Session
Organizer 1: Tiago Jun Nakamura Nakamura, 🔒
Organizer 2: Eduardo Barasal Morales, 🔒NIC.br
Organizer 3: Lucas Jorge da Silva, NIC.br
Organizer 4: Merike Kaeo, 🔒
Organizer 5: Olatunde Awobuluyi, 🔒
Organizer 6: Nathalia Sautchuk Patricio, NRO Review Committee
Organizer 7: Dina Santana Santos, Internet Society
Speaker 1: Merike Kaeo, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 2: Olatunde Awobuluyi, Technical Community, African Group
Speaker 3: Nathalia Sautchuk Patricio, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Tiago Jun Nakamura Nakamura, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Eduardo Barasal Morales, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Dina Santana Santos, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Roundtable
Duration (minutes): 60
Format description: The roundtable format ensures a more democratic activity as the discussion needs as many inputs as possible from the community. Although we are dealing with a technical operation discussion, the issue discussed in this workshop is relevant to every multistakeholder, because the consequences of the risks presented affects every Internet user.
60 minutes is enough for this workshop as each speaker can have up to 10 minutes to explain the issues from their stakeholder/region point of view as well as up to 20 minutes of open mic for the audience to participate in the discussion. We will use an online quiz platform to guide the workshop through the policy questions, so the audience (both onsite and online) will have time to interact with the discussion.
The discussion in the proposed session will be facilitated around three policy questions posed for the participants as well as the audience in general:
A. How can the Internet's multistakeholder ecosystem be technically, politically and economically prepared to receive innovative changes in the Internet's infrastructure while avoiding compatibility risks?
B. How can we enable a multistakeholder approach to better engage in Internet technical innovation (so that every stakeholder is included in the discussion)?
C. What are the risks and impacts of the Internet's future for the stakeholder's shares that are not able to follow up the technical innovation?
What will participants gain from attending this session? The purpose of this session is to raise awareness both in an international and collaborative environment. Although it is extremely widespread that all Autonomous Systems should adopt the most modern standards, protocols, and security measures, in their networks, it is rarely discussed how to convince everyone to get involved in deploying structural changes in the Internet's infrastructure. Every multistakeholder carries out a relevant role in the future of the Internet's infrastructure.
The participants and attendees, in addition to acquiring knowledge in the session with the debate, are expected to be able to contribute by presenting their perspectives and solutions to the exposed problem.
In conclusion, It is also expected that after all the discussions presented at this workshop, this will increase the concern about the theme and help to engage more people in the adoption of new standards, protocols and security measures.
Description:
From its creation to the present day, the Internet has been working in an innovative decentralized way. Currently, its infrastructure is composed of approximately 100.000 independent networks (government, academia, enterprise, provider and others) that connect and exchange Internet traffic among themselves. Each of these networks is considered an Autonomous System (AS). Each AS has the authority and autonomy to build its own network infrastructure and decide how it will communicate with other ASes. This model, however, is not perfect and has its own risks.
While a decentralized network has aided the innovation of the Internet by allowing any institution to build its own network, it also made it challenging to manage adjustments and upgrades within this model. For example, deploying structural changes in the Internet's infrastructure such as replacing protocols, adopting new standards, implementing security measures, among others is incredibly difficult to accomplish.
The technical operation challenges of making adjustments to the Internet model are numerous, because in order for a change in the internet's infrastructure to be deployed effectively, it requires that all ASes adopt it. If any of the Internet's ASes don't adopt it they have a risk of being left out of the main Internet's network, leaving these AS isolated from the rest. One of many issues of this kind is the IPv6 protocol.
IPv6 was developed to replace IPv4 on the Internet. It is an innovative protocol that solves many problems that we have with IPv4. However, this migration of protocols isn't a trivial task. By design decision, one is incompatible with the other. 26 years have passed and IPv6 adoption remains low while IPv4 addresses have been exhausted. This situation presents a high risk to the Internet's technical operation, due to the emergence of IPv4-only and IPv6-only islands that do not communicate with each other.
Currently there are some global multistakeholder entities that aim to raise awareness of the Internet's innovation and its technical operations risks discussed in this workshop such as Internet Society (ISOC) and ICANN. Some of those initiatives have been very successful in raising awareness of this topic such as MANRS, KINDNS, World IPv6 Launch, DNS root KSK rollover.
The main expected outcome for this session would be for the audience to have a better understanding of Internet infrastructure and the awareness of Internet's innovation and its technical operations risks. With this outcome, it is possible to enable a multistakeholder approach for avoiding the risks discussed in this workshop through a document with the solutions proposed as well as initiatives such as Hubs, discussion groups and follow-up events at IGF in the next few years.
Hybrid Format: The discussion will be facilitated by the onsite moderator who will use a quiz platform called Kahoot to present the policy questions that will be debated by the panelists and the audience. We used this platform at Youth LACIGF 2023, and we had great results in boosting audience interaction. The online moderator will make sure the remote participants are represented in the debate.
Online participation and interaction will rely on the IGF online platform (Zoom). Those joining the session using Zoom (either invited members of the debate or the general audience) will be granted the floor during the workshop. People in charge of the moderation will strive to entertain onsite and remote participation indiscriminately.
Lastly, having two moderators (onsite and online) will facilitate the control of time, which will be very important for the proper functioning of the workshop.