[governance] India's communications minister - root server misunderstanding (still...)

[Adam Peake]

Keeping in mind that news articles aren't always reliable...

Worth noting India is hardly an unconnected country.  Tata
Communications runs a global cable network, is a U.S. tier one
backbone provider.  There's a major national neutral interent
exchange, NIXI (now run by Dr. Govind who was one of the organizers of
the IGF in Hyderabad, ran the ICANN GAC secretariat.)

That such a senior govt official from a highly developed ICT country
appears clueless about how the Internet works, is a shame.  And is
exactly what we faced in 2002/3 in WSIS, talking to delegations,
explaining Internet basics.

What can anyone do to help? Not much, the Indian government has many
experts who could brief the minister, if he/his office don't seek
their advice then there's nothing we can do.

Adam


On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 4:58 PM, Roland Perry
<roland at internetpolicyagency.com> wrote:
> In message <501A2ADB-BF64-4AE1-BCD7-053BF8C75AD7 at virtualized.org>, at
> 09:48:33 on Thu, 2 Aug 2012, David Conrad <drc at virtualized.org> writes
>
>> On Aug 2, 2012, at 7:14 AM, Roland Perry <roland at internetpolicyagency.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Happy to write something, especially if it starts to dispel the needless
>>> confusion between (eg) Root servers and Route servers.
>>
>>
>> Err.  Traffic doesn't flow through route servers either (:-)).
>
>
> Yes I know, but it's another example of almost deliberate built-in
> confusion.
>
>
>> While writing yet another document aimed at policy makers explaining the
>> role of the root servers would undoubtedly be beneficial (and I'd be happy
>> to contribute), the fact that the demonstrated level of misunderstanding
>> currently exists despite the Indian GAC rep being an advisor to the Ministry
>> of Communications and Information Technology may suggest there are larger
>> issues here.
>>
>> I guess the real question I'm asking is how can the 'technical community'
>> most effectively communicate the underlying realities of the Internet to
>> policy makers? Is writing briefs the best way or are there other approaches
>> that would increase the likelihood that policy makers would actually
>> understand what it is they are attempting to create policy for?
>
>
> I believe I listed some activities that would help. Traditional briefing
> papers tend to suffer from being like pieces in a jigsaw, and it's how they
> fit together that needs explaining.
>
> To that extent, the paper I've started writing about Root Servers is more in
> the nature of "the ecosystem of the DNS", which is a wide enough subject to
> be able to give a picture that a non-techie has some hope of understanding.
> --
> Roland Perry
>
>
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