ASO AC Teleconference 4 November 2010

AC Attendees:

Jean Robert Hountomey, JRH – AfriNIC
Alan Barret, AB – AfriNIC
Tomohiro Fujisaki, TF – APNIC
Louis Lee, LL – ARIN
Martin Hannigan, MH – ARIN
Jason Schiller, JS- ARIN
Sebastian Bellagamba, SB – LACNIC
Hartmut Glaser, HG – LACNIC
Francisco Obispo, FO – LACNIC
Dave Wilson – DW – RIPE NCC
Hans Peter Holen, HH – RIPE NCC
Wilfried Woeber, WW – RIPE NCC

Secretariat:

Laureana Pavón, LP – LACNIC

Observers:

Germán Valdez, GV – APNIC
John Curran, JC – ARIN
Nate Davis, ND – ARIN
Einar Bohlin, EB – ARIN
Ernesto Majo, EM – LACNIC
Emilio Madaio, EMa – RIPE NCC
Olof Nordling, ON – ICANN
Leo Vegoda, LV – ICANN

Agenda:

Welcome
Agenda review
Approval of the minutes from the October 14 teleconference
Review of open action items
ASO AC presentation at ICANN 39
Global policy proposal: IPv4 allocations post exhaustion
Discussion: Clarity edits by NRO
ASO AC representative to the 2011 ICANN NomCom
Volunteer group to get together at the upcoming RIPE meeting in Rome.
Update from LACNIC XIV
Update on activities related to the ICANN Review Teams
AOB
Adjournment

1. Welcome

The Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting at 13.08 UTC.

2. Agenda review

LL read the tentative agenda, which was approved.

3. Approval of the minutes from the October 14 teleconference

Motion to approve the minutes of the meetings held on October 14 by SB, seconded by TF. None opposed and the motion carried.

New Action Item 1104-01: The secretariat to change the status of the October 14, 2010, minutes from draft to approved.

4. Review of open action items

Only the open action items not attached to an agenda item were reviewed here.

Action item 0622-05: All to begin conversations with the new secretariat in the upcoming weeks, find out their preferences and limitations and come up with a proposal for the ASO AC. (Action item regarding the scheduling 2011 teleconferences with the new Secretariat, time zone issues, day of the week, etc.). OPEN

Action item 0410-3: The Secretariat to find out how much effort and cost would be involved in setting up a wiki − both as a private wiki and as a public wiki − and send that information to the list for further discussion. OVERTAKEN by Action Item 06-22-3

Action item 0622-02: WW to work with PR and the RIPE NCC on the wiki. If WW needs more help he can turn to the communications committee. OPEN

WW: I already agreed with the NCC folks to meet in Rome f2f, on the occasion of RIPE61 (starting in about 1+ week from now) to take this up again and report back to the AC. Thus I propose keeping this action item open till the next teleconference.

Action Item 1014-01: The secretariat to change the status of the September 9, 2010, minutes from draft to approved. DONE

Action item 1014-02: RE to do a write up on Webex and send it to the list (including features such as chat that we can make use of). DONE

LL: The Secretariat sent a document to the list describing technical features.

LP: Webex represents substantial savings as compared to the traditional teleconference service we were using before.

LL: Please report any issues or advantages/disadvantages you’ve encountered when using Webex to decide whether to continue using this system or whether it’s necessary to find another one.

Action item 1014-03: The AC to send a possible review to the NRO EC so that they can have their staff have a look and make sure that the RIRs won’t be running into any issues. (re. global ASN policy ratified and implemented on 21 September).

DW: I think what we were wondering is whether the fact that the global policy for ASN numbers expires at the end of this year represents a problem, if there is a need for an extension.

LL: The only people who can answer that are the RIR staffs, but I personally haven’t seen any indication that RIR staffs are scrambling for the ASN 16s.

JC: The RIR staffs will follow the policy, the question is whether the community is ready for what happens when we start following that policy. The last time this happened we had some whiplash. I understood the question as follows: Are we ready this time or is there a need to be ready to change the policy regarding 32 vs. 16? I don’t know how RIR staffs can answer whether users will be upset when they get a 32 bit ASN.

LL: Excellent point. The last global policy was ticked off due to feedback from users, so basically we need to start discussions at least on our lists. The problem is that many people on our RIR discussion lists already have their ASN and those that need ASNs are probably not in the process yet.

JC: Let me put it differently: It would be good to know whether any significant service providers don’t accept a 4-byte ASN from multihomed customers. In the ARIN meeting we asked for a show of hands and there were a couple of guilty looking people with their hands up, I don’t know if they are a small number or if they represent large ISPs. What we’re trying to determine is whether service providers are actually ready for a 4-byte ASN.

LL: Maybe it would be appropriate to get a discussion going with the community, that’s something the EC can do with our respective discussion lists to suggest a possible change in the global policy and use that as a way to kick off a discussion as to whether it’s necessary.

JS: Question for JC: My understanding is that when you stop differentiating between 16-bit and 8-bit ASNs you would just start from the numerically low ones and go up from there, so if there is to be an issue we wouldn’t see it until we’ve run out of the numerically low ones?

JC: I need to confirm that, but I believe that’s the case.

DW: My memory is that there’s a phase an RIR can enter where there might be 16-bit numbers available but the next block they get from IANA is a 32-bit block.

JS: My concern is that different RIRs may run out at different times.

JC: If we’re all ready for 4-byte ASNs then this won’t matter, that’s why we need to know if we’re all ready.

LL: If we’re to kick off discussions on our respective lists about this we need to be clear on the effect of not having a new global policy proposal, so thank you for the discussions.

5. ASO AC presentation at ICANN 39

LL: We now have volunteers from 4 regions for the presentation team: NA, WW, FO, and LL. We are still needing a volunteer from the AfriNIC region. There will be travel support from our RIRs and we also have support from the RIR staff to help put the presentation together.

AB volunteered for the AfriNIC region.

LL: Many thanks to HH for kicking off the development of an outreach plan. This leadership is much appreciated and we can follow these plans to produce the presentation that we’ll need to give at the ICANN meeting. Logistically, I’m working with ICANN staff to arrange for a 3-4 hour session on the Tuesday of the meeting week, and I hope to finalize those plans within a week.

MH and HG said they’d also be attending the ICANN meeting.

SB: I will be there on different business, I’ll let you know my agenda. Please include me in the group that will do the initial development of the presentation.

LL: After the initial development is complete the rest of the AC can provide feedback.

6. Global policy proposal: IPv4 allocations post exhaustion

LL: The procedure calls for us to have a PPFT.

DW: There’s a group of AC members who have already volunteered to shepherd the global policy proposal through each region.

LL closed this agenda item by asking the AC members who had volunteered to shepherd the policy proposal to continue following up on this. No further comments were heard on this item.

7. Discussion: Clarity edits by NRO

LL: MH kicked off a discussion on the process to request and perform edits on a GPP. This discussion continued identifying the actual procedures − edits being done by the NRO EC to synchronize the language and also ratifying that language using a process of their own and then passing it on to the EC. A couple of questions were raised: Is there a process to request these edits? A little more clarification or transparency was requested to identify how the new edits are ratified by each RIRs.

I hope I have characterized these questions accurately and will try to answer at least in part: If we have clarity edits we would like to suggest to the NRO EC, it’s fine for us to make those suggestions unsolicited. The NRO EC will consider these to be suggestions, not mandates or requirements.

WW: From my personal point of view, the only question that needs consideration is what happens if the edits involve more than fixing typos or grammar issues, how do we go back with that to our communities/regions. I’m not aware of any situation where a policy text was substantially modified and put forward. For me this is the only item that was left in an open and undefined state.

JS: The open and undefined state I’m concerned about with regards to the current GPP is that a different text was ratified in the 5 regions and then set to the NRO EC, but there doesn’t appear to be a process for the NRO EC to judge that the text is substantially different and not put it forward to us. I don’t think there’s any procedure for declaring the policy abandoned and taking it off our docket. I believe the signal is that the NRO EC will not forward the policy to us, but is there some way to officially deal with this policy and complete the loop? (Re. global policy with and without mandatory return)

JC: If you believe that the ASO has done everything it can, you can drop a note to the NRO EC saying that you’ve done everything you can on this policy and asking the NRO EC handle it as they see fit. I don’t know what the NRO EC will do at that point.

In order to clarify, LL proceeded to read a message received from Axel in October saying regarding that policy: “Seeing that the original proposal for the Global Policy for the Allocation of IPv4 Blocks to Regional Internet Registries has been changed in one region, but not in the other regions, it now does not meet the criteria for global policies, namely that they be the same (for all practical purposes) in all of the RIRs’ regions. In so far, it is not covered anymore by the ASO MoU’s respective provisions describing the development of global policies. The NRO EC has no intentions to forward it in its current state to the ASO AC for further processing.”

JC: What that says is that you don’t have to do anything about it. Note that a region could turn around and change its submission and suddenly you’d have a viable policy.

JS: So it stays a policy proposal for ever?

JC: I don’t know of any process for getting rid of these. I can see that one could be brought to life very quickly so you wouldn’t want to be overly prompt in cleaning them up.

DW: I don’t see any harm in it staying on the books as a global policy proposal even if there’s no expectation of it going forward.

SB: I think that what we actually do is monitor the policy for the sake of having our own work done in the case it’s handed over to us by the EC, but we have no role before the formal handover of the policy and we shouldn’t be formally worrying about that (re. the first global policy). I’d also like to comment on what happened at the past LACNIC meeting about the GPP coming from the ARIN region, some procedural issues were raised by me in the LACNIC community in the sense that we already have in place a global policy on this topic that has been approved by the community and by the LACNIC board, we were not in a position to consider a new one policy because we already had one in place. If a global policy doesn’t achieve a single text, we should think of how to deprecate the previous version in order to propose a new one, otherwise we are creating a loop.

JC: In ARIN we’re quite capable of considering and even endorsing several versions of a proposal. Only the global ratification of a policy would cause us to take the others and get rid of them, and I presume that the NRO EC would formally clean up any other global related policies if one were to be adopted. For example, in ARIN we have 2009-3 and 2010-10, which cover the same topic. We actually could have both advance to the ASO, that’s not a problem, we’re willing to live with whatever output is adopted.

HH: I find it strange not to consider a new proposal that modifies an existing one, not discussing a proposal because we already have another one seems to be a very strong action to take against a new proposal.

SB: It’s simply a procedural fact. If the new proposal does not deprecate the previous one we are duplicating policies. There should be a provision to deprecate the previous policy.

HH: I have the feeling that we’re constructing obstacles here. If we have a valid GP and then someone proposes to change it, then would be the same thing: a new policy proposal changing a previous one. We cannot say we are not going to discuss it because we have one already approved.

SB: I see your point, but this wasn’t the understanding at the LACNIC meeting. The LACNIC meeting understood that it was a new proposal, not a modification of a previous.

HH: The previous one wasn’t adopted, therefore it isn’t a change.

LL: Did the presentation identify the differences between the one that was adopted and the new one that was under discussion?

SB: Yes it did.

LL: Then I guess that the audience should have understood that, as there were differences, this was a change even though it was not identified as such at the top of the proposal.

WW: I was wondering if the local procedure to react to a change in the environment is really a metaphor for the AC, I would perceive this as a regional issue to set up rules or procedures on how to go on with life if the environment changes. In the RIPE region there’s always the implicit and sometimes explicit understanding that every policy that gets approved is subject to modification if the opinion of the community changes.

LL: I still think it could be a very regional issue that’s worth discussing so that we understand the local nuances, specially with a global proposal.

JS: I’m confused, maybe I’m not well educated on the LACNIC PDP, but I don’t understand what procedurally prevented the possible adoption of this policy.

SB: What I got from the community in general was the feeling that we already have a policy in place, that we’d already decided on this and we already have a policy in place that works.

JS: So it’s not necessarily a PDP issue that kept the community from discussing and adopting that policy, they just felt that they’d already discussed it and didn’t want to do it again?

SB: Nothing in the PDF formally prevented the discussion, it was more of a philosophical issue. It’s understood that if we already have an agreement on the previous policy and we are proposing a new policy without trying to duplicate or change the old one, would that make sense? That’s the question on the line.

JC: A generic comment about rules of order and what might be the consideration: If a body debates a topic and comes to a conclusion, it’s often considered out of order for that body to re-debate the topic; if you’ve come to an actual decision, then you’re not allowed to just re-discuss the matter. In the ARIN region we have a policy body and every time we make a proposal we’re re-discussing parts of it, so our region has never been administrated that way. Additionally, in the case of a global policy, I don’t know how you would go back and make the necessary changes if you’ve made a decision but circumstances have changed. What happens in all regions is relevant for the other regions. I understand the principle, I’m just not sure how it works in a global policy scenario.

SB: I have no answer to that, that’s why I raised the issue here, for us to discuss and try to find a way out of the deadlock.

JC: I agree that each RIR should decide its own procedures for this. For the record, in the ARIN region we don’t block any policy proposals, I have no difficulty having multiple global policy proposals approved and out there, and if any of them find a match in the other four regions then we will withdraw the ones that are no longer relevant.

LL: If we were to apply that specifically to a discussion within a RIR, then we would need to frame the discussion in that the circumstances are such that we need to make a change because there is new information. Is that how the new global policy proposal would need to be presented?

JS: What I’m hearing is an inclusion in the new global policy (2010-10) of a statement suggesting that upon ratification by ICANN it would deprecate 2009-3, which is a global proposal. The problem I see here is that I could pick a global policy proposal topic, write a horribly unfair proposal and it sounds to me that, as long as it’s passed in some region, I could prevent that region from discussing any other GPP on that topic, that seems to be a deadlock.

MH: That’s not the intent of the process. In my opinion what we’re dealing with is more of a political problem than a procedural problem. There are various ways in which the system can be exploited to block a proposal, I don’t know what else to say.

DW: I don’t see this as you do, Jason, at least in my region. In RIPE we ratified a global policy proposal, it’s on the books and will stay there. It will be activated when it’s ratified by the ICANN board, until then it has no effect.

AB: It seems to me that proof exists that it is possible to modify global policy (the 4-byte ASN policy was approved and then a few years later a new one was also approved). If that was possible why can’t we make the same kind of changes in other policies? I don’t understand what the problem is.

LL: In that case it was explicit that it was a change to the current global policy that had already been adopted.

AB: In that case, would adding a phrase that said “we’re also cancelling/terminating this other proposal” be enough to break the deadlock?

LL: APNIC didn’t have any problem discussing this policy proposal, in fact they had a very robust discussion about this GPP.

JS: I’m looking at the draft for 2009-3 and I don’t see text in there that clearly says it’s replacing an existing GPP. Can somebody point out where it says that?

LL: I think it’s in the justification part, not in the proposal itself.

JS: I just wanted to set the record straight. It was said that 2009-3 specifically stated that it was modifying an existing GP. I just wanted to be clear that 2009-3 it doesn’t explicitly state this, so we do have proof of existence of how this can work.

EMa: To reply to JS, I have the text of the global policy proposal that went though the RIPE region. Section 3.2 mentions another global policy that will be deprecated when the ICANN board ratifies this GPP.

JS: Thank you, that is exactly what I was looking for. However, I don’t see that in the ARIN text.

At this point of the discussion it was decided to move on to the following agenda item.

8. ASO AC representative to the 2011 ICANN NomCom

LL said that WW had confirmed via Webex chat his ability to serve another term on the NomCom.

WW confirmed his ability, stating that this would be his second and last term on the NomCom.

Motion to appoint WW to the 2011 ICANN NomCom by MH, seconded by HG. None were opposed and WW was reappointed to the 2011 ICANN NomCom.

New Action Item 1104-02: LL to formally notify the new chair of the 2011 ICANN NomCom that WW has been reappointed.

LL suggested that anybody wanting to serve on the 2012 NomCom should please start thinking about it now.

9. Volunteer group to get together at the upcoming RIPE meeting in Rome.

Various practical aspects for this informal meeting were discussed and it was decided to continue the discussion on the list.

10. Update from LACNIC XIV

SB: LACNIC XIV was held on 19-20 October, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in conjunction with the first LACNOC meeting and the meeting of the Brazilian PTT Forum. We had 2 days for the policy forum, 5 policy proposals were presented, 4 of which reached consensus and are now within the last call for comments period. The webcast files are available on the event’s website, all of which is translated into English, Spanish and Portuguese.

11. Update on activities related to the ICANN Review Teams

LL: Update on the ATRT: We’ve issued a request for public comments on a set of draft proposed recommendations we developed as part of our review of ICANN’s execution of its commitment to accountability and transparency under the affirmation of commitments (AoC). We’re still required to provide the final recommendations to the ICANN board (due by 31 Dec.). I sent out the link for request for public comments, you can also find the draft recommendations there.

HG: Update on the SSR review team: We’ve only had one conference call to introduce ourselves, right now we are receiving a lot of documents. Probably at our next conference call we will elect our chair. We’ve decided to have a face to face meeting in Cartagena. We’ve just begun our work, so I have no details to report at this time.

WW: Update on the Whois team: We began working in October and have had 2 meetings. We are discussing the mandate and reviewing the things that the ATRT has already put on the table procedure and document wise and trying to understand what the mandate actually is. Some of us are planning to meet in Cartagena, although we know that some members will not be able to make it to Colombia. We’ve also started discussions on the chair and vice chairs and there, and there is also some discussion in the sense that it would be good to have clarified the mandate before electing chairs. The next teleconference will be in approximately two weeks time

LL: If you need any answers regarding administrative aspects, procedures, etc. of the review teams the ATRT is available for consultation.

12. AOB

a) Filiz Yilmaz has been appointed ICANN’s new Senior Director of Participation and Engagement

LL: There’s a link to her interview on the ICANN home page.

b) Follow up on ASO AC presentation at ICANN 39

LL: The tasked committee has already began to work on the presentation that we will give at the ICANN 39 meeting, so we’re already in communication regarding that.

The following other topics were brought up for discussion:

HG: Do you have the names for the new members of the AC? We need to have our election for the new chair for 2011 and probably that must be done in the next meeting in December, so we need to invite the new members to our next conference call.

HH: I think there is only one candidate nominated, unless there are big surprises you’ll be elected for another three years.

LL: I believe we will have the same members as in 2010 with one exception. Congratulations to MH on his election to the ARIN AC, I believe the ARIN board will be appointing a replacement to complete MH’s term in 2011.

HG: For your information, I was re-appointed to the AC by the LACNIC board, so I will continue on the AC in 2011.

AB: In the AfriNIC region, VN’s term expires at the end of December 2010 and there will be an election in Johannesburg in a few weeks. My term expires at the end of this year.

HG: We have two options: we can appoint a chair in December or have a meeting in early January to elect the new chair.

LL: I’ll review the procedures, but I believe that the election begins in December but doesn’t finalize until January.

HG: Probably the Secretariat needs to send a letter to all regions whether they have already had their elections or are planning the election in order to gain time for the selection of our new chair.

LL: If anybody would like to serve as a vice chair they should also think about that.

LL: Since the chair’s responsibilities, while not officially, have been expanded (participation in ICANN processes), I’ve been thinking about what would be the best way to propose some kind of expansion of the formal role of the chair or to parse that out to possibly a new role or add it on to a new vice chair role. I’ll think about that and get back to the list for discussion.

13. Adjournment

Motion to adjourn by HG, seconded by AB. There being no objections, the meeting was adjourned at 14.30 UTC.

Last modified on 29/01/2020

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ASO AC Teleconference 4 November 2010