Internet Governance Forum

ICANN Meetings in San Juan, Peurto Rico

Real-time transcription of the session on IGF.

ICANN San Juan, Puerto Rico

Internet Governance Workshop

28 June 2007

>>THERESA SWINEHART:  For those of you stay for the Internet governance session, stay and sit down.

I need the following participants.  Markus, Jacqueline, Chris, Mr. Hansem, I need all of you up on the podium, please.

>>THERESA SWINEHART:  Okay.  If everybody can be seated, and those who want to continue their conversations, go out into the hallways.

We're going to be running a very short one-hour session, or perhaps a little bit shorter, on Internet governance and ICANN's role in relation to critical Internet resources.

I'd like to thank very much the panelists who have been willing to commit their time and their schedules to participate in this event.

We should use this as an opportunity to have some really good conversation and thoughts, and whatever else we can fit into the short time frame in preparation to leading up to the IGF meeting in Rio.

And I'd like to thank Markus Kummer, in particular, for his willingness to be the moderator and to start off the session.

So we will now get started.

Thanks.

>>MARKUS KUMMER:  Thank you, Theresa.  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

I'm very pleased to be given this opportunity to have this workshop.

Sorry, I do apologize.  Yes, you can hear me now.

I am very pleased to have this opportunity to have this workshop on the Internet governance forum, it comes in very timely as we move into the phase of substantive planning.

Let me start by introducing the panelists.

We have a truly multistakeholder panel, as befits a multistakeholder Internet Governance Forum.

From my left, we have Jacqueline Morris, the ALAC chair, representing civil society, giving us a civil society perspective.

Next to her, Raul Echeberria, the CEO of LACNIC representing the RIRs.

On my left, Chris Disspain, the chairman of the ccNSO.

Next to me is Vint Cerf, representing ICANN.  And next to him, to my right, is Jose Vitor Hansem giving a government perspective on behalf of our host country, Brazil.

Let me start by giving a brief overview on the state of preparations and where we are.

After the successful  inaugural meeting in Athens, there was a broad consensus that we should build on Athens without slavishly repeating the form L.A.

So we are going to have an Athens-plus in Rio.

We will repeat the four Athens main themes:  That is, access, diversity, openness, and security.

And there will be a new theme, critical Internet resources, which will be the main focus of today's sessions.

In addition to the main sessions, we will have workshops again, as we had in Athens.  And I know the deadline we set is a short one.  It's the 30th of June, and maybe at the end we can also talk a little bit about the workshop, as I know within the ICANN community there are various initiatives to submit proposals for workshop.  And I think this is a very positive signal.

And we also propose as a new element best practices forums that would allow to present best practices at the national level.  From the government side, what was the Internet policy they used to deploy and develop Internet in a country or what were best practices related to a given theme.  We will see what proposals will come in and, last but not least, we will also provide a platform to all major institutions dealing with Internet governance-related issues to present themselves, to have an open forum, and to engage in a dialogue with the community present at the IGF.

But let's turn now to the main theme of today's session, critical Internet governance, critical Internet resources.

We had a meeting in Geneva back in May, and there was a broad agreement that this issue should be put on the agenda of the Rio de Janeiro meeting.

However, it was not clear, actually, what we meant by critical Internet resources.  And looking up the various text from the Working Group on Internet Governance to the Tunis Agenda, there is no clear definition of critical Internet resources.  However, the text used points toward a definition that is broader than just naming and addressing.

So -- And we also -- while we agreed that we should have the discussion on this issue, we could not actually -- the discussion, we did not have enough time to develop a format on how to deal with it, what should be the point of entry, and how we should deal with it.

So this session here is a very welcome input into that discussion on how to deal with this theme.  And without much further ado, I would like to ask Vint to give us his thoughts on what are critical Internet resources.

Thank you.

>>VINT CERF:  Thank you very much, Markus, and good afternoon, everyone.

I'd like to start out by suggesting a possible term that would help cast Internet and its infrastructure into a somewhat different perspective than usual.

I'm going to use the word ecosystem.  And I'd like to suggest to you that the Internet is really a kind of economy and ecology made up of an extraordinary number of different parts.

If we think of Internet only as the telecommunications links -- the routers, the companies that run the networks that make up the Internet -- we are overly constraining an understanding of what it is that makes the Internet function.

Plainly, the other parts of the system -- the hosts, the web servers, the e-mail systems, the companies that run those services -- are part of that ecosystem.

The domain name system and the various components of it, including the root servers and all the others who run different layers in the domain name system, are part of that ecosystem.

But I want to depart from just the physical resources of the Internet say that this ecosystem is much broader than that.

You could also include the legal framework, and perhaps regulatory framework, in which the Internet operates.

It's clearly global in scope.  Pieces of it operate in different jurisdictions under different possible legal and business frameworks.  Of course the only reason it all works is because it's technologically intended to be compatible and interoperable.  But that draws on yet another part of the ecosystem, the standards-making component of Internet.  The Internet Engineering Task Force being a primary element, but there are others as well.  The IEEE and the ITU have roles to play in different layers in the structure.

That's not the only part of the ecosystem.  ICANN is a part of it as well.  Its processes contribute to the stability of the Internet and its continued evolution.

I don't want to take up too much time because there are so many other people on the panel, but I would like to say that during the meetings that come up in Rio in November, if I am permitted to intervene, I will emphasize the scope and diverse nature of the elements in that Internet ecosystem, all of this need to function successfully in order for the Internet to work.

The last element of the ecosystem I'll mention is people.

The users, the people who make the various parts of the Internet work.  The participants in the ICANN process, the members of the board, the companies and the people who run them, who operate parts of this ecosystem, are also absolutely critical resources.

One is tempted to say that without each one of those different resources, the Internet with neither be what it is now nor would it necessarily survive.

It takes a collaborative effort in many dimensions for the Internet to work.

And I hope that the participants in the IGF will understand that an overly narrow definition of the Internet and its critical resources can only lead to policy which is inapplicable and doesn't necessarily assure that the Internet will persist.

Thank you very much.

>>MARKUS KUMMER:  Thank you very much, Vint, for your thoughts.  And let's now turn to Jose Vitor Hansem.

Vitor could you explain a bit.  Brazil was one of the countries who wanted to have critical Internet resources on the agenda.  Can you share your thoughts with us?  Thank you.

>>VITOR HANSEM:  Yes, thank you, I can share my thoughts on this with you --

Let me start by thanking ICANN for the invitation to participate on this panel, to thank the sponsors of this event here, in particular dot PR, for this well-organized ICANN meeting we had here in Puerto Rico and for the splendid organization.

I would like to say to begin with that Brazil -- Brazil's offer to host the second IGF in Rio between 12 to 15 November 2007 was a joint initiative by the Ministry of External Relations and by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee itself that -- a multistakeholder institution which is in of charge Internet governance in Brazil and which deals with a wider range of scope, range of issues, wider range of issues than only management of critical Internet resources at a national level.

On the behalf of the government of Brazil, as the event host, I would like to present our view on the IGF, the IGF and WSIS achievement, since we understand the IGF is part of the WSIS processes -- process.

And mention that these same views were presented by both the government of Argentina and Brazil during the preparatory meeting we had for the IGF recently in Geneva.  And had been presented as well during our ICANN Lisbon meeting.

Well, first, we have to understand that the Internet has evolved, thanks to the efforts of most people here, into a global facility available to the public and its governments to constitute a core issue of the information society agenda.

Second point is that the international management of the Internet should be multilateral, transparent, and democratic with the full involvement of governments, the private sector, civil society, and international organizations.

Third, Internet governance is an essentially element that's people-centered, inclusive, and development oriented, nondiscriminatory information society.

Fourth, states have rights and responsibilities for international Internet related public policy issues.

And fifth point, all governments should have an equal role and responsibility for international Internet governance and for ensuring stability, security, continuity and evolution of the Internet.

With regard to the IGF, the government of Brazil considers it essential that the mandates established by the Tunis Agenda regarding participation, scope, thematic, agenda, and possible outcomes -- possible outcomes expected from the IGF be fully observed.

No subjects that may be relevant to Internet governance should be a priori be excluded from the agenda.

We also understand that the IGF is a process that has just started in Athens, and we do not expect that the second meeting, it will be able to deliver the mandate in its entirety.  But we believe that we need to move forward and we expect that until its last meeting, all the expectations that the international community has formulated with regard to the IGF aren't met.  One of the other aspects that I think is important to observe with regard to first the IGF, is that the participation of representatives from the developing world was very limited.  Only 5% of the participants came from, particularly, Latin America and the Caribbean.  So I think, since we are fortunately in a country from this region, it's important to emphasize the need of stronger participation of the representatives of all stakeholder groups from this region and the IGF in Rio.

And we think that the fact that the event is going to happen in Rio will help attendance from participants from the region and from developing countries.

In this regard, I would lake to recall that the mandate for the forum calls for balanced regional representation.

This is on paragraph 78 of the Tunis Agenda.

And in the sense, we support the creation of a mechanism to be -- that is able to be able to revert the problem of underrepresentation of the developing world, established again by paragraph 78 of the Tunis Agenda.

The secretary-general -- this is, again, a provision by the Tunis Agenda -- should take balanced regional representation into account in the convening of the IGF.

We understand also that a balanced regional representation is essential for the legitimacy of possible recommendations of the IGF.

Now, in line, in answering the question with which Mr. Kummer introduced my speech, we agree that Internet governance encompasses a wide range of issues or is -- perhaps we could adopt Vinton Cerf's definition of an ecosystem or economic system or something in its shape.  And this wide range of issues include but is not limited to the management of critical resources.  And of course, there is no -- there is no possibility to say what -- to be of an exhaustive list of what critical resources are.

In this regard, Tunis Agenda, paragraph 72, provides that the idea shall, inter alia, debate issues regarding the management of critical Internet resources, while paragraph 72b asks the IGF to facilitate discourse between bodies dealing with different cross-cutting international public policies regarding the Internet and discuss issues that do not fit within the scope of any existing body.

So I think we share this view that Internet governance is a very complex field with diversity of issues, and some of which we cannot entirely bridge.

In this context, Brazil, as the host country of the second IGF, invites ICANN to participate in the discussions and topical issues related to critical Internet resources as well as to participate in discussions on any other issue that might interest or cross-cutting issues that involve management of Internet critical resources.

We think the ICANN President's Strategy Committee report could be a good starting point for such discussions internally in ICANN.

I would also like to mention that we invite the international telecommunications union to present its views on the management of critical resources and resolution 102 -- ITU resolution 102 as a reference document.  That's what we understand.

The Brazilian government considers that the inclusion of a main session on Internet critical resources in the second IGF program will offer an excellent opportunity for ICANN to report to the international community to its role and activities -- on its role and activities, as well as on its WSIS follow-up process, in line with Tunis Agenda paragraph 70 on enhanced cooperation for Internet governance.  We think as well that the IGF provides a valuable outreach opportunity for ICANN since the event is expected to attract an estimated 2000 or 2500 participants.

Finally, I would like to invite you all to go to Rio and actively participate in the event.  It's convenient to highlight that the IGF program will dedicate space for the for the presentation of workshops and critical Internet resources as well as other issues.  And those workshops can be proposed and organized by participants from all stakeholder groups.  And we would like to invite all ICANN constituencies and members to present their proposals to the IGF Secretariat, here represented by Mr. Kummer.  And to conclude, I am glad to announce here that the Internet Governance Forum, which is the constituency I belong to, is considering to present a open forum on its activities and roles.

So I am longing to see you all in Rio.

Thank you.

>>MARKUS KUMMER:  Thank you, Vitor, for giving us your host country perspective.  I think that was very helpful.

And I now turn to Chris Disspain, giving us his perspective, please.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  Thank you.  Thank you, Markus.

I wanted to talk very briefly about one aspect, about security, an aspect that is very relevant to the ccTLD community.

Security was a main theme in Athens, and it's a main theme again in Rio.

But security also sits underneath critical Internet resources, because the security of those resources is obviously very important.

Historically, from the ccTLD perspective, a lot of the management of our infrastructure has been carried out on a volunteer basis.  ccTLDs provide each other with secondary servers, that sort of thing.

Movement over the last few years, of course, has been to see that slowly phase out as ccTLDs realize they have to take responsibility for their own infrastructure.  And the cooperation is key.

Security is also an area where, even if you're in a territory where the government takes a hands-off approach in respects to the management of the ccTLDs, security is an area in which the government obviously is concerned and interested.  And it's often security aspects that are the first to lead to discussions and cooperation between a government and a ccTLD manager.

But it's critically important to remember that security is also important from the point of view of the end user.

Most attacks come from -- are on the end user side, not on the top end, the ccTLD, side.

And the IGF is an ideal forum to provide education and information to business and to individuals about the sorts of things that they should be doing in respects to security, both for their own individual computers on the Internet, but also, of course, for business structures, such as banks and other institutions that now rely to a huge extent on the Internet.

So I'm very hopeful that we'll have some important and wide-ranging discussions in Rio on security and that we will be able to provide information to people to help keep the infrastructure and the resources secure.

>>MARKUS KUMMER:  Thank you, Chris.  And with the indulgence of the other panelists, I would like to follow up with him and ask a very simple question.

How would you then delineate the discussions on critical Internet resources and the main session devoted to security?  Which session would be dealing with what?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  Well, I think that critical Internet resources is such a wide area and it covers so many different things.  There's a tendency for people, I think, to assume that when you talk about critical Internet resources, you're basically talking about names and numbering, and that's it.  But you're not.  You're talking about a whole heap of stuff.

And I suppose my straightforward answer to your question, Markus, is that given that we actually have a theme on security, what I would like to see is -- in Rio is using the critical Internet resources session to get really clear what we mean when we talk about critical Internet resources, to get really clear who is responsible for what, and then perhaps at the next IGF, feed down the -- into the other themes, where it is of relevance to critical Internet resources, so security, but it's also relevant to access, it's also relevant to -- perhaps not quite so much diversity, but it's certainly relevant to access.  That's how I would see it working.

>>MARKUS KUMMER:  Okay.  Thank you very much for your explanation.

Next on your list is Raul.  Please, Raul.

>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA:  Okay.  Thank you, Markus.

I would like to thank everybody that is here in the room, because I know that we are competing with the lunch.  So we are at a disadvantage with other alternatives for the people who are here.

I was asked to talk about IPv4 and consumption and transition to IPv6 in the context of the IGF.  So, really, for those who have attended our presentations in the GAC and the NRO, ASO report this morning, probably there are not too many things new.  But I'm obligated to repeat some of the information that has been already presented.

As most of you probably know, the central pool of IPv4 addresses is becoming smaller all the time.  If we can anticipate, probably also an increasing of the consumption of IPv4 in the next few years, since Internet conditions growing around the world.

Currently, only 19% of the total IPv4 addresses are still available in the central pool.

Some predictions made by different scientists, the most known probably is Geoff Huston from Australia, indicate that the IPv4 central pool will be absolutely depleted for 2010, 2011 sometime, and probably the stock of IPv4 addresses being administered by the RIRs in each region will be finished in one more year.

Some -- when we say that, many people ask us to indicate a more precise date on which all IPv4 addresses will be extinguished.  We always say the same:  It is impossible to say that.  The predictions are only predictions.

At the same time, probably in the new policies will be developed, I cannot anticipate which policies will be developed, because they are developed in a bottom-up fashion, but some people could think that more conservative policies could be adopted in the next few years.

So probably the life of IPv4 could be standing for a short time.

Other people think that the best thing that could happen is to consume all IPv4 addresses as soon as possible.  So probably they will propose policies in the opposite direction.

So it is impossible to say now what will happen a few years.  The only thing that we know is that the IPv4 addresses are becoming -- the pool is becoming shorter.

And so the reality says that this is the moment for adoption of IPv6 as the solution to this problem.  It doesn't matter if the IPv4 addresses will be extinguished in 2012 or 2013; it's almost the same problem, with very few months of difference.

Yes, of course, in LACNIC, for example, we have mentioned a date, but not a date for indicating that in that date there will not be more IPv4 addresses.  What we are saying is we are proposing to the region is a date as a goal for the adoption of IPv6.  And we are indicating the date of the beginning of 2011 as the -- for having all the networks in the region working in a compatible way with IPv6.

Everybody has a role in this for achieving those objectives.  The technical community has to work, continue working, for providing solutions to some aspects that need some adjustment yet.  The private sector will be those who will lead the adoption of IPv6 through investments.  The public sector has to offer some facilitating environments for the adoption of IPv6, probably also a stimulated option through regulatory or economic measures.  And also coordinating with industry.

The most important, as has been said this morning by reports, I guess, is not only to have the networks working in a compatible way with IPv6, but the most important is that all the applications could be accessible from IPv6 networks.  Sometimes, the people that want to deploy big networks will have to deploy the networks on IPv6, because there will not be big contiguous blocks of IPv4 addresses.  So they will have to set up IPv6 networks.  So there will be -- at some moment, there will be users only running IPv6.  So one of the things that we have to promote is that everybody take measures for making their applications available for IPv6 users.

Due to the fact that IGF is a place in which all the stakeholders participate, it's a good place for disseminating this information, for locating people, also for offering all the information in order that each existing stakeholder could decide or could realize what is the role that they have to play for achieving the objective of the role of IPv6 adoption in time.  I liked it when Vint Cerf said this morning that the deadline for adopting IPv6 is before IPv4 exhaustion.  But this is very nice.

Personally, I have -- I always agree with inclusion of Internet resources as one of the topics for the main sessions in IGF.  So I'm very comfortable with this situation.

As I said before, since IGF is the place in which every stakeholder participates, it's the right place for discussing that, for allowing each stakeholder what is the role they have to play in that.

The NRO, the Number Resource Organization, has been involved since the beginning in this process.  And since 2003, when this issue of Internet governance became a central point in the discussion in the summit process and in the working group on Internet governance later, as we have supported the IGF function in supporting this and participating actively in every discussion.  We will continue this support -- supporting this initiative, because we think that we have created a very good thing.  It's a very good experience, very innovative experience in which every stakeholder can have a very productive dialogue, can be engaged in a very productive dialogue without the pressure of making recommendations, basically, on agreed, negotiated outcomes.  This is the main difference of IGF in relation with other processes like the summit itself.  And this is because we think that this is a very productive initiative, and we will be in Rio de Janeiro for contributing to the discussion on this topic, but also in other topics that are of the interest of the community.

>>MARKUS KUMMER:  Thank you, Raul, very much for your -- also for your supportive attitude towards the IGF.

I think everybody will agree that the issues you highlighted, transition of IPv4 to IPv6, are important issues related to critical Internet resources, and building on what Chris has suggested, having a first session showing a bit the landscape of who is responsible for what, I could imagine that the RIRs sit up on a panel, one of you, and highlight the problem, and then it will be deepened in one or more of the workshops.

And I know some workshops are on the way.

You would like to react, please.

>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA:  I would like to add a personal comment.  It's very short.

The people that spoke before me mentioned that one of the things is to look at what are the Internet critical resources.

It is very interesting, one week ago or two weeks ago, somewhere a cable was broken in Central America between Nicaragua and Honduras.  This is one of the cables that connects most of the Pacific Ocean countries in South America with central American countries, with the United States.  So millions of users were affected by that.

And this -- I have heard that it will take a couple of months to solve the problem.  So when we think about what are the critical resources, we -- I think that it's more exciting, the discussion of DNS and everything, but we don't have to forget also that cables are also a critical resource.  Because if -- as one friend of mine said yesterday, if we know to where we can -- we want to go, but we don't have the way for going to that, then this is really a big problem.

>>MARKUS KUMMER:  Thank you for this.

And you also pointed out the strength of the IGF.  And I think very much the multistakeholder approach is the core of the strength.

And we have Jacqueline here to give us a multistakeholder, civil society perspective.

How would you frame this particular issue, Jacqueline?  Or anything you would like to add, please.

>>JACQUELINE MORRIS:  Yeah, thank you.

Actually, first, I wanted to say about what Raul said about the Pacific line, we have one very recently with -- off Guyana and Suriname, and that took down not just the Internet, but also a lot of the international phone lines.  And some of the guys from Guyana can tell about you the stress they went through even to get basic e-mail via dialup over their cell phone and all sorts of things.  It really destroys -- that's a really, really serious, critical Internet resource.

Anyway, with regard to the civil society position, I sat down and started looking at the mandate for the IGF, and realized that with regard to at-large, what we've done is that we are working really hard to put the multistakeholder structure within ICANN.  We endorse, of course, the multistakeholder framework of the IGF.  And ICANN itself finally today, a few minutes ago, has reached a new milestone with regards to its multistakeholder behavior with the end of the interim ALAC, which had appointed members by the board, and the formalization of the structure with elected members.  We hope that this will give us full or close to full participation of individual users and mechanisms for a dialogue with and advice from the individual Internet users.

The road is a rough and difficult one.  There's a lot of work we have to do to be able to get that advice and get that dialogue going.  But one of the things that we've noticed while we were getting when we were starting that is that ICANN's remit is a very, very narrow technical one.

The groups that we have as our members, the ALSs, the NGOs, the multistakeholder groups that are effective in their regions, have much, much broader issues that they want to deal with.  And it's sometimes very difficult to tell them, yeah, it's a really, really important issue, but you can't bring that up here, because ICANN doesn't have anything to do with it.

And so one of the things that we really like about the IGF, and one of the things that I think we need to work more with the IGF in, is the fact that the IGF is, in its mandate, the space for things that can't fit in ICANN and can't fit in IETF.  And things that work across all of these places.  Because it's s

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