Someone outlined the plot of an action film to me recently. Picture this, a worldwide communications system, built on a fundamentally flawed numbering system, is being held to ransom by unscrupulous operators. These operators won’t abide by the rules and use every means at their disposal to prevent the rules from being imposed on them, including bribery, corruption, hacking, DOS attacks, death threats, vexatious litigation and international subterfuge, crippling the administration of the communications governance system in a major continent. Sound like a fun film? An outlandish story?  I fear it will be playing soon at a local conference centre near you, as these are all allegations that have been made against some people contesting the APNIC Executive Council elections. Sadly, however, with the price of IPv4 addresses getting higher and higher, we are likely to see increased shenanigans, so it is all the more important that we ensure the governance of our regional internet registries are sound. The term ‘Wild West’ has often been used to describe internet actors, but in reality the policy processes of our Internet governance systems including ICANN, APNIC and the IETF are usually much more boring and very disciplined. Let’s keep it that way. If you have a vote in the APNIC EC election, make sure you vote and use your vote wisely. 

Speaking of things to combat the ‘Wild West’, we’ve announced our new online and in person conference series, kicking off with a session on Malicious Domains, given by Graeme Bunton and Rowena Schoo of the DNS Abuse Institute. This fun session will overview the latest research into DNS abuse, covering mitigations and best practice to keep things relating to our domain name system as boring and behind the scenes (i.e. WORKING!) as possible. I hope to see you online. 

This month I will be heading off to Apricot in the Philippines, where I will catch up with our colleagues from other IXPs across the region and hear about new content and other services likely to appear on our networks soon. A check of our traffic statistics tells us we are serving over a petabyte in content each day! Rest assured I will be hunting more of it down wherever I can. If there is a game or other service your users are driving up the transit bills with, let me know and we will do what we can to get them into our content farm. 

In other news, I hope you enjoy our latest article on traffic engineering, celebrate SA-IX’s birthday, check your Amazon IPv6 peering for a little typo recently discovered, and invite your colleagues to apply for this year’s IAA Systers program! 

Applications are now closed for our IAASysters 2023 program.

This year’s theme, Future Heroes of the Internet, continues our crusade to support and enable women within the Internet industry. We’re offering 10 successful applicants free attendance, including flights and accommodation (if necessary).

The third running of our IAASysters program is set to be our best one yet! Not only is it taking place on the beautiful Gold Coast in line with the AusNOG Conference, but we’re excited to announce that we’re bringing back a Systers favourite, Cheryl Alderman, who’ll be running her high-energy career coaching session during the workshop.

IAASysters was launched to support and encourage ALL women in the Internet space. Whether you’re an inspiring student, intern, re-entering the workforce after a break or have been working in your role for some time, it’s your passion for the Internet and the Internet industry that really counts. Applicants demonstrating the most potential for personal growth and passion for the Internet are rated highest.

Applications are open to ALL types of job roles within the Internet industry (network operations, engineering, IT, marketing, regulation, customer support or studying towards a relevant degree or diploma).

We’re offering 10 successful applicants the opportunity to attend:

• the one-day IAASysters Workshop – Wednesday 6 September

• the IAASysters lunch – Wednesday 6 September

• the two-day AusNOG Conference – Thursday 7-8 September

• the networking and social events that run in conjunction with the conference.

All flights and accommodation costs are covered, so all you have to do is fill out your application. Applications to become a Syster closed on Friday 28 April 2023 at 5:00pm AEST.

Learn more

IAA has just embarked on a project to add alt text to images across our entire website. With over 700 images in our media library, it’s going to be quite the task! 

But a very worthy one. We aim to improve accessibility and the user experience for our readers, including those who are visually impaired. We want everyone to be able to access our content, gleaning its full context and meaning – something often reinforced through images. 

For those of you who aren’t aware, alt text – also called alt tags and alt descriptions – is the text that appears in place of an image on a webpage when the image fails to load on a user’s screen. It describes the function and appearance of images, conveying critical information. Not only does this descriptive and specific text help screen-reading tools describe images to readers with visual impairment, but it also allows search engines to better crawl and rank your website. 

If you haven’t already done so, please consider adding alt text to your images too. Let’s work together to create a better Internet.