[Chapter-delegates] [REPORT] ITU IPv6 Group meeting, 15-16 March 2010

[Bill Graham]

Following is a report on last week's ITU IPv6 Group meeting.  I  
particularly want to thank those of you who reached out to your  
contacts in national governments to talk about this issue and to share  
the briefing paper I sent to you on 1 March.  I heard from several  
delegates that they had read the paper and had appreciated it.  This  
is a great example of how ISOC's membership can effectively work to  
advance the health of the Internet and to strengthen awareness of the  
Internet ecosystem.

best regards

Bill

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REPORT: ITU IPv6 Group meeting

Geneva, February 15-16, 2010

The ITU convened the first meeting of the Council-chartered IPv6 Group  
in Geneva, co-chaired by the Directors of the Telecommunication  
Standardization and Telecommunication Development Bureaus.  The  
meeting was chaired by Dr. Mohammed El-Khamis of the United Arab  
Emirates, and was attended by about 20 Member States and an equivalent  
number of Sector Members and invited experts.  The latter group  
included the RIRs and the authors of two studies commissioned by the  
ITU: Dr. Milton Mueller and Dr. Sureswaran Ramadass.  For ISOC, Bill  
Graham and Constance Bommelaer, Leslie Daigle and Mat Ford attended.   
In addition, all five Regional Internet Registry CEOs and four RIR  
staff attended the meeting.  Three ICANN staff were available to  
attend, but ICANN had not been invited as experts, and after some  
discussion, attendees decided not to let them join this meeting.  This  
decision will be revisted for future meetings.  No civil society  
organizations were present.

As you will recall, ISOC SGE prepared a briefing note for membership  
that was distributed in advance of the meeting, along with information  
about how interested members could reach out to government delegates  
to explain to them the ISOC view of the items on the meeting agenda.   
Those were:

-  To draft a global policy proposal for the reservation of a large  
IPv6 block, taking into consideration the future needs of developing  
countries, as outlined in paragraph 23 of C09/29.

-  To further study possible methodologies and related implementation  
mechanisms to ensure ‘equitable access’ to IPv6 resource by countries.

-  To further study the possibility for ITU to become another Internet  
Registry, and propose policies and procedures for ITU to manage a  
reserved IPv6 block.

-  To further study the feasibility and advisability of implementing  
the CIR [Country Internet Registry] model for those countries who  
would request national allocations.

-  To assist in the implementation of the project called for by  
Resolution 64, taking into account the needs at regional and national  
level in terms of capacity building and allocation policies.

-  To report to ITU Council 2010 [13-22 April, 2010].

During the ICANN meeting and in Geneva before the meeting, it was  
really encouraging to hear from several members that they had used the  
material to brief their governments.  Equally encouraging, I heard  
from several governments that they had received the ISOC briefing from  
various sources, and that they had found it useful in their own  
preparations.  Those reports speak strongly for the willingness and  
ability of our membership to inform their national governments about  
ISOC’s positions and the importance of the Internet model and  
maintaining support for the Internet ecosystem when they are well  
informed about an issue and are provided with briefing material to  
help them.  That is a real strength of ISOC and should be developed  
further in future.

The meeting itself was successful from the perspective of effectively  
defending and even promoting the legitimacy of the existing Internet  
organizations, particularly the Regional Internet Registries.  All  
Member States that spoke except one supported the existing  
institutions and tried to confine discussions of the ITU role to  
things it can do within its mandate.  The strong and focused  
interventions by the Internet technical community were helpful and  
informative.  The RIR group repeatedly provided detailed technical and  
organizational information to inform the debate.  ISOC interventions  
were supportive of the Internet ecosystem, and concentrated on a  
higher level message, pointing out that issues about Internet address  
allocation and policies should be discussed in the appropriate  
existing forums.  Those were well received by the governments and  
private sector representatives.

Despite incorrect and misleading statements by one delegate about the  
nature and influence of IP addresses and addressing policy, the Chair  
of the meeting remained scrupulously neutral and fair, and guided the  
meeting to a reasonable conclusion.  The meeting ended by creating two  
“correspondence groups” to continue the discussion before its next  
meeting, beginning September 1, 2010.  The first correspondence group  
is to start developing an ITU Development Sector project to do  
capacity building to help developing countries to implement IPv6  
deployment, including studies of the costs and mechanisms associated  
with the project.  The second correspondence group is assigned to  
identify specific cases where member states have identified a problem  
obtaining IPv6 addresses, and to study ways of dealing with those  
problems within the existing system.  The draft report recognizes that  
efforts to include ongoing study of the Country Internet Registry  
proposal from the NAV6 document, or of the rules for ITU to become  
some kind of global Internet Registry would be premature, in spite of  
some efforts to have the correspondence group focus on evaluating the  
viability of that proposal.

The meeting was successful for ISOC, because it gave us opportunities  
to explain both the existing system and why the ITU is the wrong place  
to be talking about Internet addressing.  But the meeting was  
nonetheless a discussion about core Internet matters that took place  
in an organization that hasn't demonstrated why it should have any  
special status or role in address allocation or addressing policy  
(although ITU could certainly help its Member States by undertaking  
capacity building activities).  Overall, the discussion in Geneva  
definitely seemed to be trending toward continuation of the ITU IPv6  
Group, reinforcing this by inviting (read: expecting) continued  
participation by representatives of the Internet technical community,  
rather than following ISOC’s suggestion that it would be better to  
take the discussion to the relevant forums instead.

I believe that ISOC will need to carefully consider next steps.  That  
consideration will have to include detailed internal discussions, as  
well as discussions with the RIRs and ICANN (which will be invited to  
the September meeting).  At this time it does not seem that this ITU  
process can be ignored, but as an organization we should continue to  
recommend that discussions about Internet address allocation and  
related policy be held in the appropriate Internet organizations.

Questions or comments to Bill Graham (graham at isoc.org)