The Internet Society (ISOC) seeks a maximum of three highly qualified individuals to serve on the Board of Directors of the Public Interest Registry (PIR) for the period 2008-2010. PIR’s business is managing an international registry of .org domain names. The Board meets in person 3-4 times per year. The time commitment is approximately 14-18 full days per year plus additional phone calls and e-mail.

Qualifications sought include:

• Demonstrated business acumen with significant entrepreneurial, non-commercial and/or marketing skills;
• understanding and engagement in the retail domain name space;
• known contributor to the ICANN processes;
• financial literacy;
• expertise in the application of Internet technologies to support non-commercial organizations; and
• experience with the operation and policies of TLD registries.

Global diversity in candidates is desired.
Please forward a statement of interest and qualifications, three references, and a curriculum vitae highlighting relevant experience, expertise, and contact information to:

Lynn St. Amour, President and CEO, Internet Society
Email: pir-nomcomm@isoc.org.
Please submit materials in attached documents (pdf, .doc, .txt)

For full consideration, please apply by June 11th, 2007. Applications will be evaluated as they are received.

Read more…

For the election of Trustees by Chapters, there were four candidates and a total of 56 out of 76 (73%) possible ballots. The percentage of chapters participating was much greater than last year.

One position is to be filled for a three year term. In addition, one additional position opened up this year due to an early vacancy. After a complete count, the results are:

• Patrick Vande Walle
• Dr. Alejandro Pisanty

As such, Patrick Vande Walle is elected to a new three year term and Dr.Alejandro Pisanty is elected to fill the vacancy for the coming year.

For the election of Trustees by Organization Members, there were had four candidatesand total of 52 of 78 (67%) possible ballots. The percentage of organizational members participating was much greater than last year. After a complete count, factoring in membership-level weighting, the results are:

• Desiree Miloshevic
• Dr. Hiroshi Esaki

As such, Desiree Miloshevic and Dr. Hiroshi Esaki are elected for three year terms.

In a separate process, the IETF has selected Ted Hardie to serve for a three year term.

At long last, the incumbent operator, P&T, has upgraded its ADSL infrastructure to the ADSL2+ standard. As a result, download speeds now range from 2 to 15 Mbits/s.  This is  most welcome, as  it moves Luxembourg back into the top 30 leading countries with broadband access. The icing on the cake is that this is being done with no additional subscription fees.

Many competing ISPs (Visual Online, Luxembourg Online, Alternet, Tele2)  use the P&T infrastructure. Hence , their offers have been adapted, too. I guess it will only take weeks before the competing infrastructure provider, Cegecom, will offer the same speeds, too.

A few months ago, the Luxembourg chapter of ISOC launched a survey among the Internet users. The main finding was that the users were unhappy with the slowish speed of their “broadband” connection. While I would not dare to say that this report changed the landscape, I think it nevertheless contributed to speed up the deployment of the new DSLAMs.

From discussions we had with members of the Luxembourg ISOC chapter, it appears that ISPs over here do a terrible job at offering a good Usenet service. Some people complained that they had to buy the service elsewhere. Others just gave up because their ISP was not carrying the groups they wished and offered a very limited choice.

Strange, because offering good Usenet service is neither difficult  nor expensive. In less than 2 weeks, we have been able to offer to our members a good service, with multiple peers, all of which do it for free. How come a volunteer not-for-profit can do what a commercial ISP cannot ?
This is quite typical of the mostly general attitude of ISPs over here, which is along the lines of “Pay your subscription and don’t complain”.

The last Usenet group about ISOC has been deleted today. The times they are a changin’

The Internet Society yesterday read a very direct, unambiguous statement on the role of the USG in the ICANN process. Some excerpts:

Finally, as the MOU has become a symbol internationally of US control over the DNS, it can be argued that the MOU, which was originally designed to support and shore up ICANN in its early days, is now actually hampering ICANN’s continued development and their legitimacy in the eyes of many.

ISOC believes a clear unambiguous signal needs to be made internationally that we are entering a new phase and taking steps to move to the private sector model per the original vision of the US Government.

I heard a zillion times that ISOC was the USG’s best friend. I hope this will definitively show it is untrue.

The Public Interest Registry (PIR) announced today the appointment of
seven new Worldwide Advisory Council members and a new representative
from the ICANN Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) to fill
expiring term open seats. New members include:

• Maarten Botterman: Europe (RAND Corporation)
• Hans Peter Dittler: Europe (Internet Society)
• Michael Mann: North America (Grassroots.ORG)
• Sebastian Ricciardi: South America (Jauregui & Assoc.)
• Sadiq Hussain: Asia (Majan University College)
• Angela Stuber: North America (Ohio Community Computing Network)
• Jaechul Sir: Asia Pacific (Korea NIC)
• Frannie Wellings (NCUC Representative)

I just got this link from Jordi Palet Martinez.

ISOC and The IPv6 Portal organize a half day IPv6 workshop in Istanbul, next Friday 28th, after the RIPE meeting.

The target audience is engineers, ICT managers, software developers and public sector. It is expected that the participants have some IPv4 knowledge in order to take bigger advantage of the workshop.

The goal of the workshop will be to introduce IPv6 from a theoretical point of view, and make some hands-on practices with Windows XP. Information about other operating systems will be also provided. The workshop will also give some basic ideas about how to enable IPv6 in ISP and enterprise networks. As a practical exercise, the participants will be able to present their own network cases and work on possible transition paths for those cases. It is expected that the participants bring their own laptops with XP SP2 to take further advantage of the hands-on part.

Read more…

It seems like every ICANN board member needs to run a blog these days. Veni Markovski has started his own one.

Worth reading and funny, too. These are David W. Maher’s memoirs from his early days in the Internet governance world. David was the former VP Public Policy of ISOC. He is now Senior Vice President, Law and Policy of PIR.

This is no diplomatic talk. Maher talks frankly about Postel (“God”), Cerf, Magaziner and how the Clinton administration managed to ignore the IAHC in favour of of its creation, ICANN.