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We’re looking for two PHP developers to build and maintain the new IAA Member Services Portal in addition to business as usual tasks. If you or someone you know is an experienced developer with PHP and Laravel framework knowledge, combined with a deep knowledge of JavaScript, CSS and HTML and can meet the knowledge and experience components required for these roles, then head over to our Careers Page to learn more about the roles or to apply.

This year’s RPKI Deployathon builds on the previous Deployathons held at APNIC48 (Chiangmai) and APRICOT2020 (Melbourne).  

Event details
Date: Tuesday 5th April
Time: 9.00am – 5.00pm AEST
Location: Cliftons Sydney, 13/60 Margaret Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000 

This event will be face-to-face guided by facilitators; participants will discuss/debate and work on: 

  • properly signing ROAs for your address space (based on what you announce/accept in BGP);  
  • install and configure different RPKI validators (diff the validated outputs and under the hood defaults?);  
  • connect routers to the validators (multi-vendor infra);  
  • configure infrastructure to implement ROV (to drop or not to drop?). 

Participants will analyse the outcomes of each step and summarise any improvements in operational processes to achieve these outcomes. The summaries/findings of each activity will be presented as a lightning talk at AusNOG (PC and time permitting). 

Participants will work with different validators, including Routinator, FORT, rpki-client, and rpki-prover, with accompanying routing implementations for IOS-XE/XR, JunOS, SR-OS, EOS, and others (BIRD, FRR). 

Participants must meet the pre-requisites to join, and there is a maximum number of 50 attendees, so don’t delay your registration! For more information, please see the APNIC Academy Events page.  

Dr Karen Lee, in the UTS Faculty of Law, is undertaking research into the ways service providers engage when codes of practice are drafted; and why industry participants choose to engage or disengage in code development.   

Using the development of the Telecommunications Consumer Protections Code (C628: 2019) as a case study, the research seeks to identify the consultation mechanisms used; the difficulties encountered; the barriers to participation that industry participants of all sizes and business types might experience; the effect these mechanisms and barriers have on the code development process, and measures that might be taken to improve industry rule-making activities.  

To schedule an interview with Dr Lee or for further information about the project (UTS ETH21-6356), please contact her at karen.lee@uts.edu.au.   

With Australia’s newest domain namespace launching next month – .au direct – auDA will be holding a webinar to update users on tools and resources to help get their .au. The webinar will set out how to apply for a .au direct domain name, demonstrate the new tools designed to support .au direct decision making, and how auDA has been working to drive awareness of the new namespace.  

Members may need to make some DNS changes or could get extra calls to the helpdesks if customers start seeing these strange new URLs on the interwebs. 

Date: Thursday 3rd March 2022
Time: 1:15pm – 2:00pm AEDT
Location: Virtual 

If you are interested in attending the auDA webinar, register here 

Thank you to all Corporate and Affiliate members who have completed our member survey. As a member-run association, your input is vital to ensuring that we provide the network you want and need. As we have seen a good amount of growth across the exchanges, we are wanting to expand our network into Hobart, Darwin and other data centres. We’re also keen to get your input on the content you would like to see on the network, so if you haven’t completed the survey yet, please get to it! The survey closes on Friday 4th March 2022, 5:00pm AEDT.  

One of our staff members caught up with founding member, James Bromberger, to learn more about the history of WA-IX. Here’s what James had to say: 

What was the fundamental reason for building WA-IX?
WAIA, the former name for IAA, was founded in 1995 principally to represent the civil liberties of Internet users and organisations that wished to have private communications. With network engineers and stakeholders from the fledgling ISP and Telco sector involved, it became clear there was a need for a non-profit, carrier-neutral peering exchange. Up until this point, the incumbent telco in Australia had been charging volume based carriage fees for inbound and outbound traffic; this was making connectivity expensive for those who received traffic – which possibly was not solicited or requested by them. For example, if someone sent you a large email, you’d be paying to receive it, and the sender may not have optimised the email down to cost less (think of attached images not being scaled to a smaller resolution/file size). 

Did you think that WA-IX would be as large as it is today? Why did you think that?
I recall the first organisations being the ISPs, as they were shouldering much of the comms bills from the growing ISP subscriber base, but it was when some of the commercial organisations, particularly in the mining sector, started to connect to the exchange we saw there was a real solid future for wider customer use. CoLo providers extended the peering fabric to multiple facilities, and then more and more end organisations started to swell the throughput. Given a fixed, predictable monthly cost, the service expanded rapidly. 

What was the uptake of the exchange like in the first ten years?
Within a few years, nearly all of the smaller ISPs had connected locally in Perth. It seemed to be a right of passage to connect in and then subsequently be consumed by iiNet! 

What would you say was WA-IX’s most significant contribution to the Internet in Australia today?
Ensuring that B-party charging was not extended to the Internet bill of consumers was a key element of opening up the Internet to consumers; in a country of the size of Australia, making communications more affordable with less personal cost risk to consumers meant the adoption surged in the community. This drove scale, and further reduced cost, to the point where consumers were being offered unlimited volume download (and upload) plans. Prior to this, traffic quotas were commonplace, and consumers would make decisions if it was worth sending or downloading content. With large content providers and CDNs putting cache nodes within the peering network meant that consumers would start to use large amounts of local traffic without making a conscious decision to do so, further driving the ISP-incurred bandwidth costs down. 

With the expansion to multiple peering fabrics across Australia, we saw the fundamental economics of the digital online ecosystem become more commodity, accessible, and thus spurring the digital skills; most people now have email, browse websites, do online banking, and order groceries. If the adoption of online services had continued to be throttled by a single organisation, then society would still be using fax machines, and the ability to comfortably isolate during the pandemic would have been much harder. 

There’s still progress to be done in the telecommunications space in Western Australia. For customers in the north of Western Australia, there is very little (i.e. no) peering locally between telcos; that traffic often comes down to Perth, jumps across providers, and then transits back to the North of Western Australia, a round trip time that is at times a performance impact on applications. Having a small community peering in Port Hedland, Carnarvon, Geraldton, Broome and asking the ISPs servicing these areas (typically via NBN these days) to exchange traffic locally could have a cost-saving and performance improvement, but thus far, we don’t see this happening. 

[CEO comment – if you agree with James’ view on the utility of regional peering, don’t forget to complete our survey!] 

“A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good” – HackerNoon 

If you are a Developer/Programmer in Sydney looking to work with a dynamic team with flexible work options, then check out our latest job post! We’re looking for someone who has an excellent technical aptitude, shows a willingness to learn and can work independently.  

Working as part of the Development Team in building and maintaining the next generation IAA Member Services Portal, so having a good working knowledge of the telecommunications industry is desirable.  

If this sounds like a career opportunity you or someone you know would be interested in, then head over to our careers page to apply. Applications close Friday 14th March 2022. 

The ACCC will extend the expiry date of the wholesale ADSL (WADSL) service until 30 June 2024. IAA commented on this consultation in September 2021. We advocated for the WADSL to be extended as it is still used in regional areas where competition remains weak and Telstra operates its copper network without much alternative. The ACCC referenced IAA’s submission in their Final Decision paper.

SBAS Access Determination Inquiry | ACCC
IAA responded to the Superfast broadband access services (SBAS) access determination inquiry Discussion Paper in December. In our submission, we advocated that the Regional Broadband Scheme levy should be absorbed by SBAS providers instead of being passed through to RSPs and users. We also argued that SBAS and FAB providers should disclose key network service quality/reliability metrics to RSPs.

Telecommunications Draft Determination – Consumer Data Rights | The Treasury
After conducting a Telecommunications Sectoral Assessment last year, the Department of Treasury decided to recommend the telco sector be designated for the CDR. In December, we commented on the Draft Designation, wherein we pointed out that the cost of implementing and running the CDR, especially for smaller telecommunications providers, is excessively high in comparison to the benefits. We also flagged the importance of a clear demarcation point of the threshold for telco providers captured by CDR, as this can provide certainty for industry.

Customer Identity Verification Determination (CIV) 2021 | ACMA
ACMA introduced a determination which seeks to impose multi-factor authentication (MFA) requirements on CSPs for all customer interactions at high-risk of fraud. We responded to this determination in December. A code released by Comms Alliance covered similar ground to the Determination, but provides CSPs with much more flexibility on how to meet the requirements. In our submission, we extended our support to measures CSPs can implement that reduce customer fraud, however, argued that for smaller CSPs, some MFA and reporting requirements may be difficult to meet.

Privacy Act Review | Attorney General’s Department
The Attorney General’s Department is conducting a review of the Privacy Act 1988 which seeks to expand the scope and application of the Act and how it is regulated and enforced. As part of its review, the Department released a Discussion Paper looking at the expansion of definitions to include greater types of technical data, consider the appropriateness of exemptions including for small businesses, and the introduction of a direct cause of action and statutory tort. We advocated for the development of an effective and practical privacy regime which balances the legitimate commercial need of businesses to monetize the data they collect whilst also protecting the rights of individuals to maintain privacy and control over their data.

 

Draft Rules Register of Critical Infrastructure & Mandatory Reporting Scheme | 1 February 2022
Following the amendment of the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act 2018 (SOCI Act) in December 2021, the Minister is proposing to apply additional security obligations, including requiring certain new assets to provide operational and ownership information to the Register of Critical Infrastructure Assets, and the introduction of mandatory cyber incident reporting. The telecommunications sector will not be deemed subject to these obligations, as opposed to the initial recommendations and proposals. However, the Rules will apply to asset classes including broadcasting, domain name, and data storage or processing.

Exposure Draft Security Legislation Amendment (Critical Infrastructure Protection) Bill | 1 February 2022
The Exposure Draft proposes further amendments to the SOCI Act. This Bill is part two of the Security Legislation Amendment (Critical Infrastructure) Act enacted in December 2021. It will introduce a Risk Management Program and enhanced security obligations. IAA will respond regarding concerns about the expanded powers that would give the Minister the ability to privately declare an asset as of national interest which would increase the requirements and burdens on deemed businesses.

Electronic Surveillance Framework Discussion Paper | 11 February 2022
The Department of Home Affairs is embarking on an overhaul of Australia’s electronic surveillance framework. This review would repeal the various legislation which currently contains powers to create a comprehensive framework. Whilst IAA supports the harmonization of regulations to replace the current complex and inconsistent regime; there are concerns that the new framework will be overreaching and excessive.

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