After posting my previous ramblings on the subject of Internet Governance (IG) I’ve been quite busy in my head, thinking about where I stand on this subject and how best to define the various aspects of IG within the so-called «Nordic model» that applies to Government, Business and Citizen of Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark (the Nordic countries). This time, I’m exploring parts of IG in the Nordics, as seen from Norway.
First of all, I’m not so sure that the Internet are seen in the same way in the Nordic region as a whole. I might be wrong, but Finland seem to be ahead of both Norway and Sweden, with Iceland and Denmark fast approaching from behind. Internet access is written into law as a citizen right in Finland and Sweden but not in the other countries (yet). With the United Nations pushing to make basic Internet access a human right (2003) and a renewal of this as a ‘fundamental right’ at the 2005 World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis, more countries are bound to make basic Internet access law for it’s citizen. In all the Nordic countries 80-95% of the population have access to the Internet on a daily basis if they wish to; at home, work/school or at Internet cafés, by cellphone et.c.
The WSIS Working Group (WG) on Internet Governance (WGIG), set up by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, after the first part of the WSIS in Geneva (2003) were asked to “investigate and make proposals for action, as appropriate, on the governance of the Internet by 2005″. Three defined issues represented the different objectives of the WG. One of these, “Develop a working definition of Internet Governance” are found in the report delivered by the WG:
“Internet governance is the development and application by Governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programs that shape the evolution and use of the Internet”[1]
In Norway the Government have for the past three-four years, to a degree, tried handed down the task of governing/policing the Internet from a juridical view, to private sector law companies and Internet providers, who for their part, are hard working not to become the ‘Norwegian Internet Police’ (NIP). I think that with the recent changes in policy and proposed laws in Norway we are likely to see a private sector NIP emerging quite quickly as providers of online services and access to Internet resources are required by law to police their users activities.
Let’s start with the part where many governments faulty ‘Govern’ as ‘limiting access’: As a technical somewhat technically oriented and policy-interested person I find it a bit hard to see a central governmental control of the Internet in Norway happen in a way that will hinder unwanted activities by citizens. The fact that it’ll be harder for ordinary citizen to carry out perfectly legal online activity and just as simple as before to do online criminal activity it’s enticing to see how many politicians of the western world see it as their job to implement digital restrictions on their subjects.
The ‘strike first’ policies with technical/digital hindering of negatively charged activities should certainly not be adopted in such a civilised country as ours? (Many people ask themselves this as the European Union have adapted the directive of data retention (“Directive 2006/24/EC”) Well? Seen from a political view there is nothing wrong with creating digital walls that will hinder your subjects to do things not permitted by law. There’s only one problem here: We do not build such walls in our offline, physical society. There is no wall outside a nursery that will hinder a unscrupulous individual taking pictures of the kids there. Nor is there someone taking notice on how many residence doors you approach, walk by or enter, and wish to use this information to decide if you’re a likely criminal. Seen from a business view there is equally nothing wrong with having digital security in place and do a (technical part now, folks) package inspection on a content level (DPI) to make sure no corporate secrets are leaked. As long as this digital security is automatic, non-identifying of employees it’s for most people employed, ok. As many companies today have a set of rules for the use of computers and how to act online, what to access et.c. when representing the company/at work a little line or two about package inspection are probably being entered into the next rewrite of those rules. I believe that it’s at work people are most likely to meet a page that tells them that ‘this part of the Internet is closed to you due to company policy’. This part of corporate culture and Information Security is a tipping point in peoples view of restriction of access. Regardless of company, there’s two camps here: Permissive or restrictive access. Restrictive access is of course the part with that incriminating page that tells you that /this/ is not something you should be doing at work. Working with permissive policies leaves the choices to the user, under the knowledge that the company might very well log their access, should something criminal happen down the road. Seen from a residential view there is certainly something wrong with a paid-for Internet connection being monitored and logged for ‘future reference’ should something occur in your neighbourhood, or origin from the residential Internet connection that is not in line with local law. This rocks the very clear, and so far, unmovable principle that we are all equal to the law and are seen as innocent unless proven guilty.
So? Back to the main issue eh? Who governs the Internet? It is clear through the definition by the WGIG[1] that the Internet is governed by a set of multi-stakeholders from three main parties, namely Government (G), Business (B) and Citizen (C). Within these there are a number of sub-representations such as Residential (R), Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO), Religious communities (R) et.al. However, there is, even today, not a clear view of how to make sure that we are all equally treated in the scope of the Internet as a vital and more and more important part of our life. There have recently been great strides towards creating common ground for all, and this is certainly an evolving work on this, currently at the e-G8 and the G8-forum in France.
Right now I only see one thing as rock solid: As the Internet evolves the way it is governed will also evolve. What once was a academic research project have certainly come a long way since the 1960ies.
[1] Working definition of Internet Governance, published in the report from the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), 2005, page 4
As part of my eLearing assignment this week on Internet Governance there is a debate sparked about how to bridge the divide of having “Internet access”. I’ve been giving this a few moments of my time, and will use this entry, and comments on it/follow up posts, as part of my gaining of insight into the sub-subject of having Internet access. Many countries have defined Internet access as an fundamental right, but they have, cleverly, not defined ‘how’ this access should be provided for, and if it is to cost their population money.
So, how does people get online in todays world? In many countries basic Internet access is first established through the use of an mobile browser on ones cellphone.
After this, many, many, many people have access to the Internet through Internet cafés in their local community or through educational institutions or work.
Thirdly, residential Internet access is spreading in all parts of the world, with Europe, the Pacific region of Asia and the northern parts of America as the head of the pack.
Finding a solution that globally defines “basic Internet access” or “Internet access” is key to being able to bridge this divide for the future generations. To make that happen, we need the nations of the world to unite under a common definition that have been agreed on in a neutral fora. The G8 or G20 is no such fora, nor is the EU or other regional foras of trade/governmental membership. The UN might be a starting point, but I’m not sure of the UN is right either.
Who governs the Internet? If asked this question, different people will answer very differently, shaped by their previous experiences, background, objectives and history in general.
Recently I started on an six month eLearning online course by the Internet Society titled “Shaping the Internet – History and Futures”. As the NGL programme web-page says: “The course curriculum covers the essential topics required for effective interactions and relationships within the Internet ecosystem, as well as key concepts and emerging issues in Internet governance”.
I’m absolutely thrilled to be on this and have a clear goal of delivering my absolutely best with participating in discussions, classes, doing my assigned activities and being available to my fellow course participants!
..back to the question asked. A Google-search will return what I’d say is a slim selection of responses. A quick read-through of some of the hits give a hint to the complexity of the issue. Some of them gives you pointers to the UN, the ITU, the Internet Society (ISOC) and of course, the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) in 2003/2005. If you work in the private part of the ICT sector in a western country in Europe and you speak English as your primary or second language, you are probably going to find that the answers Google will return with, matches your views in many ways. But what if you work with the governmental ICT of an emerging economy in another part of the world, with a different language and a different set of rules in daily life? Will your answer be different?
With the NGL programme in my head and the Internet governance as an very interesting subject, I’m giving this a great deal of thought and will probably write more on this subject in the weeks ahead.
Now, where did I put my book of Roman warfare?
I was pleased this morning when I through IRC learned that Norway’s largest newspaper have enabled IPv6 at their domain, vg.no. Not that I read VG much, but the fact that there is a push forward with IPv6 in the media sector is great, since it’s only about 8-9 months until there are no more IPv4 addresses left.
Here at work we’re doing lot’s of fun stuff with IPv6, and are currently actively pushing forward with dualstack implementations for our customers.
But today, we end with a delicious traceroute to VG via IPv6:
traceroute to ipv6.vg.no (2a02:c0:1010::16) from 2a02:2c8:1:42::4, 30 hops max, 16 byte packets 1 r-vl400.pir1-4.ipv6.as44381.net (2a02:2c8:1:400::1) 0.271 ms 0.245 ms 0.232 ms 2 2a01:560:207::1 (2a01:560:207::1) 0.597 ms 0.485 ms 0.491 ms 3 xe-1-1-0-13.cr3.hmg9.no.v6.linpro.net (2001:7f8:12:1::3:9029) 8.733 ms 8.914 ms 8.61 ms 4 2a02:c0:1000:2::3 (2a02:c0:1000:2::3) 9.015 ms 9.207 ms 10.083 ms 5 2a02:c0:1010::16 (2a02:c0:1010::16) 8.637 ms 8.774 ms 8.709 ms
Woo-hah there cowboy; Life on the Internet is getting better. Yesterdays news of .org now being signed is great and means that I can get all my .org-domains online with DNSSEC. Really looking forward to DNSSEC-secured domains It also happens to be that the worlds #1 registry for domains (GoDaddy Inc) already have a community-based howto online for DNSSEC; and I think that I’ll have to give some input
Since my employer (ITsjefen AS of Trondheim, Norway) have given me the opportunity to work with free software (we base most of our customer-fronting solutions on free software) I’m mostly spending my days deep within the realms of servers, command line options and back end systems (that is when I’m not on a one month holiday).
Yesterday, after getting a report from a co-worker that a customer using our free wireless network on a dual stack (IPv4/IPv6) Windows 7 could not read his e-mail I dug into a tiny, but yet, frustrating problem with our mail proxy software — perdition. While perdition it self does indeed support IPv6 it seemed to be a bit easier to enable IPv6 for the xinetd service for perdition (I really, really thought IPv6 was in place as a default these days). After setting the proper flags (you just add the line “flags = IPv6″ to the service you wish to enable IPv6 for) I went about restarting xinetd, discovering that no IPv6 was functioning in xinetd. I promptly tried to add other services to xinetd with IPv6, thinking perdition must be the culprit, but no dice.
Thus, downloading a reading in the source for the Debian-package I soon discovered that the tiny config-option of “–with-inet6″ was left out. A quick recompile on the compile-box and pinning of packages later, IPv6 was working flawlessly for the perdition services.
Does anyone know of other, possibly more easily ways of getting proper IPv6-support for services in xinetd? If so, do let me know!
At some point in 2004 I decided to start to weblog in English. The weblog platform I set my eyes on was Serendipity, since I had read that it was all shiny and good. Some years later, (almost five) I found myself fed up with S9y, and the duality of maintaining security for both S9y and WordPress on my own webpage. Thus, I decided to dump S9y and move to a dual-stacked WordPress, English and Norwegian weblogs on the same platform.
To end this chapter of my webpresence I feel it’s suitable to give a final salute to this stable platform of my online life. The post-count might not be all that great and such, but hey.. Statistics matter I guess. So, with any more fuss, here’s to Serendipity and the pages it’s served up:
First entry Tuesday, March 23. 2004 18:03 Last entry Monday, December 14. 2009 03:12 (final notification of weblog removal)
Total entries: 238 entries.. and I leave comments open for you math-freaks to give me a postcount for that period of time. And do remember the +1 leap years!
In march 2001 I was introduced to IPv6. IPv6 will coexist with, and eventually replace IPv4 when the pool of available IPv4-addresses run out. Currently the estimates says that there will be no more IPv4-blocks available by 2012 for Europe and North America. This will probably all linger on, since there exist some methods to distribute addresses in private networks with NAT and I also believe the regional Internet registries (RIR) will do some kind of coordinated “official thing” when things get “bad enough” in the Internet-based services-sector.
Up until today the uptake of IPv6-based networks and services have been very slow. Here in Norway it’s really just UNINETT and the members of the national science network that have good access to native IPv6-based services and networks without the use of IPv6-via-IPv4 tunnels and such.
As some of you who read my weblog from time to time might know, I work for a small Norwegian Internet Services-provider, ITsjefen, who have six employees. We’ve tasked (thanks Dilbert) ourself with the task to deliver digitally good services in our own fibre- and ethernet-based network. As a part of this strategy we’re members of RIPE, and a local Internet registry (LIR) for ourself and our customers. Through the membership in RIPE I’ve had the pleasure of formalizing my knowledge of alot of subjects, and among them, IPv6. I’ve come to the conclusion that we need to speed up the uptake of IPv6 among the large Internet Service Providers here in Norway before it’s too late. - To get Telenor, Ventelo(BaneTele), NExtGenTel, Get, Canal Digital and others, including service providers in the mobile Internet sector (Telenor Mobile, Network Norway, NetCom and Tele2) to plan the implementation, roll-out and marketing of IPv6 is a very heavy process. This will take time. Thus the task of getting these large players aboard is a thing for the powers of the free market, and it’s here I enter the picture again, with my funny little plan. - Why not begin with the smaller and medium companies and through them create enough push so that the large companies will get aboard and see the purpose of rolling out services before it’s just-too-late? Well. As planned, I embarked on this with my special idea to get this done.
Five weeks ago, I was given a link to the picture submitted by American ISP Hurricane Electric (HE) with their cunning plan to solve the IPv6-disconnect in their peering with also American ISP Cogent Co. The technical guys at HE nailed it with baking a cake and bringing it to a NANOG-meeting (The North American Network Operators Group). The cake can be viewed here.
With this as backdrop and the blatant steal of the cake as an idea I thought that I could perhaps convince the upstream providers ITsjefen get the bandwidth from to implement IPv6 before 2012. To begin this I thoght it best to approach a company we share many values with and have a good partnership with, NTE Broadband. We called the local bakery in their city headquarters location in Steinkjer, Norway and asked them to bake us a kake to be delivered to the NTE NOC on Friday in time for their 1400 CET coffe-break (a tradition in Norway). This was two weeks ago, and the cake looked like this:
(click on the picture for a larger edition)
The days passed, and we wondered what NTE would do. Suddenly it was Friday again, and we got a delivery to our office at 1330 CET. The delivery was this:
So, what kind of conclusions can we bring to the first phase of my IPv6-by-cake uptake in the Internet Service Provider-sector of Norway? 1) It really helps to have your own IPv6-block available and ready for use when your upstreams are ready. Then you have reason to bug them for IPv6 already. 2) A cake helps even old engineers to get interested in new and shiny services in the form of one and zeroes. 3) It helps to have a good tone with your peers, the providers, partners and customers. New services should be fun and something you look forward to using.
The question now is, should we send someone else a cake, and to whom?
As part of The Debian Edu-project collaborating with ArntOG and others we have put up a Planet for an view into the minds of our community. The Planet will probably be populated in different languages as time passes, but for now it’s multi-language and open to all who have ties to the project.
Even as I myself probably need to put into words a bit more often the things I do, I’d like to point out that a short update on what you’re up to often have an inspiring effect on other community members; perhaps you’re working on the same things without knowing. IRC is fun and all that, but a weblog/blog lasts so much longer when it comes to allowing people to read up on your ideas and thoughts about a specific need or subject.
Welcome to the planet at http://planet.skolelinux.org/
_This_ is cool stuff!
