Veni | Вени

Малка бележка (updated)
В последните дни чета из българските медии какво били мислили в ICANN.
Като представител на тази организация за нашия регион, мога само да кажа, че никой, с едно изключение, не се е обръщал към ICANN официално с въпрос какво мисли организацията по един или друг въпрос, свързан с България. Изключението е питане от Министерството на транспорта, информационните технологии и съобщенията, отговорът на което бе отразен, но само в 2-3 вестника.
Много е важно да се знае, че всеки има право да участва в срещите на ICANN. Участието може да става както на място, така и дистанционно – чрез Интернет. ICANN не е затворен клуб, в който да се допускат само определени хора, а предлага нов, отворен модел за участие на всички заинтересовани – потребители, бизнес, правителства. Това, че някой е присъствал или не на една или повече срещи на ICANN не бива да го прави повече или по-малко важен в България.

И накрая – ICANN не може да вземе отношение по дискусии в България с думите “ние подкрепяме тези или онези”. ICANN работи с всички, без дискриминация.

Световният Интернет влиза в нова ера с подписването на документа за задължения между ICANN и правителството на САЩ.

Новият документ потвърждава, че Интернет ще продължи да се развива както и досега – от организация, в която участват всички заинтересовани страни: частният сектор, гражданското общество, правителствата, потребителите. Ще продължи развитието на политики, насочени към включване на нови домейни и – което е особено важно за България! – на домейни на кирилица. Както знаете, България бе първата страна, поискала официално от ICANN създаването на домейн “.бг”.

По повод приключването на договора, зам.-министърът на транспорта, съобщенията и информационните технологии Първан Русинов заяви (цитиран и на сайта на ИКАНН):

“България и българското правителство винаги сме подкрепяли развитието на Интернет у нас, а е известно, че по света сме давани за пример с либералното си законодателство. Нека напомня, че ние сме една от малкото, ако не и единствената държава, в която по законодателен път е решен проблемът с управлението на домейните и IP адресите – в интерес на Интернет-потребителите. Нашето управление продължава традицията на предишните – на сътрудничество с частния сектор, с неправителствените организации и с потребителите. Ние сме решени да предложим в кратки срокове работещо електронно правителство и разчитаме на иновативния български бизнес да ни подкрепи. България участва в работата на ICANN от самото създаване, чрез постоянен представител на МТСИТ в Правителствения консултативен комитет, а в продължение на три години имахме и наш съгражданин – член на Съвета на директорите на организацията. ICANN проведе заседание на Съвета в България през 2006 г. Много добре е, че ICANN тръгва по нов път, в който ще се отчита вече не само на американското правителство, както беше досега, а на целия свят. България е една от страните, които са дали заявката си за създаването на нов домейн от най-високо ниво, “.бг” (на кирилица) и ние работим с ICANN за реализирането на тази задача в най-кратки срокове.”

Повече информация – на сайта на ICANN.
Мнение на руските Интернет-лидери – в блога на ICANN.

Today, at 11 a.m. Moscow time, ICANN signed the zone file for .ru with a cryptographic key approved by the US Government. The news was announced during the meeting of President Obama and President Medvedev in London, and conveyed by me in Moscow, at a session on DNSSEC, with Suzanne Woolf and Steve Crocker participating by phone.

The phone was used, because after signing the zone, the Russian Internet apparently had some issues, which the local community is working upon as right now.

P.S. by now, 8:45 Moscow time, the problems are solved. They were not related to the signing of the root, but to an error in the TCP/IP, which the Russians decided to change earlier that day. Because they were using GOST (a governmental standard), which is above the world quality level, the Russian TCP/IP v.6 was moving above the normal TCP/IP. The Russians decided to go back to the old TCP/IP v.4, and now all the Internet is back to normal.

Igor Schegolev, the Russian Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications spoke at the opening of the InfoCom 2008 exhibition in Moscow. Among other things, which made news (for example, that the Russian government will be implementing a free and open source based operating system on all computers in the Russian schools), he also made the following remarks (translated by me in English):

“In the whole society, the Internet resources play major role in securing national standard for access to information.
At the same time, in every country, if the Internet is not protected from malicious actions, that causes direct risks for the political and economic stability, and social prosperity, as there are many processes (including business), relaying on the Net.
It is important to state the “critically important” resources of the national segment of the Internet. We need to define the risks, the weak spots, develop measures for ensuring information security. We need technologies and defense mechanisms from foreign, as well as from domestic actions.
Not long ago, the Internet entered a new phase in its development. Before for writing a domain name, one could use only Latin alphabet, while the usage of national alphabets means multilingual of the Net.
The Ministry has started a program for promoting Russian language in the domain name system. We hope that in the next year we’ll be able to finish the process, and we already have serious allies and partners on that road, and not only from the states of the former Soviet Union, but from other countries, where Cyrillic is being used, namely Bulgaria.”

His talk shows a continuous support for the development of the Russian country-code top level domain in Cyrillic (.рф, .rf for Russian Federation).
The whole process has started in the beginning of the year, as stated in this letter, and has continued after the formation of the new Russian cabinet, under Prime Minister Putin, as expressed in this letter from the Russian Minister to Paul Twomey, ICANN’s President and CEO.

Много хора напоследък си чешат езиците по темата за домейните на кирилица. Цялата работа става типично българска, но това не бива да ни плаши.

Можете да прочетете в коментарите след предишната ми статия по темата, но не те са важните.

Важното е, че ще има домейни на кирилица, които ще се “разчитат” от цял свят. Важното е, че ще има възможност всеки – на собствената си азбука – да ползва Интернет. Всичко останало е маловажно.

Най-парадоксалното е, че противниците на “парцелирания” (по думите на Йовко) Интернет използват аргументи в защита на своята теза, които със същия успех могат да се използват за обратното. Ето конкретен пример: Йовко твърди, че можело да му се наложи да изпрати по пощата писмо на този електронен адрес (бил произволен): 億円減額@塔を爆破.設定
Но той пропуска да каже, че е възможно някой китаец да трябва да изпрати на Йовко писмо на yovko@whatever.com , което за въпросния китаец ще е толкова неразгадемо, колкото и за Йовко – горпосоченият адрес.

Защо въвеждането на домейни на езици, различни от латиницата е полезно? Защото няма да се налага всеки китаец, българин, руснак, японец и т.н. да учи английски, за да може да си общува със своите сънародници. Защото за мнозина (няколко милиарда!) хора английският е ненужен, труден за учене и, ако щете, непостижим от гледна точка на липсата на преподаватели, ненужността му в териториите, където не е официален език и т.н.

Логиката “Щом аз съм могъл да го науча, всеки може” издиша на няколко места. Интелигентният читател и сам може да си отговори защо тя куца, а на неинтелигентният няма смисъл и да се обяснява.

Ето още няколко въпроси, които получих по пощата или открих в Интернет:

vse pak shte e limitirano polzvaneto na net na sobstven ezik

Истината е, че собственият език в Интернет отдавна не е преимуществено английски. Съответно, съдържанието в Мрежата е в по-голямата си част изписано с нелатински азбуки.

тук: не са милиони българите не владеещи латиницата и ползващи компютри

За българите не знам – но виж, за китайците е сигурно, че не са милиони. А около милиард. Да не говорим за индийците, които имат 22 езика и 11 азбуки (а мнозина си мислят, че английският им е официален език).

vuprosyt e, che naistina shte e idiotsko da poluchish email ot kitai ot niakoi, koito ne znae angliiski i si misli, che shte go razberesh

Нищо не пречи и в момента да получаваш поща, която не разбираш, дошла до твоя адрес с латински букви, а не с кирилица. А ако някой от Китай ти пише на китайски по работа, то той със сигурност ще знае дали ти разбираш или не езика и азбуката, които той използва.

Great News!

As some of you probably know, ICANN will host its next meeting in Paris, June 22 – 27, at the Le Meridien Montparnasse hotel.

On June 24th we could have a concert of Goran Bregovic, as part of the musICANN!
For those of you, who know the music of the Balkan genius, there’s no need to explain more (for the others, check my blog here), but to ask you for support. We need to find the money necessary to host his band.

I will try to do this coordination effort, but my blog and this entry will serve as a focal point for all of you who want to see him at the ICANN meeting.

It’s worth doing it, and it is not that expensive, so the outreach to sponsors is on. I’ve contacted the manager of Goran, and she put me in touch with their French agent from Zamzama Productions. We are working on details about musical equipment needed. Here’s the most important part (please, help if you know people/companies that can provide us with this):

SOUND SYSTEM: High Quality Line Source Array System, Appropriate for delivering high SPL at highest to the entire audience. Main stereo system must be flown above stage front 4…6 small front fill speakers should be added at stage level for first row. Please, expect highly dynamic and sometimes LOUD music. SOUND SYSTEM should be connected to a clean supply and not to any light-in supply.
FOH MIXING BOARD: Yamaha PM 5 D RH or Yamaha PM 5 D (Yamaha Pm3500 with 10 comp. rack and 2 reverbs TC 2000, Lex PCM 70 … if is PM 5 D is absolutely not available)
Prefered main systems: d & b J-series, Meyer Sound MILO, EV x-line or XLC, L-Acoustic dV-DOSC
Monitor mixing console: should have 24 inputs into 6 mixes, and graphic EQ on each output. Please, make HighPass filter on 150Hz for all monitors.

There are more requirements, but we’ll deal with Sebastien, my French colleague from ISOC-France on them.

Due to the size of the hall, and the fact it is going to be used for other events, we can have max. 1000 people, and the small band:

Goran Bregovic, Alen Adamovic (vocal) + 2 trumpets, 1 saxophone, 3 trombones (baritones), 1 Tuba and the 2 Bulgarian voices (read more about their fantastic performance here and here)

Many people talk about root servers, domain names, IP addresses, and these words sometimes sound like a secret society codes. Here’s an explanation of the number of root servers. Some people claim that the root servers are “controlled by the US Government”, and that this “control” means the US government (the “evil American imperialists”) can shut down the Internet in any given country, or even in the whole world, because they have the root servers under their (governmental) control. (by the way, I am not one of these people; just find it interesting to quote)

Kim Davies of IANA wrote this last week trying to explain how the root servers work:

I am at the UN Internet Governance Forum, being held this week in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A recurring theme you can hear here is one that has vexed the technical community many times before — “Why are there 13 root servers?” This question is usually followed by questions like “Why are most of the root servers in the US?”

So let’s dispel these myths.

There are not 13 root servers.

What there are is there are many hundreds of root servers at over 130 physical locations in many different countries. There are twelve organizations responsible for the overall coordination of the management of these servers.

So where does the 13 number come from?

There is a technical design limitation that means thirteen is a practical maximum to the number of named authorities in the delegation data for the root zone. These named authorities are listed alphabetically, from a.root-servers.net through m.root-servers.net. Each has associated with it an IP address (and shortly some will have more than one as IPv6 is further rolled out).

But when we think of servers, we probably think of physical machines that sit on a desk, or perhaps lined up in racks in a specialized computing facility. By any measure, there are not 13 servers as there is not a correlation between the number of named authorities, and the number of servers.

The majority of named authorities are spread across multiple cities, often multiple countries. The “I” root, for example, is located in 25 different countries. But ignoring the physical diversity, even those authorities that are just in one physical location — the reality is they are comprised of networks of multiple servers that handle the millions of DNS queries the root servers receive every hour.

Another thing you may hear is that some of these root servers are just copies, whilst others are the “real” name servers. The reality is that every single root server is a copy, and none of them are more special than the others. In fact, the true master server from which the copies are made is not one of the public root servers.

So next time you hear there are 13 root servers, or that they are mostly in the US, just remember this map, courtesy of Patrik Fältström:

View Larger Map

Note from Veni: There is one such a server in Bulgaria. I blogged about it last year. That makes Bulgaria again on the cutting edge of technology, and I am quite happy to be able to contribute to this happening.
_____
Wikipedia gives this explanation:
No more names can be used because of protocol limitations – UDP packet can only carry 512 bytes reliably and a hint file with more than 13 servers would be larger than 512 bytes – but the C, F, I, J, K, L and M servers now exist in multiple locations on different continents, using anycast announcements to provide a decentralized service. As a result most of the physical, rather than nominal, root servers are now outside the United States.

My friend and colleague Joi Ito has wrote a good piece about ICANN. Read it at his blog or here.

What used to think ICANN was like…

Apologies for the delay in writing the post. I’ve been trying to think about what to say and have just decided that I better write it before my thoughts get old…

I joined the ICANN board during the December 2004 ICANN meeting in Cape Town. I served for a three year term and stepped down at this last meeting in Los Angeles and didn’t run for another term. My apologies to all of the ICANN community and the people who helped me learn about and participate in the complex but important process that is ICANN.

Before joining ICANN, I thought that ICANN was the only part of the Internet that wasn’t really working. I knew that there must be a better way to do what ICANN does, but I couldn’t be bothered to figure it out. I’d agree with people who said things like, “it should just be distributed” or “it should just be first come first serve” or “we should just get rid of it.” People from ICANN would say, “it’s more complicated than that” or “at this point that would be impossible.”

After being part of the process for three years, I find myself saying those same things and feeling a sense of exasperation at the people who take pot shots at ICANN from the peanut gallery without really trying to help or change things. I also have gained a huge respect for most of the people who participate in ICANN, many as volunteers, trying to improve the process and keep the Internet running.

With all of it’s tumultuous history and bumps and warts, ICANN, in my opinion, is the best way that we can manage names and numbers on the Internet and any new thing to try to do what it does would be less fair and probably wouldn’t work.

There are some technical architectures and ideas that might make ICANN less relevant, which would be a good thing. However, even relatively obvious things like IPv6, IDNs and DNSEC are having a hard time getting traction. I think that it would be nearly impossible to “redesign the DNS” and get people to use it. It would be like trying to redesign a flying airplane. On the other hand, their might be some evolutionary changes that make domain names less relevant.

The ICANN process as it is currently working involves a number of supporting organizations that feed into a consensus and policy development process. The board is 15 people, 8 who are “neutral” and nominated from the public through the nomcom process and 7 who are elected from the supporting organizations. It is geographically and otherwise fairly well distributed and balanced. It is nearly impossible to “capture” the process. If any stakeholder wants to participate, they just have to show up.

The problem that ICANN has is not one of being unfair, the problem that ICANN has is the difficulty and time required in trying to reach consensus on difficult issues. The other problem is that most of the people who are affected by the decisions, the average users, don’t know or care about ICANN. Trying to figure out an better way to get their input has always been an issue, but is one that is not unique for ICANN. All of politics and collective action share the difficulty in getting the public to care about issues that affect them.

When I was urged by a number of people to join the board, I thought of my term on the board as a kind of “jury duty”. I had been benefiting from the Internet running properly for the last decade, building businesses and my social network on the Internet. I felt that three years would be a kind of “community service” to give back some of what I had received. The board work included nearly monthly conference calls, probably several thousand pages of reading, two face-to-face board retreats and three meetings per year. The meetings are a week long. This adds up to nearly two months or more of work a year.

As the new chairman of Creative Commons and my portfolio of companies requiring more and more of my time, I just couldn’t justify serving another term. I calculated that I spent more time reading about and discussion whether we should allow .xxx than I spent on any one portfolio company this year… and at the end of it, I voted in the minority and .xxx was shot down and I ended up as just a voting statistic.

Having said that, I have no regrets. I met amazing people, learned a lot about how the Internet works and have gained a great respect for the people and the organizations that make up and contribute to ICANN. Many thanks to the ICANN staff, board and various constituents who have made my term a fruitful and exciting one.

I think his points are quite relevant.
In May 2006 I calculated the time spent on ICANN issues as 50 %.
People are generally not interested in the way the Internet is working, as long as it works. I will be blogging more on that in the next coming weeks.

From the ICANN press release:

The ICANN community came together to thank retiring chair Vint Cerf for his eight years of service on the board at a gala ceremony at the 30th International Public Meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

“Vint was very much a part of the ICANN model’s creation. No individual, no country, no company controls the Internet. Instead, it is the Internet community that drives the ICANN agenda,” said Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN’s President and CEO. “I want to thank Vint for his friendship, his enthusiasm, and his guidance. People may not realize that Vint, like all members of the ICANN board, serve the ICANN community as volunteers. It’s an incredible sacrifice made in the name of a stronger and better single globally interoperable Internet. That model works.”

Dr Twomey led the tributes at the event, which included speeches from Ira Magaziner, who oversaw the Clinton White House policy on the Internet that led to the creation of ICANN, and Steve Crocker, Chair of ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee and a life-long friend of Vint Cerf.

There were also video tributes from across the globe:

“If the Internet is about networking — the sharing of information with no central point of control — then as ICANN’s board chairman, Vint has applied that same basic philosophy. He has led a model that is about coordination not control,” said Vice President Al Gore. “On behalf of Internet users everywhere, I would like to simply say thank you so much. Thanks for your work at ICANN; for your vision; thanks for being a great friend, mentor, and colleague.”

“Vint is a great friend of Egypt, he is a great friend of mine. I have known him for the past 20 years,” said Dr. Tarek Kamel, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Arab Republic of Egypt. “He has led the board of ICANN for many years with vision and the right leadership in an issue that has been creating a debate worldwide.”

“I have one great hero in my life, and his name is Vint Cerf,” said Dr Eric Schmidt, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Google. “It’s no surprise that during the last almost 10 years of his leadership in ICANN, you all working hard have delivered more than four times global internet users, the creation of many new internet domains, and more importantly the values espoused by the kind of governance and consensus building that has so characterized Vint in his entire professional career.”

“The European Commission has been supportive of the ICANN process since the outset and it will continue to be so as ICANN addresses future exciting challenges such as internationalized domain names, new generic top level domains, the transition to IPv6,” said Commissioner Viviane Reding, Member of the European Commission (Information Society and Media). “You leave ICANN a much stronger organization now than have you entered it, and an organization that has benefited much from the skills and the reputation of its chairman.”

“Vint doesn’t limit himself to being in California, or part of the Unites States, or in our planet — he wants to develop an Internet that is across the whole Solar System, the idea being that anyone can dial in an address for a space craft, or a rover, or any assets we have in space and you can directly communicate with them,” said Dr. Charles Elachi, Director, Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “This is an example of how visionary Vint is.”

ICANN will be posting a video of these tributes later this week.

I have published pictures from the event, and I will blog about Vint at some later point.
I had the honor to serve with him at the ICANN Board between 2003 and 2006, and that comes with lots of memories.

English text first, български – по-надолу!

Internet users around the globe can now experiment with their name in their language on their Internet with today’s launch of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) live testing of Internationalized Domain Names in 11 languages.

“This is one of the most exciting times yet in the development of IDNs,” said Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN’s President and CEO. “Internet users who speak the 11 languages of the test can play a key role in testing how IDNs operate, and help us move toward full implementation for all the languages of the world.”

Internet users around the globe can now access wiki pages with the domain name example.test in the 11 test languages — Arabic, Persian, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese and Tamil. The wikis will allow Internet users to establish their own subpages with their own names in their own language — one suggestion is: example.test/yourname.
Read more…