Session
Moderator: Theresa Swinehart, ICANN
Online moderator: Adam Peake, ICANN
Rapporteur: Becky McGilley, ICANN
Ulka Athale, RIPE NCC
Olaf Kolkman, Internet Society
Fahd Batayneh, ICANN
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
9.1
9.2
9.3
9.4
10.2
10.6
17.9
Targets: 4.1 By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes 4.2 By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education 4.3 By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university 4.4 By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship 9.1 Develop quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure, including regional and transborder infrastructure, to support economic development and human well-being, with a focus on affordable and equitable access for all 9.2 Promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and, by 2030, significantly raise industry’s share of employment and gross domestic product, in line with national circumstances, and double its share in least developed countries 9.3 Increase the access of small-scale industrial and other enterprises, in particular in developing countries, to financial services, including affordable credit, and their integration into value chains and markets 9.4 By 2030, upgrade infrastructure and retrofit industries to make them sustainable, with increased resource-use efficiency and greater adoption of clean and environmentally sound technologies and industrial processes, with all countries taking action in accordance with their respective capabilities 10.2 By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status 10.6 Ensure enhanced representation and voice for developing countries in decision-making in global international economic and financial institutions in order to deliver more effective, credible, accountable and legitimate institutions 17.9 Enhance international support for implementing effective and targeted capacity-building in developing countries to support national plans to implement all the sustainable development goals, including through North-South, South-South and triangular cooperation
Roundtable
In a roundtable format, the session will mix information from experts with questions and dialogue. There will be designated speakers for each of the main topics of the session, but other experts, representative of different regions, will also attend. The Internet is inherently a collaboration, we aim to use the session to inform and also identify areas for collaboration. Participants in the session will gain a comprehensive understanding of the topics at hand without feeling rushed. Presenters and discussants will include representatives all the Internet Technical Community Organisations from all regiobs: ICANN, Regional Internet Registries, ISOC, IETC and Country Code Top Level Domain Name mangers.
What do we mean when we say the "Internet"? To many of us, the Internet might be what we access on our phones or laptops – content, applications, and services. It provides a way for us to communicate with family, friends, and colleagues, and to access and share information. However, the Internet – an essential communications, development, and empowerment tool – would be impossible without its technical meaning. The Internet is a network of many networks, more than 70,000+, independently owned and managed, that are globally connected and use common protocols that facilitate communications and enable interoperability. The Internet We Want is only possible because of the stability, resiliency and interoperability of its technical foundation. The technical aspects that make up the Internet are invisible to many and are often taken for granted. The session aims to strengthen participants' understanding of the technical foundations of the Internet and the technical community’s role in the Internet’s operations and development. We will discuss how these organizations that comprise the Technical Community, with separate responsibilities and work together to ensure the Internet continues to function well. The session will take a step-by-step approach in explaining how Internet communications are enabled. How do our computers know where to find the website we want to access? How does our email end up at the correct destination? At this year's IGF, we will discuss the Internet We Want. This session will provide participants with a deeper understanding of how the Internet’s technical foundations and robust multistakeholder governance model supports the Internet we all want.
We encourage online as well as onsite participants. The Internet technical community is very familiar with working on hybrid formats, it is how we conduct many of our meetings. The moderators and speaker are very experienced in this format.
Report
Moderator: Theresa Swinehart, ICANN
Speakers:
Olaf Kolkman, Internet Society
Ulka Athale, RIPE NCC
Fahd Batayneh, ICANN
Session description and introduction:
The Internet technical community focuses on the foundation "layer" of the Internet -- the global, interconnected network of networks that ensures data flows to deliver content, services and applications. Speakers discussed the technical operation of the Internet and how policies are developed by their respective multistakeholder communities. The technical community that provides the Internet is itself as a unique stakeholder in Internet governance. It is defined by their respective technical functions and how policies are developed "bottom-up" by inclusive community-led processes.
Technical underpinnings of the Internet
From an Internet technologist's perspective, the Internet is a global network of networks that through the interoperability and interconnectedness of more than 70,000 autonomous networks gives the impression to users that they are connecting to a single cloud. Each network in this notional cloud connects to other networks, each network making its own decisions about which networks to connect to. The operator of a new network can choose to join the Internet --i.e. choose to interconnect with other networks and share traffic across the networks-- by adopting open standards and protocols developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). These standards, essentially the user manual for the Internet, are developed by a global community of engineers who participate as volunteers in the IETF to develop and maintain these standards, i.e. the IETF is global and multistakeholder community of technical experts that is open to all.
Users access the network through an IP (Internet Protocol) address, an identifier unique to the user's device. Requests for information and messages are transmitted as packets. Each message is broken into small chunks, packets, each with information about the location on the network the packet needs to be transmitted to, and information that identifies it as a part of a whole message so that it can be put together and understood by the recipient, be that a person (e.g. email) or computer (e.g. an instruction to retrieve a document). Unique identifiers are at the heart of the Internet. A unique address is assigned for each device connected to the Internet, and to identify networks, servers and resources across the Internet. Unique assignment requires policies and governance, hence the technical community's role in providing, and coordinating the global Internet.
Regional Internet Registries (RIRs).
To connect a new network to be part of the 70,000+ networks that make up the global Internet, the first point of contact is the local Regional Internet Registry: the RIPE NCC (Europe and the Middle East), APNIC (Asia Pacific), LACNIC (Latin America and Caribbean), ARIN (North America), and, AFRINIC (Africa). RIRs manage the administration and registration of Internet number resources. When a new network joins the Internet an RIR will allocate the resources they need to connect and to route traffic. These resources include IP addresses and Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs). The RIRs maintain routing information and support technical coordination among the various network operators and people using these resources so networks can keep talking to each other.
RIR functions today have been in existence since the origin of the Internet with numbering resources always having to be allocated and administered. The RIR system has grown to reflect the complexity of the Internet as billions of users came online and needed access to these essential and unique resources.
IP addresses typically identify devices connected to the Internet. Autonomous System Numbers are used to identify networks so one network knows the identity of the next, and networks send data packets to each other depending on the routing information that the packets and the network contain. A network operator must have an ASN to control routing within its networks and to exchange routing information with other Internet service providers.
Allocation is hierarchical, starting from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), a central repository of numbers and protocol information and resources, to the RIRs, which then allocate to any entity that runs its own network – telecommunications services, ISPs, media providers, content networks, governments, universities, etc. An Internet service/connectivity provider then allocates IP addresses to users. As users experience it, IP addresses correspond to domain names, with a domain name easier to use than trying to remember a complex string of numbers.
The RIR’s are all independent non-governmental bodies. They are membership organizations, they develop their own policies for their region. RIRs are funded by membership fees. Policies are developed by the RIR's community, driven by governing boards with representatives elected by the community. Staff implement policies developed by their community. This is an inclusive multistakeholder approach organized in an open, bottom-up, consensus-based manner. Each RIR has different processes, but they each follow these principles.
ICANN
ICANN has a coordination role collaborating with many actors in the domain name industry; with the Regional Internet Registries, with the IETF and technical standards development bodies, with the domain name sector, network operators. Also, policy organizations such as those working on intellectual property and consumer rights, international trade, or the governance of different technologies such as the International Telecommunications Union and other intergovernmental bodies. i.e, coordination role collaboration with technical and non-technical actors.
Beyond ICANN's role coordinating the DNS, the organization develops policies for generic top-level domain names. Domain names act as a "user interface" between human users who find it convenient to remember and type letters and scripts, and the computers and devices on the Internet that communicate in numbers and codes. Recent expansion of the top-level domain name space to include internationalized domain names that use scripts other western alphabets are making the Internet more inclusive, a truly global multilingual Internet.
Every time someone sends an email or requests a URL for a website, the process starts with DNS resolution. Resolution is a database look-up process the translates a domain name entered in the user's device to an IP address so that data can be sent across the Internet to complete any request - almost everything a user does on the Internet involves DNS resolution. The system is in essence very simple, a simple database look-up process, but the global system is made up of millions of resolvers providing look-up distributed across the Internet. This system supports billions of queries every second, instantaneously and transparently from the user's point of view. The system is robust, globally distributed, resilient and secure.
ICANN has a unique form of governance with policy development led "bottom-up" by a community of volunteers from across the world all representing all stakeholder groups. While bottom-up and inclusive, it is also based on a complex set of processes (developed by the community) that ensure policy is developed in a transparent, accountable, and predictable way. The ICANN Board of Directors that manages these processes is made up of community members, but it only coordinates policy development, ensuring the defined processes and procedures have been followed. The Board does not make policy. ICANN staff support the community in their work, and with the community implement policy.
Outcome
The reason the Internet is governed in this way is because we need to maintain interoperability. We need coordination for IP addresses so that they are uniquely assigned. That coordination is done in a bottom-up fashion by the stakeholders that use those IP addresses and the other protocols to make th e network run. Standards development is done bottom-up by the stakeholders who need those standards to make things work. They follow these open standards as part of their commitment to becoming part of the Internet and collaborating globally to make this Internet. We need coordination to make sure DNS names are unique and assigned correctly so that they match with the IP address and data can move across the Internet in ways that were intended. ICANN's policy processes are developed by a global community of volunteers, and ensure that that this DNS coordination between names, numbers and protocols is achieved.
The Internet technical community develops standards and protocols, allocates Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and other resources, and oversees the coordination of the Domain Name System. We provide global connectivity which is then used by services and applications. Our work is inherently multistakeholder, both in how we are organized and in how we collaborate.