Last month in Kathmandu, Nepal, 750 delegates participated in APRICOT 2018 – Asia-Pacific’s largest Internet conference. It was led by Internet Exchange Nepal (npIX) with support from several organizations including the Internet Society (ISOC) Nepal Chapter.
The Internet Society, through its Asia-Pacific Bureau, is a long-term partner of the APRICOT conferences, sponsoring a competitive fellowship programme, as part of the Internet Society’s mission to support capacity building in developing countries. Read more about our fellows at APRICOT 2018:
Team ISOC @ APRICOT 2018 comprised of staff from Regional Bureaus and Internet Technology. This included Andrei Robachevsky, Aftab Siddiqui, Rajnesh Singh, Salam Yamout, and myself.
In line with the Internet Society’s 2018 Action Plan, our core message at APRICOT 2018 was to strengthen the global Internet routing system and mitigate many of the risks facing the Internet’s core today. This includes route hijacking, traffic detouring, and address spoofing – which is a root cause of Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks. We promoted the Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS), a set of recommendations addressing these risks, already adopted by some network operators.
Team ISOC took on a wide variety of roles at APRICOT 2018 and other co-located events, including: chairing and speaking at the AP* Meeting, speaking at the ICANN GAC Regional Capacity Building Workshop, and several other speaking and moderation roles at the conference.
Presence of many of the key people and organizations shaping the Internet in Nepal and Asia-Pacific invited a number of important engagements at APRICOT 2018. Team ISOC had a number of bilateral dialogue with government representatives, ISP associations, network operators, and regional Internet organizations.
The ISOC Nepal Chapter chaired our regular ISOC@APRICOT meeting, inviting the community to learn about our work plans and possible areas of collaboration, and share views on broad Internet issues in Asia-Pacific. Several Internet Society chapter leaders and members led lively discussions about their work with local communities.
Together with delicious dinners and friendly social gatherings, Team ISOC had great visibility and impact during APRICOT 2018, with several outcomes and opportunities to support one of our KEY actions vital to the Internet’s future – securing the Internet’s core.
Mark your calendar – APRICOT 2019 will be held in Daejeon, South Korea on 19 February – 1 March 2019.
Learn more about MANRS and how you can make the Internet more secure.