point to express the best wishes to the success of this program in APNIC. FRIDA has been a very successful program, we have already funded 41 research projects and ICTs. We have received now in the last quarter, the close of 18 August, 110 proposals from 18 countries. In total, we have received more than 450 proposals in the last 4 years. While we have funded only 15% of the projects that we have received, it is important to say that in part we were looking for, it has been achieved. Because if we think that probably, as an average, two researchers work in each proposal, it means that we have around 1,000 researchers in the region. This is very important to create the habit of researching. This is one of the objectives of the program.
LACNIC is very active in the Mayor governmental forums in the region. We have been involved in eLAC-2007, it was the moment the process for approving agreeing an action for developing the Information Society in the region. We performed many activities aligned with the objectives of that action plan, activities that contributed to the achievement of one-third of the total goals of the action plan.
As we were also very, very active in the second phase of these dialogue platforms in the region, that finished last February with the new agreement among the governments, under the name of eLAC-2010, we made many contributions and one of the interesting things is that we had opportunity, we were the only non-governmental organization that appeared in equal footing with all the governments in negotiations and discussions in this process. For us, it is a recognition of the role that LACNIC is playing in the region.
We made many contributions in areas like infrastructure, interconnection costs, IXPs, and of course, IPv6. In fact, we proposed to the governments one goal to be included in the plan that suffered some changes in the discussion but was finally approved. What it is is a call to the governments to promote and adopt themselves IPv6 as a way to impact in the development of the market. Similar resolutions were adopted by CITEL, the commission, Internet American telecommunication commission, that organizations features in which LACNIC participates. Similar resolution was adopted and also LACNIC was involved in the, in pushing that resolution.
Talking about IPv6, our activities are very similar to those that are being developed in APNIC region. As we continue supporting the deployment of IPv6 through training, promotion, and a couple of initiatives that, like the Latin American IPv6 forum and Latin American IPv6 task force.
During 2007, we made presentations and organized meetings about IPv6 in 13 countries, besides that, participated in many for members. There are activities in 10 countries scheduled for this year, you can see the list of countries. There are two more under discussion that probably will be completed before the end of the year. We are promoting a - leading a campaign in Latin America for - that is slogan of the campaign is the region has to be ready for IPv6 by 1 January, 2011. We have an IPv6 portal, I don't know if you can see the URL, but it is portalipv6.lacnic.net.
We have incorporated metrics about the adoption of IPv6 in the region. We hold, we held LACNIC meeting in Brasil, it was a very success, a very nice meeting we had 289 participants from 30 different countries during the LACNIC meetings there were many different activities, some related to the ccTLD, IXP, and also hosted a meeting of ISOC chapters, we organized an interesting panel on IPv4 depletion, it was a very original idea that nobody has done before, or after.
As I said, we have 289 attendees and it is interesting to remark that they represent 159 members. But this high percentage of them, the membership of LACNIC, so if you remember, in last May, it was 802, I think at that point.
So the presentation was very high.
Some policies got consensus and they have already been ratified by the board in its meeting of August. Most important, it has been said before, it was approved and ratified by the board, the government allocation of remaining IPv4 space. We have already interest in policy for the use of the last /12 of LACNIC pool, speaking about IPv4 of course. We have been working very much in the last couple of months, after the annual meeting of LACNIC in the last week of May, we had a regional meeting for the Caribbean meeting in Curacao and we had 70 participants from 17 countries. We created the format of the LACNIC meeting but in a compatible way. We held some discussions about interconnections and IPv6 and of course, our policies.
So we took advantage for making many reports from LACNIC. And last week, or a couple of weeks ago, I don't remember exactly, we organized a very interesting meeting in Monte Video, originally we called all the stakeholders in the region for open consultation in order to facilitate the participation of all stakeholders in LACNIC, allowing the resolution of the last summit, information society, but after that, some people propose the meeting in the second meeting to prepare for IGF. We expected about 40 or 50 persons and we had 102 participants from many countries in the region. Many people, probably one third from governments and one third from private sector and one third from civil society. The most relevant people in the region in this area participated, as we re-created the format of IGF with the sessions, as some conclusions are being issued in the next few days. It will be followed by four days of online discussion about the same issues, hosted by LACNIC in the second week of September.
To finalize, let me advertise our next meeting, it will be held in the last week of May in, sorry, in Panama City, Panama is a very nice country, it has everything, forest, beaches, and the most important, the meeting of LACNIC, so you are very welcome and I hope to meet some of you there, travelling is not very easy. But as it is usual in our community, the meeting will be webcasted as we webcast usually the meetings in three languages, it is also translated, the meeting itself. So it is, that is all, folks.
Thank you. The good thing, making a presentations in APNIC is we get a present.
Thank you very much
AKINORI MAEMURA:
Thank you very much, Raul. OK, next report from the RIR is from AfriNIC. Lillian? Where are you? OK!
LILLIAN SHARPLEY:
Hello, my name is Lillian Sharpley, I'm the Communications Area Manager at AfriNIC. I joined AfriNIC two and a half months ago and I'm here to give you an update on our activities and some statistics on behalf of the CEO of AfriNIC. As I said, I joined two and a half months ago as a part of restructuring of the organization. We have now three key areas: the comms area, where there is three of us; the finance administration; finance and administration area. That is Patrick Deesse who joined AfriNIC last year and he is new to the area manager's position and there is Alain Aina, the technical area manager. We have a total of 11 employees currently at AfriNIC with two open positions. Most of the employees are in the technical area position, being six there.
AfriNIC has been officially in operation for three years and started with only two staff members and now 11. The membership is currently, as of the end of July 31, 470 members, giving us 53 new members for the year 2008. Our operating budget for this year is US$1.5 million. We had one global policy ratified this year. Again, in terms of membership growth, you can see from the beginning of 2005, we had 197 members, and then 470 members now. And that is over 130% increase. We have continuous growth in the IPv allocation as well.
The IPv4 addresses issued, they are somewhat steady, you see quite a spike in October, the last quarter of 2007, but that was for a mobile operator, because for the most part our members are microbusinesses - small, very small businesses. So that was an unusual allocation there.
Training is very important at AfriNIC, we have a goal to conduct training in all of the countries of the continent by the end of 2009. The orange represents countries where we have conducted training already, the green countries that where training is scheduled for this year and then white, yet to be scheduled, I'm sure for next year though.
We, since 2006, we have been focussing on increases awareness of IPv6. We have five training sessions scheduled for the remainder of this year. We are currently working on improving the training tools, including online training, we are organizing a virtual testing lab in Mauritius, where we are located by the way, the tiny dot in the square. We are also working on the training materials. In terms of cooperation, we continue to support our sister organization, such as AfTLD, AfNOG AAU/AfREN. We provided training to the University Network Operators in Cameroon this year and plan to do additional training at the universities before the end of the year.
AfriNIC is part of the 6Deploy consortium, supported by the European Commission, composed of 13 organizations, including LACNIC and Cisco. The objective is to support the IPv6 deployment throughout Europe and developing countries.
Other outreach activities, we had a booth at ITU Africa event, the Cairo event in May 2008. We are organizing a booth at the upcoming ICANN meeting in Cairo of this year, in November 2008. We are organizing a workshop in Dakar in Senegal in October of 2008. We continue to promote the fellowship program, we provided two to attend the meeting at Rabat in May 2008, for students to attend the AfNOG meeting which took place at the same time and also provided a fellowship to an individual to attend IETF in Dublin.
Again, the 6Deploy participation is a benefit for us because we did, like, a joint training event with them in Nairobi, Kenya in June. It proved to be a success because we had positive feedback from surveys and we also get subsequent training requests.
A quick overview of the Rabat meeting - that turned out to be a success with 190 participants representing 45 different countries throughout Africa, representatives from the education industry, the Telecom, governments, and regulators and ISPs. Four policies were presented and discussed and at least two of them have since been withdrawn. At the meeting, there is a review of AfriNIC's three-year strategic plan, which includes the structural reorganization. There were two new board members elected to represent the Indian Ocean and the Central African Ocean.
Finally, AfriNIC9 is scheduled to be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at the Sheraton Hotel, and it will be back to back with our fourth Africa IPv6 day on 22-28 November and I would like all you to attend.
Thank you for your time, and I would like to thank APNIC for the warm welcome here. On behalf of myself and AfriNIC, as well. It has been very informative and enjoyable.
AKINORI MAEMURA:
OK, next report from the RIRs is from ARIN, from Ray Plzak.
PAUL WILSON:
I suggest we also insert Axel Pawlik between Ray and lunch.
RAY PLZAK:
I have to get this out of the way so Axel can get here so everyone can eat. We will gladly do that. Paul, thank you for asking us to be here to make a presentation. It is always really appreciated to be able to update the APNIC community and what we are doing, and what we have been up to. Being passed out right now is a copy of an ARIN report dated August of this year. Normally our custom is to present it in English and the language of the host country, I do realize the other official language of New Zealand is Maori, Kia Ora, however I did not know how many people would be able to read it so I did not have the translation made, however, if someone wants it in Maori, please see me and I'll send you a copy in Maori. It is not a problem for us.
In any event, if you before you go into the pamphlet and describe what is in there, I would like to point out one thing, we are, at our last meeting in Denver we reported on the results of the IPv6 penetration survey we did. The results of which were finalized by CAIDA, we are doing that again and the survey will be launched soon. We have asked the other RIRs to participate with us and they have all agreed to do so. Some time in the near future you may see an announcement from APNIC asking you to participate in the survey. This survey will be completed in time to be presented at the ARIN meeting, coming up in Los Angeles in October and the result will be distributed to the RIRs to distribute it as they see fit.
So, on to what I have passed out to you. You will see it is primarily deals with our outreach activities in things we have been doing eternally to the ARIN organization. You will note that if those of you who are subscribed to the ARIN public policy mailing list, we are having robust discussions as we always do on the mailing list. In addition to the policies identified in the brochure you have, there are additional policies that have been proposed, some of which will not be discussed for consensus but will be discussed for informational purposes because they were submitted too late to be considered for consensus at the meeting.
Also, this time, the ARIN Advisory Council, in order to gain more input into the very robust discussion occurring regarding transfer policy conducted a survey, and the results of that survey have been published. It has to do specifically with the transfer policy. You will see the results of that on the ARIN public policy mailing list as well as the PDF version of the file is available on the ARIN website.
Upcoming ARIN meetings, I can tell you about for sure, the policy meeting. This will be conducted in Nassau, Bahamas on 15 September. I realize it is the hurricane season in the Caribbean but it is always a chance you take when you schedule things in that part of the world at that time of year. The meeting following that will be the ARIN meeting in Los Angeles, held in conjunction with a NANOG. This meeting site was purposely picked by NANOG and ARIN as a place to hold a ceremonial remembrance for Jon Postel, who died 10 years ago this coming October.
In between the two meetings, there will be a bridge session on Wednesday morning which will - has a panel discussion of some old Internet grey beards who are not active in the policy discussions but will discuss what would Jon have done looking at the current crisis that we have, if you will, in regarding IPv4, IPv6. For those that have been around long enough, you remember the discussions some time ago, it would be interesting to hear what the panel has to say on that.
The next meeting we have scheduled for certain is the meeting in April in San Antonio, Texas, it will be a full-scale policy meeting.
Also we are tentatively scheduling, in the early part of 2009, another Caribbean sector meeting, somewhere in the southern regions of the West Indies. You are welcome to all the meetings, they are all public policy meetings, the information gathered will be used by the Advisory Council to work through and determine consensus on our policies.
A couple of the things that may be of interest in this region, one is the policy discussion we are having in the community wireless networks, as you know, and there have been activities in many parts of the world regarding small wireless networks to be accessed by members of the community. ARIN has a policy under discussion currently which would provide for the ability of these networks to gain their IP address space directly from ARIN without having to go to a service provider, which makes them independent of service providers.
One of the newer member of the ARIN staff is Cathy Handley, she has the rather imposing title of Executive Director of Government Affairs and Public Policy. We are working on developing a shorter title for her.
So the last thing I want to point out to you, you can see the numbers of the different outreach activities, a spring outreach recap. And lastly, I would point out we are in the throws of having not only the US national election, which has been very interesting to watch to date but also more importantly to us, we have some up coming ARIN elections as well. With that, I would entertain any questions you may have. Otherwise, Kia Ora, thank you.
AKINORI MAEMURA:
Thank you, Ray, last RIR is Axel Pawlik.
AXIL PAWLIK:
I try to keep it short. I'm the managing director of the RIPE NCC in Amsterdam, we have pretty good weather in Amsterdam, pretty good sunshine and all that. Where do I click? No, it doesn't work.
BILL MANNING:
It is always sunny in Amsterdam.
PAUL WILSON:
Excuse us.
AXEL PAWLIK:
Looking back at this meeting in Germany, it was the biggest attendance with more than 400 people there over the course of the week from 46 countries. That's quite a bit. Of course, we had lovely weather in Berlin, the sun was shining and the sun was coming down and they were on top of the high rise, right in the centre of west Berlin. It was quite nice. The focus of the meeting was basically before depletion, v6, and how do we get there? We had a meeting of the certification task force and I'll talk a little bit about that later on.
Also about the data protection task force wrapped up about how to publish the contents of the RIPE database. We did work on outreach for enhanced co-operation task force and finalise the charter for what will likely become or will become the co-operation working group.
We also had a general meeting with fairly good attendance. Usually we had in the old days, separate meetings with about 14 people coming and maybe 30 votes. So having 200 votes was quite a success. The room was full and we had the financial report for the previous year adopted with about a million euro surplus.
Discharged the board, we re-elected two of the board members, which was great fun because we had seven candidates and our election system procedure goes in a fairly arcane way, so four rounds in the first and in the second round. There were five rounds and people were getting tired and making noises about us doing electronic voting soon. So we are looking into that. However, we had lots of fun. We have two more board members now. That's the old group and the two new guys.
Now we have a remarkable good spread of board members representing regions from our service region. Fahad AlShirawi from Bahrain and Dmitry Burkov from Russia and it's quite a nice mix. Now, these guys are a new mix, so we are seeing some changes in attitudes overall.
We, however, continued to prepare for the future as I presented before for the last two years or so roughly. We are sitting with our board regularly to look at scenarios for the future, what might happen, what might not happen. What to prepare for and what not to prepare for.
Basically, the idea is to ensure a stable RIPE NCC and good services for the members and interesting times that we're in and that we see coming also. We have now identified three areas, three main areas of attention. One is what we used to call the defending and the world of the RIPE NCC, we used to say it is working well and people know what we're doing in general. However, we want to go out to more outreach and do community building at the RIPE meetings of the provisional community and governments and the like.
The second of the three main areas is what we called trusted source of data. We have the numbering registry for our region. It is running fairly well. We want to harden it. We want to build reporting tools, more reporting tools than we have and again, we want to bring them out into the world.
Then, basically, for our core business, the numbers of life cycle management. Basically, we have an allocating addresses or numbers so far. We have done occasionally audits. We have barely done any reclamation. We are now introducing certification. Basically, what we are changing here is the whole life cycle. We give them out, we follow them and we take them back when that is needed.
So, OK, so of course we're doing lots of things that are sometimes not visible outside of the company, but around those three major areas, what keeps us currently busy is certification, support for some of the policies that demand more support than they usually do. Developing information services and outreach in PR which is a fairly good one.
Certification, I won't go into many details here. We have RIPE certification task force, that's a group of our members. About ten dozen people and they have been convening regularly over the last 18 months I think. We are discussing currently processes in certification, what we will do for instance to make sure that we don't suddenly come into difficulty after people don't pay any more, like members. What we will do is announce a limited test run at the RIPE meeting that comes up in October. That is to get some hands-on experience there with the system. And then we plan to deploy fully for 2009.
I mentioned policy support, policy development support, we have one policy that is more complex than we originally expected for 2007-01. Direct Internet resource assignments to end-users from the RIPE NCC. The idea is to get a grip on who is using the LIR space really. The idea is that the guys will close contracts with our members and as a last resort, if that is really necessary also with the RIPE NCC, or as an alternative with the RIPE NCC, so we have to think about whether those guys will be members or not and we decided against them being members. Basically, there's a lot of discussion, and the proposal itself, the policy text is being revised again.
2007-08, enabling the methods of reallocation of the IPv4 resources. That's currently being redrafted and it is complicated and you can follow the discussion.
This slide you have seen before, we have a number of, what you call "information services". TTM and RIS, It is an area that we find very important, not only for our own use and our members' use, but also to tell the world at large more about what we are doing and what the developments are, so that's something that we want to focus on and we have some fairly revolutionary ideas about that as well.
Membership regional outreach, we expect slightly more than 6,000 members by this year. We also go out into the regions and the regions for us mostly is Moscow and the Middle East. Let's say Russia, but we try to go to other places and the Russians tell us, "Go to Moscow, otherwise you won't see many of us". We will go to Russia in September again, there are more than 200 people registered for that meeting.
The MENOG, the Middle East Operator's Group, the network operator's group was supported initially by us and now we have a RIPE meeting that incorporates the fourth MENOG meeting and we do a membership survey and we said that earlier and John Earls asked me about that earlier in the week. And oh, the survey questions have been finalised. The survey itself will be conducted a little bit later this year, but this year, I promise.
Beyond outreach, what we have done that was fairly revolutionary for our thinking earlier on, we hired a PR agency called Racepoint in London and they are quite good. We are doing campaigns with them on IPv6 uptake or the slow uptake there. What is happening with the longer ASN numbers. We do press released and sustained briefings with analysts and on the phone and face-to-face and stuff like that.
Then the support for events, OECD was mentioned earlier on and ITU and they know the industry and what we are about currently, and it is a little extra effort that they can support those events also.
And we also use them to look at information services and do some thinking together with how we can get the services out there and use more as an auto developer. Very interesting.
Governments and enhanced co-operation. I mentioned the enhanced co-operation task force at RIPE. That has closed down and there was a decision to establish a co-operation working group for October. We have secured chairmanship there from people close to governments. So, I think that's a very, very interesting focus there. External relations, as I said, governments, we do the next RIPE NCC round table for governments and regulators at the end of September in Amsterdam. That must be the fourth, I think. And we will have quite some attendance there from law enforcement agencies also who find this area increasingly interesting.
Of course, we go to Hyderabad at the end of the year for the IGF. Obviously, you're all invited to come to Dubai. It will be sunny and it might be dusty, I don't know, very warm probably. We have tried to make it not hellishly expensive, and so the first opinion one hears is, oh, it is so expensive. We have secured good prices for the hotel and there are also cheap hotels around. You're welcome. After that, we decided to come back to Amsterdam. You might remember that we didn't want to go to Amsterdam because the usual venue was being refurbished. That hasn't even started yet so we started to go. If they start refurbishing that week, I think we own the hotel. We have tight contracts there! So I hope to see you there. Thank you.
*APPLAUSE*
AKINORI MAEMURA:
Thank you very much. And now we come to the end of the morning session and we can go to lunch. And then please come back here at 2pm. Thank you.
PAUL WILSON:
And a reminder, I've just been reminded to issue a reminder about voting. You should please have your ballot papers deposited by 2pm at the latest in the ballot box outside. Thank you.
(End of session)
APNIC Member Meeting Session 3
1400-1530
PHILIP SMITH:
Hello, thank you everyone for coming back properly and on time. Just a final reminder of the ballot box is closing any minute now. Thank you.
AKINORI MAEMURA:
Welcome everyone and welcome to the meeting in the afternoon for the Hanoi people and the Manila people.
We are now resuming to the APNIC member meeting and we're starting with the NRO NC report from Hyun-Joon Kwon.
HYUN-JOON KWON:
Good afternoon everyone. We are actually global, our job is developing policy and we have 15 members and three are from each region. As you heard in the morning session, you know, each region has three members and two are elected at large and one is appointed by the RIR Board. Normally when we have a meeting in teleconference and face-to-face meeting, we have 15 members and the RIR and ICANN observers.
The terms, regarding terms, you know. Two elected have two years top. And then the one is appointed by the IANA Board, has a one-year term.
Our responsibility is to advise the ICANN Board and also we select the ICANN Board members. There are 15 ICANN Board members so two are from NROs. Also, we select nomination committee members for ICANN, so also, our meeting schedule is normally, we have a teleconference monthly, and also, we have annually we have, sometimes we have one face-to-face meeting if it is necessary. And yet, last year, we had one face-to-face meeting in Los Angeles. I told you before, that we have 15 members. You see that the RIRs select three members for us so we have 15 members on this slide.
This is the main part. Of a APNIC 25, we had a teleconference in March, April, June, July, and August, so a teleconference five times. And also, the main job is developing global policies, so this time, we finalized the ASN global policy. At the time of June 13, we submitted the policy proposal to ICANN board for ratification, and also we sent advice to the ICANN board, and July 31, the final ICANN Board ratified the policy unanimously. So the policy is really ready for implementation, so as soon as you request the ASN. And then according to this policy, ICANN is ready to implement this policy. Also, this year, we appointed Hartmut Glaser for 2009 ICANN Nom Com.
And also discussing the global policies which was discussed yesterday and the global policy for the allocation of the remaining IPv4 address spaces. So, these are the main parts of our activities.
In the next six months, there are some events. As you know, there is the ICANN meeting in Cairo in November. And also, we are standing by for the global policy proposals so we're continuing to work on global, common global policy proposal templates. OK, that's it. Any questions on this?
All right, thank you.
*APPLAUSE*
AKINORI MAEMURA:
Next part is the report from IANA.
PAUL WILSON:
Leo having volunteered for counting votes will be back to do that report when the results are in.
AKINORI MAEMURA:
OK, Paul Wilson will make a report from the NRO.
PAUL WILSON:
As you may know, the office holder positions of the NRO Executive Council are rotating each year, and I've been the chair during 2008, so it is my duty to report on activities at the NRO. What is the NRO, it is the Number Research Organization which is the formal vehicle for co-operation among the RIRs and for collective representation of the RIRs. It is not yet a legally constituted body, but that is still a topic of ongoing conversation because it is still a possibility in the future that would be incorporated. So the NRO in its current form was formed for the purposes of protecting the unallocated number resource pool, for promoting and protecting the policy process and acting as a focal point for Internet community input into the RIR system and it was established just by MOU and not yes, but for October 2004.
AfriNIC is the Secretariat so they have quite a few responsibilities this year in supporting NRO responsibilities. The Treasurer is Axel from RIPE NCC. And the rotation coming up in 2009, unless I've got this wrong is that the chair will be Adiel and the Secretary will be Axel and the Treasurer will be Raul.
The NRO has got a number of expenses which are which are regarded as collectible shared expenses. One of them being for the contribution in support of ICANN, and that's a voluntary contribution that we make as confirmed in an exchange of letters that we completed with ICANN at the end of last year. The total of the ICANN contribution for instance is $823,000 per year. That's to be re-negotiated annually, and according to the weighted formula of expenses distribution, APNIC is responsible for 26.5% of that, or $218,500 US in the current ICANN financial year, and on the screen here that the other RIRs have got different percentage responsibilities for total NRO shared expenses and that's calculated according to a weighted formula which relies on revenue in the previous years and the resources allocated in the previous year.
ICANN had its last meeting, the Paris meeting this year and during that meeting, the NRO had quite a few activities. A formal consultation with the GAC which is now a regular event with the GAC, the GAC being the Government Advisory Committee and what that indicates clearly is that that committee has got increasing interest in IPv4 and IPv6. So addressing matters. And they're registered to talk to representatives of the RIR community about that.
The interest in these matters is relentlessly extending so the NRO was invited to present at a workshop of the at-large advisory committee of IPv6 transition. And in case you don't know, that committee is concerned with the at-large structures which are really the structures within ICANN which are intended to represent and capture the interests of the end-users of the Internet, so we're seeing people starting to become concerned with the implication of the end-user and implementations. IPv6 doesn't give anything immediately new for the end-users so the end users are finding it hard to find reasons to know about IPv6 at all, let alone demand it, and I suppose that was the type of subject matter at that workshop.
There was a workshop on IPv6 for registries and registrars as well which had RIR participation and a workshop or a presentation in the ccTLD member's meeting. So, that was quite a busy meeting for the NRO people and RIR staff who were there and we've got more of the same coming up with the ICANN Cairo meeting in November this year and in the meeting in Mexico City in March of next year.
The OECD meetings, something I mentioned earlier. It was the ministerial meeting on the future of the Internet economy, and at the NRO level, we co-operated with the Internet technical community which was co-signed by numerous groups including ISOC, NRO, W3C, ETSI, 3GPP, IETF, and others. That was written in with support of the users to connect, community indicate and innovate and share and choose and it is a fairly lengthily communiquŽ that addresses the themes of the meeting that were about creativity and convergence, so if you would like to see the convent of the communiquŽ, it is on the website coming shortly. And we also made our own press release in connection with the OECD which was an appeal for investment in IPv6 amongst those who were attending that meeting.
The IGF is also something the NRO is participating in. We have two members of the Executive Council, the two CEOs of RIRs who have been reappointed to the IGF multi-stakeholder advisory group this year. Those are Raul from LACNIC who we heard from earlier and Adiel from AfriNIC. They are not participating in the MAG on behalf of the NRO, they are appointed as individuals in their own right, but the two of them have been re-appointed this year after service last year, if I recall correctly, Raul was serving prior to that or at least he has been a member of the working group on Internet governance and other structures so it really represents an ongoing and very deep and clearly successful involvement in these processes by the various members of the RIR communities which is a pay off for quite some substantial investment, but all the RIRs have been making mostly in terms of staff energy and time.
But over quite a few years now. So the next meeting of the IGF will be in Hyderabad in early December this year. The NRO is going to have a display and various material s available and the workshops for that meeting, the planning for the workshops is still under way but we'll be continuing to be involved in the planning and hopefully have quite a prominent rol