[cooperation-wg] Draft minutes from wg meeting last week

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   Patrik & Maria

RIPE 60 Cooperation Working Group Minutes
Wednesday, 5 May, 14:00-15:30
Prague, Czech Republic

A. Administrative Matters
Co-Chair Patrik Fältström passed on the apologies of Co-Chair Maria Häll, and introduced the agenda, including the addition of a presentation from Constanze Bürger of the German government in the A.O.B. section of the agenda.

B. Review/Outcome of RIPE NCC Roundtable Meeting - Feb 2010
Paul Rendek, RIPE NCC
Paul Rendek discussed the recent RIPE NCC Roundtable meeting in Amsterdam, which included 38 participants from 12 countries. Industry partners and governments presented at the meeting for the first time, including the European Commission (EC), the German government and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). IPv6 was not included as a specific agenda item, with the discussion focused on the RIPE NCC's role in Internet governance. These Roundtable meetings will continue in Amsterdam, but will also expand to region-specific events in the Middle East.

Paul also outlined the range of outreach activities undertaken by the RIPE NCC over the past six months. He noted the statement issued by the NRO on the continuation of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), issued at the IGF 2009 and delivered to the UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Sha Zukang. He noted some of the preparations underway for NRO participation in the IGF 2010.

There were no questions.

C. IGF 2010 (Vilnius, Lithuania) - What can we expect / How are the themes shaping up
Patrik Fältström, Cooperation WG Co-Chair
Patrik Fältström noted the preparations underway for the IGF 2010, emphasising that most details remain to be finalised and outlining the schedule for preparatory meetings over the coming months. He noted that there is a parallel process going on that will produce a statement to be delivered to the UN General Assembly on the future of the IGF. The decision on the IGF's future will be taken in the second half of 2010.

He noted that while there are approximately 100 workshop proposals for the IGF 2010 event, there will be only 50 workshops in the final schedule. Proposals will be evaluated on their uniqueness, on the number of organising parties, on whether they are simply reporting back from completed projects. The evaluation process will begin at the preparatory meeting scheduled for 11 May in Geneva.

Patrik noted that there are two new main themes that have been added to the IGF mandate: Internet Governance For Development (IG4D) and cloud computing. He also outlined some of the various sub-themes.

He concluded with a report on the IGF 2009, including the messages delivered to the IGF from the European Union (EU), including the recommendation to extend the IGF for another five years.

There were no questions.

D. ITU IPv6 Group Report, What's Next
Roland Perry, RIPE NCC
Roland Perry gave an introduction to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and their current activities in relation to the Internet address management system. The ITU has been interested in IP addressing for a while now, but especially in its most recent four-year cycle (which ends in October 2010). He outlined the history of the ITU's interest in IP addressing, which resulted most recently in the formation of the IPv6 Group that met for the first time in March 2010.

The report from the meeting was submitted two weeks ago, and the Council has said that for future meetings, the Chairman and Directors of ITU-T and ITU-D should decide who qualify as "relevant experts" (what this means is still unclear). He noted that the RIPE NCC has recently become a Sector Member of both the ITU-T and ITU-D, and will be attending future meetings of the IPv6 Group as such.

The IPv6 Group meeting also established two Correspondence Groups (or mailing lists), looking at raising IPv6 awareness and discussing problems with the current system. The final reports from these Correspondence Groups will be created in August, so there is work for the RIPE NCC to do in the coming months to influence these reports.

Richard Barnes asked for some clarification on the Correspondence Groups and who was invited to participate. Roland noted that it is all Member States (and their representatives), all Sector Members, and invited experts from the first meeting. It may not include experts who wish to be involved in future meetings of the IPv6 Group.

Jim Reid asked if the archives of the Correspondence Groups would be public. Roland replied that they would not, and noted that the Correspondence Groups have so far been very quiet.

Paul Rendek noted that certain countries, including the Czech Republic and Egypt, provided some very good input into the first meeting of the IPv6 Group, supporting the existing address management system. He also noted the input of Jane Coffin of the US, Cisco, Juniper and the Internet Society. Roland noted that there has been a lot of informal correspondence since the end of the meeting regarding the report and its contents.

John Curran asked why the results of the meeting and the contents of the report should be important to the RIPE community. Roland noted that the meeting was successful in that the issues of "how would a Country Internet Registry (CIR) work?" were put to one side, while the issue of whether there are in fact problems with the current system was moved to the center of the discussion. The plan being put forward by ITU proponents is to reserve significant blocks of IPv6, which will then be distributed to developing countries (CIRs) by the ITU.

Rob Blokzijl noted that the ITU document regarding the global telephone number system refers to a telephone numbering system similar to A, B and C class blocks in the IP addressing context, and commented that if the Internet community has made mistakes in the past, so too has the ITU. Roland noted that there is also a possibility that the ITU has underestimated the work involved in being an Internet registry.

Fahad AlShiwari noted other arguments being made in the ITU discussion, referring not to how numbers are distributed, but what role national governments have in policy making and number distribution – many developing nations do not want the Internet community managing address distribution. He suggested that the RIPE community does not want countries making IP addressing policy decisions.

Jim Reid advised taking care in talking about the "ITU", and noted that there is no cohesive opinion of the ITU, Rather, there are strong views within the ITU membership on all sides of the argument. The RIPE community needs to make representations to Member States (governments) who can make our arguments within ITU forums. Jim also noted that it is unclear whether it is the ITU bureaucracy that is pushing this, and that while Internet addressing resources are not under the control of ITU Member States, they are currently under the control of ICANN, which is under the control of the US government.

Roland noted that the ITU is a very "input- and output-driven" organization, and that if things do not appear on pre- and post-issued documents, then they do no exist. For this reason, a great deal of time is spent on discussing specific wordings.

Leslie Daigle noted that the experience of Taiwan in trying to obtain space in the ENUM directory under the ITU regulations, and suggested that the RIPE community should endeavour to keep discussions in the IPv6 Group on topics strictly relevant to the ITU.

E. RIPE Community Consultation on IPv6 and ITU
Roland Perry presented a draft statement from the RIPE community on IPv6 and the concerns raised within the ITU.

Jim Reid noted that the text is good, but suggested that the second sentence finish with "is inadequate".

Jonne Soininen asked whether it is the RIPE NCC or the RIPE community that should be engaging in the ITU discussions. Roland noted that the only way to work with the ITU IPv6 Group is through the Correspondence Group, and the RIPE community cannot be subscribed to this list. The RIPE NCC can, however, act as a channel between the ITU and the RIPE community.

Rob Blokzijl agreed that the statement should go forward, and agreed that this cannot be done as a community, but must be done through the RIPE NCC (who will of course work in close coordination with the community).

Sander Steffan suggested that the title be adjusted to avoid confusion with the earlier RIPE community statement on IPv6.

Hans Petter Holen supported the statement. He also noted that in the past telcos sought to prevent ISPs from getting IP addresses and moving into this territory – this is not a new issue.

Kurt Lindqvist suggested that the statement might be a bit short, and may need some context. He noted that not all concerns raised within the ITU are to do with operators.

Alain Bidron suggested that the phrase, "to clearly identify concerns" be supplemented with "if needed".

Geoff Huston noted that the APNIC community had also issued a similar (though longer) statement, and suggested that the authors read that statement and identify areas of commonality. Roland noted that since that APNIC Meeting a charter for the Correspondence Group has been issued, and the text presented has been refined to respond more specifically to that charter.

Jim Reid noted that a link has been posted to the APNIC statement. He also noted that the APNIC statement was submitted to the Study Group, while this statement will not. The main goal of this statement is to mandate the RIPE NCC to engage with the ITU and report back to the community.

Rob Blokzijl explained the process for approving such statements: the statement will be introduced during the Closing Plenary and if there is a community consensus in the room then it will be published as widely as possible, along with some explanatory information.

Z. A.O.B.
Constanze Bürger gave an update on the status of IPv6 in Germany. She also noted that there had been a statement from ZDNet recently regarding the "nationalization of IP address assignment on the Internet" – she emphasized that this is not true, and that the Minister's statements were misunderstood.

She delivered an update on the German government's plans to deploy an IPv6 national network, which are now well advanced.

Constanze also noted the German government's position supporting the continuation of the IGF, and supporting the current model of Internet address management.

There were no questions.

John Curran noted that dealing with the ITU is not straightforward. There are many different study groups, meetings and conferences within the ITU, any of which could create an Action Item that would be presented to the Plenipotentiary meeting later in the year, which could result in IP address issues being added to the ITU's agenda for the next four years. There are a lot of ITU groups that the RIR communities are not currently engaging with. ARIN has asked its members who are also ITU Sector Members to help ensure that such issues are identified. Patrik Fältström agreed.

Jim Reid, referring to John Curran's statement, noted that there is a meeting of Study Group 3 coming up shortly, the agenda of which includes an item on the ITU's role in Internet Exchanges. There is a suggestion coming from China to do with changes and extensions to BGP, including the incorporation of tariff models into BGP exchanges of routes. This is something of concern to people in the RIPE community, so this is another matter to speak with your government representatives about, however the deadline for contributions is 5 May 2010.

Brian Nisbet noted that the Anti-Abuse WG will be discussing the RIPE NCC's engagement with Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs).

Alain Bidron asked a question regarding the ICANN Affirmation of Commitments. This was signed with the support of the NRO, and there are review teams for this, however he noted that the first review team from the ASO seemed to act in a slightly unusual way. Paul Rendek suggested that this might be taken up with ASO AC members. Wilfried Woeber, of the ASO AC, responded to Alain, noting that the AC members, specifically from the RIPE NCC service region, have only a limited amount of time in which to engage with the ICANN process. If the community feels strongly that it is important that the ASO AC do more in this area, it would be good if this could be discussed more prominently. He also noted that he would speak with Alain privately.

The Chair declared the meeting closed at 15:30, and encouraged people to contact the Chairs or the RIPE NCC if they have any topics they would like to see discussed in the Working Group.