[governance] Has the technical community failed wrt IPv6' .... Governance Frameworks for Critical Internet Resources'

[Guru@ITfC]

Not very long back, the thrust of quite a few discussions and submissions on
ig was  "... Ig issues are really technical in nature and should be left to
'neutral' technical bodies and experts to decide ... And should not be
'politicised' or become a playground for non-experts, including Governments
to influence or participate in decision making ...."

So here we seem to have moved 180 degree to assert that the (non) move to
IPv6 is really a political and policy failure than a technical one. I agree,
for how can the technical community make a move happen or not happen, they
can only provide (valuable) substantive inputs on the need for the move and
the pros and cons ... And people / institutions who govern / play a role in
governance need to make the larger decisions of movement 

An element of policy or politics is inherent in such movements, since
invariably they have pros and cons and affect different sections differently
... For e.g. one perspective could be that the move to IPv6 is critical for
nations as India or China that will need significant 'quantity' of these
resources in the days to come ... While the move involves costs (of
migration) for the current players, without commensurate benefits to them.

So are we also saying that the original wisdom of internet being ideally
"self-regulated" by an "internal / trade-association" is not really
valid.... And we need to explore governance structures and processes that
would do both - get the best of technical inputs in, as well as negotiate
amongst multiple stakeholders to arrive at decisions that are both
'desirable' and 'implementable' ....  ("War is too important to be left to
the generals")

I am also intrigued by Paul's assertion that "... which is that progress may
rely, in the end, on demand at the consumer/grassroots level". I am not able
visualise a billion Indians standing up to demand IPv6 implementation ...
Policy making perhaps is more complex than 'meeting the demand articulated
by consumers', though the needs of individuals is indeed a critical input to
policy. 

We hope to discuss some of these issues in a workshop at IGF workshop on
"Governance Frameworks for Critical Internet Resources" (see
http://info.intgovforum.org/yoppy.php?poj=37) on Nov 14. Speakers include
Carlos Afonso, Milton Mueller, George Sadowsky ....

This workshop will seek to explore the normative basis of present systems of
governance of critical internet resources, and also alternative normative
bases or frameworks - like ones based on 'commons' principle, public
interest principle, or 'public-ness' of the Internet principle, and such.
Obviously, such an exploration will also go into examining what constitutes
public interest in IG, and which publics are involved here. While stability
and security are obvious issues, other issues of public interest such as
"development of the Internet" may require greater elaboration, and may also
involve greater policy trade-offs. The IPv6 migration issue may be one such.

Guru
_____________
Gurumurthy K
IT for Change, Bangalore
Bridging Development Realities and Technological Possibilities
www.ITforChange.net 
Ps - this is ver 2.0 of a mail I sent couple of days earlier which has not
reached the list...
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Wilson [mailto:pwilson at apnic.net]
Sent: Friday, November 02, 2007 4:19 AM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: Re: [governance] Re: Warning over Net address limits

>> the Internet technical community's biggest failure.
>
> I fail to see why it's the *technical* community failure. Technically,
> IPv6 works and do so for a long time. Its non-deployment is purely the 
> result of economical, financial and political decisions (or lack of), 
> without any technical issue involved.

Absolutely.  It's like blaming the "scientific community" for global
warming, because their solar panels and fuel cells haven't been taken up by
industry and the community.

IPv6 has been deployable for years, but the business case hasn't existed,
just as it hasn't existed for hybrid cars until recently. Meanwhile IPv4
addresses keep getting allocated, and the earth gets hotter and hotter. I'm
not defending that state of affairs (far from it) but it is the world we
live in.

So we can take a lesson from the climate issue, which is that progress may
rely, in the end, on demand at the consumer/grassroots level.   It's not 
that Governments don't have a role, but that the real missing link here is
demand from Internet users to get IPv6 services from their providers.

If IPv6 has a problem, it is that there is no feature that will make any
immediate difference to the users - on the contrary it is designed to behave
exactly the same way as IPv4.  Then again a Prius drives like any other car,
but people are starting to buy it...

Paul.

________________________________________________________________________
Paul Wilson, Director-General, APNIC                      <dg at apnic.net>
http://www.apnic.net                            ph/fx +61 7 3858 3100/99

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