Statement by Rajnesh D. Singh, Regional Bureau Director, Internet Society
Singapore, April 2009
The Internet Society is a non-profit organisation founded in 1992 to provide leadership in Internet related standards, education, and policy. With offices in Washington, USA, and Geneva, Switzerland, it is dedicated to ensuring the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of people throughout the world. The Internet Society provides leadership in addressing issues that confront the future of the Internet, and is the organisational home for the groups responsible for Internet infrastructure standards, including the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB).
For over 15 years the Internet Society has run international network training programs for developing countries and these have played a vital role in setting up the Internet connections and networks in virtually every country connecting to the Internet during this time.
Today, the Internet Society has more than 80 organisational and more than 28,000 individual members in over 80 chapters around the world. The Internet Society has also established regional bureaus to provide better regional focus. Currently there are 3 bureaus and these serve Africa, Latin American and the Caribbean, and South and Southeast Asia respectively. From commerce to education to social issues, our goal is to enhance the availability and utility of the Internet on the widest possible scale.
In 2008, the Internet Society launched a set of longer term, strategic activities, called “initiatives” which cover a cross-section of issues related to policy, education and technical standards.
As part of the Enabling Access initiative, the Internet Society addresses fundamental impediments to Internet advancement, particularly in such areas as policy, regulation, and access; technical capacity building; and the availability of Internet technologies in underserved communities.
The InterNetWorks initiative targets the continued operation of the global Internet in three critical areas: common and open Internet, global addressing, and security and stability. The need to move to IPv6 is also a large part of this initiative and the Internet Society has been active in encouraging discussions on transitioning to IPv6. In 2008, the Internet Society embarked on a study of how its organisational members use IPv6 in their networks. The Internet Society’s organisational members are diverse types of organisations from around the world. All of these organisations operate a network of some sort and, due to their diversity, provide a wide cross section of usage models for IPv6. As part of the study, the Internet Society was keen to determine the level of operational penetration that IPv6 has in these networks, to understand the thought processes organisational members went through in evaluating the usefulness of IPv6, and to learn of their experiences in adopting it. The full report is available on the APECTEL 39 website under the Plenary documents.[1].
In March 2009, in conjunction with the 74th IETF Meeting in San Francisco, the Internet Society organized a panel of experts from industry and other thought leaders to discuss the pressing need to adopt IPv6 to ensure the continued growth of the Internet as a platform for innovation. An audio recording of this very interesting session is available on the the Internet Society website, and a transcript of the session is available on the APECTEL 39 website under the Plenary documents.
The Internet Society’s Trust and Identity initiative ensures that users’ needs for security, transaction protection, and identity assertion and management get met by building bridges that connect the research, standardisation, development, and deployment of new Internet technologies.
The Internet Society also actively engages with a range of international organisations and fora. The Internet Society coordinated the Internet technical community’s participation and input to the OECD Ministerial meeting on the Future of the Internet Economy in Seoul, Korea in June 2008. This laid the groundwork for the formation of ITAC (Internet Technical Advisory Committee) to the OECD’s Information, Computer and Communications Policy Committee. ITAC was formally recognised by the OECD Council in January 2009. Later this month, the Internet Society will participate in the ITU World Telecommunication Policy Forum (WPTF) and provide factual information about the Internet to help shape discussions at the Forum. Various information related to The Internet Society’s participation at WPTF are available on our website.
In closing, I would like to thank APEC TEL for according Internet Society guest status recently. We recognise APEC TEL as an important forum which addresses many aspects related to the Internet Society’s mission and objectives, and we look forward to positively contributing to Apexes’ activities.
Thank you.
[1] Find the IPv6 Organizational Membership Study on the Internet Society website.