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Since our last newsletter, we have been very busy hosting and planning Convergent Events for our Members to network, learn and grow.

First up in March was an online event – Malicious Domains: Where they are, and what we can do about them.” Industry experts, Graeme Bunton and Rowena Schoo, of the DNS Abuse Institute gave us fascinating insights into this topic. Don’t worry if you missed it, you can find it on IAA’s YouTube channel.

This was soon followed by an in-person event in Adelaide, in partnership with APNIC Academy Training, who provided an insightful RPKI/ROV Tutorial. This gave our members the opportunity to receive free training on this important subject (typically valued at $80), followed by the opportunity to network at our social event.

For those who couldn’t make Adelaide, you’ll be pleased to learn we’re partnering with APNIC Academy Training to provide the RPKI/ROV Tutorial again in two other locations. More details to follow, but make a note in your calendar, if you’ll be in Canberra, Tuesday 18 July 2023 or Sydney, Thursday 20 July 2023. In both cities the tutorial will run 1.30pm – 5.30pm AEST and be followed by a social event.  Check your emails and the IAA Portal closer to the date to register.

In other news, our Melbourne Convergent Event in May featured a talk by Professor Darryl Veitch entitled “Can I trust my clock? Why NTP is fail .” The presentation was followed by drinks and nibbles. Darryl’s presentation was well received with one attendee reporting: “Everything I thought I knew about how NTP worked and synced and reliability was wrong. This may have been one of those red pill or blue pill moments.”

Register now for our Convergent Online Event 1 June

On the back of the success of this event, we have decided to share Professor Veitch’s insights with the rest of our Members, with a special online event on Thursday 1 June 2023 from 12pm AEST (10am AWST) via Zoom.

Register via the IAA Portal now!

Member registration                                  Non-member registration

We look forward to bringing you even more Convergent Conference Events soon.

The policy team continues to work hard to represent members in important legislative and regulatory reform processes that is sure to impact the Internet industry. Please get in touch to share any thoughts on any open and previous submissions; we always appreciate your feedback.

Completed Submissions

2023-2030 Australian Cyber Security Strategy | Department of Home Affairs

The Department of Home Affairs and the Strategy Expert Advisory Board sought feedback on the 2023-30 Australian Cyber Security Strategy Discussion Paper.  Our response primarily focused on the need for greater genuine engagement and collaboration to ensure a truly effective approach to cyber security. In the context of increasing regulatory requirements for the telco sector in relation to data security, critical infrastructure and privacy, we emphasised the need to harmonise and simplify the current policy landscape for an effective and efficient strategy that combats the threats and risks to Australia’s cyber security.

Final Access Determination (SBAS) | ACCC

The ACCC released its Exposure Draft to the Superfast Broadband Access Service Final Access Determination. This draft instrument was based on the ACCC’s decision released in October 2022, with limited incorporation of stakeholder feedback to the consultation held during December 2022. Our response reiterated our positions stated in our response during the December consultation, including the extension of the Determination to cover all residential TC-4 speed tiers at NBN Co pricing, and regarding NNI and state based aggregation charges. We also recommended the Determination to expressly set out prohibition to on-charge RBS.

Open Submissions 

Draft Decision: Variation to the NBN Co Special Access Undertaking (Nov 2022) | ACCC | 30 May 2023

The ACCC has released its draft decision to reject the proposed NBN Co SAU Variation. It is seeking views on its draft decision, and whether providers would accept a NBN Co SAU variation proposal based on NBN Co’s letter in response to the issues raised by the ACCC.

Although rejecting the SAU overall, amongst other things, the ACCC has indicated it is willing to accept the price increase for the 50/20 Mbps speed tier.

If you would like to review and respond to the ACC’s draft decision, submissions close on 30 May 2023.

 

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! 

This month marked 10 years since IAA announced the launch of a peering point in South Australia, heralding the further expansion of our IX-Australia peering network. 

SA-IX’s 10th birthday was officially celebrated on Monday 27 February. Here’s to another 10 years – and hopefully many, many more! 

Voting is now open for the APNIC Executive Council (EC) election. If you are a member of APNIC, IAA strongly encourages you to vote.   

APNIC is the organisation responsible for the distribution and management of IP addresses and AS numbers in the Asia-Pacific region. The APNIC EC is responsible for the management of APNIC’s activities and functions, including its strategic direction and budget on behalf of APNIC members. The constitution of the EC can have a great impact on the Internet landscape and community in Australia, and more globally. IAA is firmly committed to stability and reliability in the management of Internet resources and considers the continuing good governance of APNIC to be essential to this cause.  

As it’s a member-driven organisation, it is important that you use your vote, and do so wisely to ensure a well-rounded and appropriate EC.  

We strongly encourage you to:  

  • carefully consider the candidates  
  • ensure the candidate you vote for appropriately represents the Internet community and works in the best interest of the Internet. 

Voting closes 14:30 AWST (UTC +8) Thursday 2 March 2023. 

Further information on the nominees and processes can be found on the APNIC nominations page. 

Amazon Web Services (AWS) ASN 16509 peering on NSW-IX has recently advised our technical team of a typo in their LAG IPv6 address. Unfortunately, this has resulted in a large number of NSW-IX members peering with an incorrect IPv6 address.

To rectify this issue, AWS has requested that all peers check and reconfigure the address if required. Please see the information below:

Incorrect: IPv4 218.100.52.9. IPv6 2001:7fa:11:4:0:470d:0:1
Correct: IPv4 218.100.52.9. IPv6 2001:7fa:11:4:0:407d:0:1

If you would like any further information regarding this matter, please get in contact with AWS via peering-apac@amazon.com

You may have noticed our email earlier this month about the APNIC EC Election. But what exactly is APNIC and why does it matter to you? 

APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) is the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for the Asia Pacific Region. It is one of 5 such registries across the world. RIRs manage the allocation and registration of Internet number resources (IP addresses and Autonomous System Numbers) in their respective regions. Nothing gets on the Internet without an IP address connected to an Autonomous System, and each must be unique, though we have ways of sharing them given the number of devices connected to the Internet now exceeds the number of IPv4 addresses. 

Through this technical coordination, RIRs play a very important role in supporting the infrastructure of the Internet, as well as in Internet Governance. As independent, not-for-profit, and member-based organisations, RIRs operate for the benefit of the wider Internet community.  

In recent times, the global Internet community has witnessed other RIRs struggle to operate particularly in the context of the fight over limited IPv4 addresses. As the Internet continues to evolve to heights much greater than anyone imagined at its conception with more and more people jumping online, protecting the sound management of Internet resources and promoting Internet policies is critical to ensure the resilience and continued growth of the Internet.  

Although the overarching Number Resource Organisation (NRO) serves as a coordinating body for the 5 RIRs, each RIR distributes resources according to its own policies that have been developed in its respective region via open, bottom-up policy development processes.  This bottom-up governance structure is to respect the autonomy of each region. As such, the constitution of the Executive Council (EC) of an RIR is very important to how it functions.  

With the voting for the APNIC EC election now open, IAA encourages all members who are also members of APNIC to utilise your vote carefully and wisely to ensure the protection of the Internet community. Voting closes 14:30 AWST (UTC +8) Thursday 2 March 2023.  

IAA’s public policy work has already kickstarted, holding the first PPAP meeting of 2023 this month. Although we were missing a few members, we still had lively discussions including an update on IAA’s public policy work since the fourth quarter of 2022, upcoming consultations on Internet policy issues, and even a debate on the need for a CSP registration scheme. 

We are always welcome to hearing our members’ thoughts and concerns on issues affecting the Internet industry, so please do share any comments you may have by email 

Another busy month for IAA’s policy team as we work on responding to key submissions and holding the first Public Policy Advisory Panel meeting of 2023. As always, please feel free to share any concerns or comments regarding public policy areas affecting the Internet community. 

Completed Submissions

Proposed Variation to the NBN Co Special Access Undertaking | ACCC
Since withdrawing its proposed SAU in July 2022, NBN Co submitted its revised SAU proposal in November 2022. The ACCC is seeking views on whether it should accept the new SAU. While the latest SAU proposal definitely demonstrates some improvement, IAA still indicated some concerns primarily regarding its pricing model, and service quality and standards.

Digital Platforms: Government Consultation on ACCC’s Regulatory Reform Recommendations – Consultation Paper | Department of Treasury
Following the ACCC’s report on Digital Platforms in late 2022, the Treasury sought views on introducing new regulation based on the ACCC’s recommendations. Our response primarily emphasised the critical importance of distinguishing ISPs from digital platforms as the ‘pipes’ of the Internet to ensure telco providers are not subject to any new regulations.

Record Keeping Rule – NBN Service Performance | ACCC
The ACCC held a consultation for a development of a Record Keeping Rule (RKR) for NBN Co’s service performance. The Consultation Paper also sought views on applying comparable regulation for SBAS providers. In general, IAA supported the development of RKRs for both NBN Co and SBAS providers to ensure transparency and accountability of the provision of NBN and SBAS services. RSPs are often blamed for service faults by consumers, but public reporting made mandatory by RKR can help increase awareness and understanding in the consumer base of underlying network issues affecting their services, and in turn, force NBN Co and SBAS to improve their service provision.

Open Submissions 

Copyright Enforcement Review 2022-2023 | Attorney General’s Department | 7 March 2023
The Attorney General is reviewing Australia’s copyright enforcement regime. Following recent court cases involving various ISPs and entertainment companies regarding website blocking, a review into Australia’s copyright regime seems indeed necessary to develop a more robust and efficient framework.

Privacy Act Review Report 2022 | Attorney General’s Department | 31 March 2023
Continuing its review since 2020, the Attorney General has issued its Privacy Act Review Report, seeking feedback on 116 recommendations. This Report follows recent high-profile data-breach incidents that occurred in late 2022, which brought to light major issues regarding Australia’s privacy framework. As data becomes increasingly commodified and important in today’s digital age, IAA is committed to contributing to the development of a privacy regime that is effective but measured.

 

 

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