Aftab Siddiqui from the Deploy360 team attended the 19th Pacific Network Operator’s Group (PacNOG 19) in Nadi, Fiji. The event was divided into a conference (28 November 2016) and workshops (29 November – 2 December 2016), and was organized by Pacific Islands Telecommunications Association (PITA) with support from APNIC, ICANN and NSRC.
The event featured some interesting topics with a mixture of international and local speakers that attracted around 100 attendees from Pacific Island nations such as Kiribati, the Solomon Islands, the Cook Islands, Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu, Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and of course Fiji itself. The presentations from the event can be found here.
PITA Executive Committee member Mr. George Samisoni provided the opening remarks and shared PITA’s perspective in supporting various initiatives in the region to strengthen the telecoms infrastructure. He emphasized community engagement, Internet governance and cybersecurity issues.
Elly Tawhai, an IP Resource Analyst from APNIC then presented the Resource Update. She explained the current IPv4 delegation policy and status of IPv4 delegations in the region, along with the fact there is an IPv4 waiting list where 155 members are waiting to receive a /22 allocation from the IANA recovered address blocks. She also explained the importance of Whois updates.
Save Vocea, Regional Vice President – Oceania from ICANN presented a brief introduction of ICANN, TLD universal acceptance, KSK rollover updates and ICANN’s engagement in the region. He also briefly explained the IANA steward transition and the current status of post-transition IANA (PTI).
Save Vocea, Security Specialist from APNIC shared his views on the importance of Security Incident Response Capabilities & CSIRTs and explained the cyber-security framework and how the whole eco-system works. This included CERT/CSIRT activities in the Asia-Pacific region.
Fakrul Alam from APNIC presented the Route Hijacking and the role of RPKI in Securing Internet Routing Infrastructure and also shared the Fiji Internet resource information [Total ASNs delegated by RIR: 8, Visible IPv4 routes: 50, Visible IPv6 routes: 5]
Aftab Siddiqui from the Internet Society presented his experience with Open Networking and how it is transforming the networking paradigm by changing network deployments and providing exponential capacity.
There were some regional technology and infrastructure updates from the Fiji National University, Fiji Telecom and Nauru Government representatives.
During the open discussion session, most of the participants highlighted the importance of a regional Internet Exchange and CERT/CSIRTss to support the growth of the Internet eco-system and keep it secured.
The conference day ended with a great gala dinner with an awesome barbecue.