ICANN Independence Day
Sep/090
Today is a historic day in the evolution of the Internet. On 30 September 2009, the JPA (Joint Project Agreement) between ICANN, the Internet governing body, and the United States Government expired. Many commentators believed the US Government would not allow the agreement which maintained their ultimate control to simply lapse, but it appears in all the ways that matter that it has.
ICANN is a multi-stakeholder organisation in which anyone can have a say. 2020Media regularly attend ICANN meetings, and compared to say, Nominet, the bottom-up approach is refreshing and stimulating.
The announcement by ICANN today includes an Affirmation of Commitment which we believe is ICANN’s way of promising to ‘be good’ in the future. In it ICANN promises to do periodic reviews of their accountability and transparency – but crucially these will report to the GAC, an ICANN constituency body representing all governments, not just the US government.
Vint Cerf
Vint Cerf commented: “[The agreement] fulfils a long-standing objective of the original formation of Icann: to create an organisation that can serve the world’s interest in a robust, reliable and interoperable internet.”
Internet Updates
Sep/090
Network Meeting
Last week we had the opportunity to catch up with our fellow network operators. Amongst the interesting topics discussed were IP address depletion updates – suggestions that broadband providers might NAT their entire customer bases!
As most users have NAT on their broadband already, this effectively means double NAT – if you rely on a fixed IP address to the outside world, this has major consequences.
If you’re one of our broadband customers, we’d like to hear what you think. Let us know.
We also enjoyed a humourous talk on care of fibre optic cables. Unfortunately the detailed warnings on only using specialised cleaning equipment costing thousands of dollars was left a little deflated after a quick wipe on someone’s jeans gave excellent results!
From dirty to clean via trousers
Now Reading
All about the man behind Oracle, Larry Ellison. A man almost better known than the company he founded.
