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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.
