==================================================================== Board of Trustees of the Internet Society Fifth Meeting Praha, Czech Republic 13-14 Jun 1994 Document: 94-225 Title: New programmes and activities Author(s): Rutkowski Date: 5 June 1994 Committee: ISOC BoT Revision: basic Supersedes: a Status: Draft Access: Unrestricted -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Operations Forum One of the more critical needs facing the ISOC is putting into place a viable Operations Forum. The Internet is rapidly scaling, the entry of large numbers of providers is occurring, the new NAP architecture taking place in early 1995, the Internet has become synonymous with GII/NII, and business applications on the network about to become widespread. As a result an Operations Forum is an imperative need. Already the loose operations arrangement known as the "NSF Techs Group" has just morphed into the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) and is holding its first meeting in Washington DC in early July to explore a broad range of operations and institutional issues. A few days ago a number of Internet product and service providers formed the Internet Business Association. SAN JOSE, CALIF. June 2, 1994--InterCon Systems Corporation, Performance Systems International, Digital Express Group, NETCOM On-Line Communications Services, Portal Information Network, Inc., and Frontier Technologies Corporation, leading suppliers of Internet access software and services, today announced the formation of the Internet Business Association (IBA). This trade association will be responsible for representing small-to-midsized suppliers of Internet products and services on Capitol Hill, monitoring the complex regulatory and privacy issues surrounding electronic communications, promoting responsible use of the Internet's vast resources, and educating businesses, the media, and the general public about the Internet. The IBA charter and membership details will be available by the end of June to all vendor companies who are interested in joining the Association. I have begun working with John Williams and others who are hosting the NANOG group and conference. They are willing for ISOC to become a non-liable co-sponsor of the conference as well as have a panel at the conference to raise and explore broader operations issues - especially a global operations infrastructure. Along slightly different lines, the CIX continues to grow rapidly, and its Executive Director Bill Washburn is moving his secretariat to the Washington DC area. Recommended Action: ISOC needs to bring into existence an Operations Forum with all deliberate speed. It also needs to do this gracefully with the full consent and cooperation of all the involved parties. The possibility exists to facilitate the NANOG and CIX secretariats locating very near the ISOC Secretariat. (It's even possible to sublet space to them.) The exact relationship of these and other potential operations groups to the ISOC may also need to be a relatively autonomous one where they fit under a general umbrella of an ISOC Global Operations Forum. This action should also include the FIRST organization which is newly active and can serve as an effective international body in the security emergency response arena. It would a useful adjunct to ISOC's existing NDSS conference. 2. IETF Secretariat There appears to be increasing interest among diverse parties in bringing the IETF Secretariat into a closer working relationship with ISOC - particularly as there is already a basis for funding and it comports with the basic purpose of ISOC. Recommended Action: Work with the IETF, IESG, IETF staff, CNRI, and funding agencies to pursue the feasibility and timeframe of the transition. Consider the creation of a special category of ISOC membership that would further this end. 3. Long range secretariat strategies It is expected that the funding of all Internet related administrative activities and secretariat activities will eventually transition to ISOC. A number of parties have indicated the need for a business plan covering a several year period. Recommended Action: Develop a business plan that identifies Internet secretariat and administrative support activities and the feasibility of ISOC funding over the next five years. 4. Internet Global NIS The Internet GNIS is a concept to effect one of the primary missions of the Society (serve as a source of current definitive information about global Internet developments). This meets one of the critical needs today in the Internet environment. It also in part provides justification for the donation by Sun Microsystems of a rather impressive server. Among other things, the concept is infinitely extensible to encompass a great many information services, including an associated "International Infoscout." Several UN organizations, the NSF, and VITA have all indicated an interest in funding or contributing TDY personnel for some or all of this initiative. The concept is fully described in Annex 1, below This would also include suggestions such as Charles Brownsteins for software or pointers to the best of what is available on an ISOC server. I.e., "Internet Gems" or some such. He notes that ISOC ought to be the one stop fetching location for innovative connectivity software. 5. TIIAP Proposal Somewhat related to the Global NIS, above, was a proposal submitted to the US Dept of Commerce to provide NII GlobalLink services that would have ISOC play the international intermediary role between US DDC funded Internet based information infrastructure initiatives and other nations and international organizations. See Annex 2, below. 5. Community and K-12 Networking There has been a wealth new and ever expanding activity associated with community and K-12 networks/networking. Community networks is a broad concept being pursued by one of ISOC's organizational members - the Morino Foundation. Morino is seeking a close working relationship with ISOC for demonstration projects, workshops, counsel, and international cooperation. Additionally, other organizations active in the K-12 field such as the Coalition for School Networking (COSN) are exploring potential cooperative relationships with ISOC which presently has a relatively inactive K-12 committee. ISOC's K-12 chair sits on COSN's Board. This is an area which major potential, as Global Information Infrastructure as presently being articulated, puts considerable emphasis on community Internet based nurturing. The ISOC will be expected to play a global facilitating role. 6. Workshops and Training ISOC receives constant inquiries regarding training and training materials related to Internet and its techologies. Recently, one of the more notable Internet applications developers who is very active in the IETF, approached the Secretariat, proferring his services for workshops and training. In addition, the highly successful Network Technology Workshops convened annually in conjunction with INETs under George Sadowsky's direction are held in such high esteem that a variety of organizations wish to see these on a much more frequent basis. Some suggest that these could be organized by the ISOC International Secretariat and held monthly or quarterly at or nearby ISOC headquarters. Recommended Action: Decide whether to pursue this proposal or to play a more passive role in just providing lists of people and organizations providing such services. The primary problem with the latter is that there is no easy method to assess the quality of such services, although ISOC could require testimonials to be submitted with any request to be placed on such a list. The more frequent Network Technology Workshops could be a part of this proposal or organized entirely separately. Ideally, George Sadowsky himself would head such an initiative. 7. ISOC Volunteers The Secretariat is receiving a continuing stream of members willing to volunteer their services part-time, as an intern - especially during the summer. The ISOC staff has begun to organize a volunteer program to take advantage of this talent. 8. Product and Service Sales The Secretariat has organized a small product sales effort that will be advertised at INET'94 and advertised in ISOC News. This includes offering Tee-shirts with the new ISOC logo printed on the front with the words "The Internet is its own revolution" in half a dozen different languages; low cost sets of the ISOC presentation slides in 35mm format, and issues of ISOC News and conference proceedings. Additionally, suggestions have been make for ISOC to host WWW implementations for its organizational members who are presently without the ability to do so. 9. NSPAW - Network Service Providers Around the World A very frequently asked question is "how do I get connected." The Secretariat has developed a FAQ sheet, as well as pointed to existing books on this subject. However, information about service providers is very rapidly changing, and no available lists provide good current reference information outside of the USA. ISOC member Barry Raveendran Green has recently assembled an excellent NSPAW and is now maintaining it on ISOC's host. He has recently become responsible for engineering and operations for SingNet in Singaport and will continue to maintain it from there. 10. VISIA - China The purpose of the VISIA project ('Volunteers of the Internet Society In Asia') is to assist developing countries in Asia (beginning with China) to access the educational and scientific resources available on the Internet. VISIA will be a cooperative program sponsored by the Internet Society and the Bridge to Asia Foundation, and will send volunteers to China to train new users of the Interet. ISOC will recruit, screen and orient the volunteers, and BTA will arrange placement and in-country support for them. The volunteers will be drawn from university campuses that have large amounts of Internet traffic, in the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, and Japan. They will be veteran navigators of the Internet and expert users of Gopher, WAIS, WWW and other tools. They will be posted in teams of two (one graduate and one undergraduate per team), for a period of six to ten months at the host institutions of Tsinghua University in Beijing, Fudan University in Shanghai, and Zhongshan University in Guangzhou. Dr. Franklin Kuo will be VISIA program director. 11. Disaster assistance Peter S. Anderson, Associate Director at the Centre for Policy Research on Science and Technology, Simon Fraser University, has recently become chair of ISOC's Disaster Assistance committee. With the past few weeks, he has attended a conference convened by UN IDNDR in Geneva to plan for the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. He succeeded in getting an Internet based server designated EPIX to provide the focal point for the IDNDR Secretariat to promote Decade activities. He recently attended the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Yokohama. Connectivity was facilitated by Board member Ishida-san and Jun Murai. Peter believes that a carefully planned and flexibly structured ISOC Committee can also be a significant contributor (and perhaps even a facilitator/coordinator). He suggest raising this matter at INET94. 12. The Global Diffusion of the Internet: Patterns and Problems Sy Goodman of the Univ of Ariz., Larry Press of ISI, Steve Ruth of George Mason Univ and the Exec Director have been collaborating on a study that seeks to articulate an Internet diffustion model and quantify its factors. This could be extremely valuable in dealing with national and international officials and PTTs on policy and tariff matters. A project proposal has been finalized. 13. Several serious suggestions have been made to ISOC officers and the Executive Director for ISOC to spearhead several initiatives to get Internet connectivity introduced for Least Developed Countries. Some definitive actions may occur in the near future. 14. Funding ISOC ISOC funding needs more methodical and targetted treatment. One potential method involves the use of the NSFNet traffic statistics to identify major Internet users and to target them with requests to fund the organization that primarily helps make their use of the internet possible. Another alternative is to target product vendors who are primary benefactors based on their relative visibility at Interop. The Secretariat is presently pursuing both approaches. ==================================================================== ==================================================================== Annex 1 v. 1.2 18 May 1994 The Internet Global Networked Information Service (NIS) The Environment and Needs The Internet today is far more than just the world's largest computer network of networks. It is a technological platform implemented in tens of thousands of organizations and tens of millions of computers. It is a development and collaborative mechanism that "flattens" organizations and enables direct peer exchanges and instant global workgroups. It allows a vast array of new information services and products to be provided to a worldwide audience. It is a dynamic exponentially expanding marketplace without boundaries. The Internet in all its manifestations is also growing rapidly in scores of countries throughout the world. As a result, there is a surging need for information about what's occurring in each country and user community, and a corresponding demand for assistance at national, regional, bilateral and multilateral levels. The Concept The Internet Global NIS is a continuing programme for maintaining an international "place" that people and organizations can contact or virtually visit via the Internet for reference information and assistance in dealing with global developments concerning the Internet and its technologies and applications. The Platform The NIS was conceived and is operated by the Internet Society - the international organization for the Internet world via its international secretariat located in Reston, Virginia USA. Through its liaisons with its national chapters, other international organizations, annual Internet Networking Conferences, and worldwide "infoscouting," the Society is ideally situated to maintain the NIS. The Global Infoscout concept is an extrapolation on the USA national- oriented infoscout conceived and popularized under the NSF InterNIC program. The global infoscouting has a worldwide international orientation and focus - and is aimed at discovering information of use in developing Global Information Infrastructure or assisting programmes of international bodies and organizations. There will also be emphasis on the availability of information in local languages to the extent feasible. It is important to emphasize, however, that the NIS implementation will be globally distributed as much as possible. Although the programme is centered at the Internet Society headquarters with a master network server and staff located there, extensive use is made of network pointers, globally distributed "mirrors," and regional sites. Most of this information is maintained on powerful computer servers with a high speed link to the Internet. It supports a variety of platforms from multimedia hypertext browsing using the World Wide Web service to Gopher, Anonymous FTP, and listserve email based retrieval. Direct computer-based faxing is also available. The information is presented to users using a broad global view of the Internet and its technologies and applications that is regularly adjusted to accommodate new developments. The intent is to be global not only geographically, but for subject matter as well. Thus it encompasses everything from Internet infrastructure initiatives and networks in each country and other international organizations, to user groups, application areas, security, policy issues, regulatory matters, economic and legal studies, provision of services and software, standards activities, technology advances, conferences and meetings. ==================================================================== Annex 2 Narrative The NII Global Link Initiative Overview The Internet Society's NII Global Link Initiative is a demonstration project designed to provide a critical international adjunct to NTIA's TIIA Program. As conceived and implemented, the TIIAP is essentially focussed on domestic U.S. projects. However, there is are larger international component exemplified in Vice President Al Gore's recent Global Information Infrastructure keynote address at Buenos Aires. There are major synergies and benefits of global cooperation in the context of NII activities that are bidirectional. For example, there are many projects and expertise in other countries that may be highly relevant to TIIAP awardee projects. Conversely, there is a worldwide audience of researchers and policy makers who will be keenly interested in knowing about TIIAP projects in the U.S. to initiate and further their own NII projects. Everyone benefits by this kind of global cooperation. The Internet Society in its role as the global international organization for the Internet, its technologies and applications, wishes to facilitate global cooperation in the TIIAP projects. The Society has recently initiated its own Internet Global NIS programme, and we envision establishing the NII Global Link as part of that effort. Thus ISOC's Global Link initiative can be viewed as leveraging the entire TIIAP Program and the associated expenditures through innovation and experimentation in the uses and benefits that accrue from international information infrastructure and cooperation. The Global Link Initiative would use of the Internet to: o discover and provide information (similar projects, researchers, etc) in other countries relevant to other TIIAP projects, o disseminate current information about TIIAP projects on a worldwide basis via the Internet and appropriate international forums, and o foster and enhance cooperation and collaboration between the TIIAP awardees and their counterparts, peers, or appropriate parties in other countries. Platforms Utilized The Society would implement the proposed NII GlobalLink project using its new Internet Global NIS (Network Information Service). The NIS is a major project and capability of the Internet Society for producing a constantly evolving a structured knowledge base of worldwide Internet and related activities. It includes information about and links to myriad user developmental activities, communities, organizations, technologies, regulatory and policy information, and applications. A fuller description is attached. It is resident on powerful computer servers accessable to millions of users via a high-bandwidth Internet connection, and employing multiple platforms spanning simple email to Mosaic multimedia interfaces to World Wide Web hypertext links. In addition, the Society will contribute use of its facilities that allow direct faxing from electronic files for communicating with parties without Internet access. This system was selected because it is highly accessible worldwide and appropriately spans a very broad range of end-user technology platforms. Services Provided The Internet Society would provide: 1) Further concept development, promotion, and management of the NII Global Link Initiative. 2) Continuing timely liaison with TIIAP grant awardees and NTIA staff to obtain current summary information about each project. 3) Placement of that information on the Internet Global NIS including available gopher and html links to each project site. Information would be available both by subject matter and geographical location, using all common access protocols. 4) Provide continuing international "infoscout" searching for likely organizations and individuals outside the U.S. who may be engaging in similar or related projects as the TIIAP grant awardees, or otherwise may be facilitative to the awardees' project objectives. This would be done largely via the Internet, but may also include attendance at international conferences or travel to locations outside the U.S. This information would also be made available on the NIS. 5) Foster and support international collaboration with those involved in TIIAP Projects through Internet EMail-based discussion groups, or new emerging Internet-based collaborative technologies such as multicasting, CU-See Me, Collage. The Society would seek out new emerging collaborative technologies and attempt to implement them among the TIIAP awardees and appropriate participants in other countries or international organizations. We would also seek to indentify technologies aimed at enhancing the ability of those with physical impairments to collaborate more effectively. 6) Maintaining public server-based archives of discussion group dialogue. 7) Translation of materials into other languages. Service Provisioning The Internet Society would provide these services through the use of its international secretariat headquarters facilities and systems located in Reston, Virginia, USA, and its national chapters worldwide. Additional computers, Internet access bandwidth, and support staff would be acquired for the project. The area served by the project is the entire world. =======================================================================