Minutes – First ASO Address Council General Assembly

19 May 2000, Budapest, Hungary

Meeting Chair: Hans Petter Holen (Chair, Address Council)
Attendees: Approximately 55
Meeting start: 2pm

    1. Meeting opening and welcome

Axel Pawlik, Managing Director of RIPE-NCC, opened the meeting and formally welcomed the attendees.

    1. Address Council Status Report

      • To move faster, plan well in advance;
      • To strengthen relationships between AC, RIRs and ICANN;
      • To focus on existing bottom-up processes;
      • To actively seek to include constituencies outside the traditional RIR environment in the existing open processes.

Presented by Hans Petter Holen, Chair of the Address Council

Introductions

Members of the address council were introduced, together with details of their positions and terms of office. Anthony Brookes was introduced as an observer on the Address Council appointed by AfriNIC within the terms of the ASO MoU. The AC appointments to the ICANN Board were introduced. Hans Petter gave an overview of events leading up to this meeting, as well as specific items of work which are before the AC.

Meetings of the AC

At the recent AC meeting, it was agreed to schedule monthly phone meetings. It was also agreed to have the next physical AC meeting in Brisbane, Australia, on 28 October 2000, immediately following the next scheduled APNIC Meeting.

AfriNIC

The AC has formally accepted and welcomed the designated AC observer from AfriNIC (Ant Brookes). It also recognised the 2 “listeners” designated by AfriNIC (Nii Quaynor and Mouhamet Diop), although they do not have official status under the ASO MoU.

New gTLDs

The DNSO Names Council has submitted a new policy proposal to ICANN on creating new gTLDs. Before the ICANN board can accept this policy, they must consult with the AC and Protocol Council. The AC has reviewed the proposed policy and sees no address policy issues relevant to the proposal. However the AC will request the opportunity to review further policy proposals after the initial trial period. The AC does not see it as its task to positively endorse the proposal.

Board of Directors

A new ASO director needs to be elected on to the ICANN Board, to replace outgoing director Pindar Wong (whose term ends on 30 September). A call for nominations has been made in accordance with the MoU, and is now closed. The list of nominees has been published on the ASO web site. The AC will now issue a call for expressions of support for nominees, before selecting the new director at the July phone meeting.

Hans Petter asked openly whether this would be an acceptable procedure, or if there were any further suggestions from the audience. There were no further suggestions.

The list of nominees was shown. It was noted that nominees from North America and Europe cannot be elected to replace Pindar Wong, due to geographic diversity constraints of the MoU.

Independent Review Panel

The ICANN Independent Review Panel (IRP) is to be formed of individuals with high legal qualifications, such as former judges. The IRP nominations committee is responsible for appointing individuals to the IRP, and each SO has 2 seats on this panel, appointed by the SO council. The AC will shortly issue a call for proposals of suitably qualified individuals to serve on this committee, to be selected by the AC of possible at its July phone meeting.

Emerging RIR document

The AC has asked the RIRs to incorporate all existing comments on latest draft of this document. The comments received to date (including at this GA meeting) should also be incorporated before the document is reissued with a “last call” for comments. It is proposed to vote on formally endorsing the revised document during the July phone meeting.

Global Policy on ICANN Assignments

A draft has been published by the RIRs, and various comments received. This document requires further work, and it is therefore planned to have an ICANN, RIR and AC workshop in October 2000, in Brisbane, Australia (following the APNIC open policy meeting). Hans Petter asked the audience if these timelines seemed reasonable, and there were no comments.

ASO Internal Procedures

Hans Petter commented that the AC is new in its role, and has had to work on definition of its own working procedures. A first internal draft of an AC procedures document has been written and reviewed, and will be redrafted shortly. This will be published to the community for comments to improve internal procedures.

Transition from ip6.int to ip6.arpa

ICANN has informed the AC of a request from the IAB to move “ip6.int” to the infrastructure domain “.arpa”. The AC will seek informal contact with the relevant IETF bodies to figure out how to interact on such matters of mutual interest.

Bill Manning commented that the relevant parties inside the IETF are not sure if the move is a partial migration or a wholesale move of the ipv6.int tree.

Goals for the AC

Hans Petter summarised his report by reporting some general goals for the AC:

Comments and questions from the audience

Wilfried Woeber (AC) commented on the UMTS/GPRS presentations which were given at the RIPE meeting. These identified no new policy issues, although the presenters talked about ‘policy’ in their presentations which lead to some confusion about new RIR policies being proposed. However in fact the GPRS proponents are proposing to work within existing RIR policies and procedures.

One person commented that the RIPE task force actually accomplished the need to address the infrastructure requirements of the GPRS network, but not of mobile phone handsets.

    1. Emerging RIR Reports

AfriNIC Status Report

Presented by Ant Brooks of ISPA South Africa.

The background to AfriNIC was at INET in 1995 in Hawaii in the developing countries workshop. The discussions there lead to the formation of AIG – African Internet Group. The main problem was tension over English / French languages.

In December 1998 at the Cotonou (Benin) meeting they had simultaneous translations. That meeting had very strong geographic representation – all but 8 countries were represented. The AfriNIC by-laws were drafted. However 1999 was a year of “anti-progress”, since the initiative didn’t have sufficient representation (South Africans in particular felt left out). Many were unaware that the AfriNIC meetings were happening. A parallel problem was that none of the submissions for locating AfriNIC were acceptable.

In Cape Town in May 2000, an AfriNIC meeting was held in conjunction with AFNOG. There was strong geographic and market representation, and representation from all 3 RIRs. Consensus was reached on the formation of AfriNIC, and the Bylaws were accepted in principle. The interim board of trustees was approved, which has since selected AfriNIC’s AC observer and two listeners. There are also two working groups: BoT advisory committee and the policy working group.

In terms of outstanding issues, there are policy concerns. The community wants AfriNIC to work, and to work with stability. The minimum size of allocations by AfriNIC is also a critical issue. Large ISPs are worried about the first, and the smaller are worried about the second issue. On the issue of AfriNIC’s location it was suggested to piggy-back on to the RIPE NCC and to locate AfriNIC staff there. This provides stability, and addresses immediate technical and financial issues. AfriNIC needs to build relationships with existing RIRs. They also want to do a survey of IP address space usage in Africa, to assist in transition to AfriNIC.

Concerns – there is a lack of a clear path to a final goal. Financial viability is also an issue. Taking Africans out of Africa may result in loss of local skills. Despite these, the community wants AfriNIC. More information is available at http://www.afrinic.org.

There were no questions.

LACNIC Status Report

Presented by German Valdez of NIC-MEXICO.

There is a LACNIC creation agreement supported by important stakeholders of the LAC region. These are AHCIET, CABASE, CG-Br, ECOMLAC, ENRED and Mexico Nic. Their website is at http://www.lacnic.net. An interim board has been established, with 6 members. Comments about the board can go to directorio@lacnic.net.

LACNIC has 3 working groups. One is a technical committee – they have drafted a policy doc which is being translated into English. Others are a Bylaws Committee and a Financial Committee. The WGs are formed by various individuals from across the region.

Where to locate LACNIC? Two NIRs in the existing region, in Brasil and Mexico, have shown interested in hosting LACNIC, however LACNIC needs one location. Criteria for selecting a location were taken from the existing emerging RIR document. LACNIC will be non profit and will follow the ASO MoU. The policies and procedures will be based on RFC-2050 etc.

Right now they are working on incorporating more organisations from the Caribbean region. Looking for support from across the continent. There is a list of supporters at http://www.lacnic.net/.

Right now more than 82 organisations have signed their support. In the future, LACNIC wants to publish bylaws and policies drafts. LACNIC are thinking of having a meeting in Mexico City in July.

Questions

Wilfried Woeber asked if there could be an overview of exactly when they want to start operation.

Answer: They have proposed to start in May 2000.

Wilfried also commented that on one of the earlier slides, Brazil was described as “National Regional Registry” which may be confusing.

Answer: Brasil has a National Registry (not Regional). The slides will be clarified.

Raimundo Beca commented that the language requirement of the Emerging Registries document is quite difficult to fulfill. The document says that the documentation of the RIR must be in English, but LACNIC would like to propose different wording (they will send this in writing during the next week).

    1. Global Policy Presentations

Same address assignment policy for end user and ISP

Presented by Yoshiko Okazaki Chong, JPNIC.

Questions

Hans Peter Holen commented that a review of RFC-2050 is worth considering, and asked for suggestions on how to improve this. Cathy Wittbrodt commented that at the recent ARIN meeting they discussed this topic, and agreed that it should be examined.

Hans Petter asked about the impact of this presentation on the work of the AC. Louis Touton commented that presentations given at the ASO General Assembly would be seen by ICANN as presentations only, and should not be necessarily be followed up by the AC unless there is a formal request for action.

Hans Petter commented that the AC should consider how to progress this specific issue, given that it has been raised in one other RIR constituency. Specifically it should consider whether to look at this issue region by region, or globally.

Emerging Registries Criteria

Presented by Paul Wilson, APNIC.

Paul Wilson noted that this is presented on behalf of the RIRs, as an administrative policy issue that has been on the AC agenda for some time. It was noted that the ASO MoU provides basic requirements for new RIRs to join, however ICANN has requested the RIRs to assist with the further development of those criteria for application to possible new RIRs. Another draft will be released after this meeting, incorporating comments received so far, and any additional comments today.

It was also clarified that the document is not intended to be a strict set of rules. The intentions were to provide more detailed considerations/guidelines/principles for evaluation, and to assist the = emerging regional internet registries in how to present their case, not only to ICANN but to their regional and global communities. LACNIC has done this informally already.

Questions and comments

An audience member (unidentified) commented that the RIRs should not necessarily map on to the ICANN regions, and asked about the thinking behind the “continental” coverage. The criteria seem to prevent smaller registries from forming. What determines a region?

Hans Petter Holen commented that we currently don’t have a policy on discerning between Global and Regional policies. While 5 RIRs is manageable, many more than this would be unmanageable in terms of global policy coordination.

Paul Wilson commented that if there was a substantial majority of a region wishing to form another registry, the RIR concerned would have to respond to this. On the other hand a regional change may be initiated by ICANN on the basis of demonstrated consensus policy changes, which the RIRs may also be obliged to consider. Thus, such an initiative may come from the bottom up or from the top. Note that the emerging RIRs document would not necessarily have to change under such circumstances.

Another comment from the same person was that the criteria in the document were excellent. However the document does not say how to gather input about how these criteria map. It only provides guidance, so ICANN will need some other input on making their decision. This should be made clear in this document.

Paul Wilson commented that this document does not fall strictly under address global policy and therefore does not belong strictly to the ASO.

Louis Touton responded that the IANA would be responsible for reaching a conclusion on whether the organisation would satisfy the criteria. It would seem therefore that there would need to be a check of whether the organisation actually meets the criteria but that the first step is to get the documents down.

Rob Blokzijl commented that he thought the Board should be responsible for modifying the criteria and that checking the criteria would be relatively easy in any particular case.

Hans Petter Holen commented that the process of becoming an RIR is actually very important and having this documents is a concrete way of establishing this. He urged the members of the audience to send in any final comments asap, to the aso-policy mailing list, and reported that ideally the AC hopes to forward this document to ICANN in July, as a consensus document with AC endorsement.

Rob Blokzijl commented that the document has been in circulation for some time, and suggested to collect comments, publish next week and have a 30-day for comments after which the doc should be considered finalised.

A Proposal for a Global policy defining the delegation of addresses by the ICANN

Presented by Michael Straty of the ARIN Board of Trustees.

This proposal was submitted to the ASO policy list in January. Michael gave an introduction to the existing structure of delegation. The policy basically stated that ICANN should work within existing processes to obtain address space for their needs. Comments made to date have suggested that the language should be include reference to NIRs, and that there should be room for IANA to make assignments for experimental purposes. Otherwise, general support.

Michael then asked for any comments for a new draft.

Mark McFadden of CIX commented that the CIX fully supports this proposal, and that they think the principles should apply to IPv6 as well as IPv4.

Wilfried Woeber commented on the notion of ‘experimental’ assignments, and suggested that this needs reconsideration and should be more explicit. It is also appropriate to review guidelines as set out in RFCs, which might not be completely aligned with this policy. For example, where there is an IETF recommendation in an RFC and a possibly conflicting policy recommendation from this forum – we need to think about how to reconcile the two. He also commented that this policy should apply to IPv6.

Cathy Wittbrodt commented on the background of this proposal, namely that IANA made an assignment to themselves recently, and many people feel that the existing procedures for obtaining address space should have been followed.

Hans Petter asked about the relationship between this document and rfc2050. There was a comment from the audience that the two documents are not covering the same scope.

Hans Petter commented that the AC plans to move forward on this matter with a view to coming to closure on the document. Mike Roberts commented that the final version of this document, before approval by ICANN, will need to go to the DNSO and PSO (and in particular the IETF) for their approval. Also, that there needs to be enough flexibility within the existing mechanisms for innovation and experimentation.

    1. General Discussion

Hans Petter Holen opened the floor for general discussion

Mark McFadden raised the issue of the AC’s role in general. He urged AC to be more pro-active and identify issues that need to be addressed, for example, revision of RFC2050. There needs to be a relationship with the IETF and those dynamics needs to be considered. Within the “Ad hoc group” there is work undergoing to look at technical drivers affecting policy. Noted the success of the GPRS discussions this week. The AC could co-ordinate and take a lead on the effort required to look at what are the issues affecting hand held devices.

Cathy Wittbrodt commented that the bottom up process could be started by the AC as activists in their own regions.

Wilfried Woeber suggested that the AC could take a role of coordinating data collection on address space usage and allocations globally. Right now, everything is rather disparate and the AC could unify approaches to documenting this. Rob Blokzijl commented that the IANA/ICANN web sites holds part of this information.

    1. Meeting close

Hans Petter Holen thanked the attendees and closed the meeting.

Meeting finish: 4.30pm

Last modified on 04/02/2020