The Asia Pacific Network Information Center, Present and Future by David Conrad, Internet Initiative Japan, Inc. Introduction As is perhaps well known, the Internet in the Asia Pacific region is growing at least on par with the rate of growth of the Internet as a whole. Leased lines, previously rare due to the ridiculously high cost of trans-Pacific telecommunications, are now sprouting up in places such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Guam, commercial providers have begun operations in Hong Kong and Japan among other locations, and existing connections are getting faster and wider. In an effort to provide some support to this growth, the Asia Pacific Coordinating Committee for International Research Networks (APCCIRN) and the Asia Pacific Engineering Planning Group (APEPG) have undertaken the creation of a network information center for the Asia and Pacific Rim regions, to be known as the Asia Pacific Network Information Center or APNIC. In January, 1993, at the first APCCIRN/APEPG meeting, the Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) experiments were initiated, primarily targetting the interactions between the AP regional NIC and other regional NICs, the AP region national NICs, and the Internet users in the Asia and Pacific Rim regions [1]. Later, at the APCCIRN/APEPG meeting following the Inet '93 conference in San Francisco, the APNIC experiments were expanded and a pilot project was conceived and initiated [2]. The APNIC pilot project goals were and are fairly succinct: - determine the requirements for a regional NIC and the means to meet those requirements - implement a regional IP address allocation strategy in accordance with RFC-1466 [3] - provide a testbed for experimentation into network coordination in the Asia Pacific region - coordinate with local, national, and regional NICs - experiment with tools used to support NIC operations and, in order to insure timely results, the APNIC pilot project was chartered to begin operation on Sept. 1, 1993, and end on June 30, 1994. As a means to meet these project goals, as well as to provide services to the AP region's networking communities, the APNIC pilot project has been coordinating with the IANA, and the regional registries, InterNIC in North America and RIPE-NCC in Europe. This coordination has taken the form of discussions with RIPE-NCC regarding various aspects of running a regional registry and consultation with InterNIC and the IANA on address space allocation issues in the AP region. On April 1, 1994, this coordination, particularly with InterNIC and the IANA led to the APNIC pilot project officially receiving the delegation of the 202.x.x.x and 203.x.x.x address blocks. Since that date, the APNIC pilot project has been assigning IP addresses to organization in the AP region, maintaining the authoritative database for networks in the 202 and 203 blocks, as well as providing IN-ADDR.ARPA domain space for those blocks. After eight months of operation, and a month of handling address assignments for the Asia and Pacific Rim regions, the APNIC pilot project has grappled with many of the issues involved with providing a regional NIC service and has developed several proposals regarding the establishment of a permanent APNIC. This article will present the organizational and funding models of the APNIC pilot project and some of the ideas the pilot project staff have on organizational and funding models of the permanent APNIC. Also, some of the lessons learned during the pilot project will be discussed, and finally some concluding thoughts regarding the work towards a regional network information center in the Asia Pacific region will be presented. APNIC Organization Given the immense size of the Asia and Pacific Rim regions, from the Persian gulf area to the island nations of the South Pacific, and the vast diversity of cultures, religions, and economic situations encompassed in this space, one of the basic assumptions held by the members of the APNIC pilot project staff regarding the establishment of a NIC in the AP region was that the ultimate APNIC would need to be highly distributed. The APNIC pilot project, following this premise, exists primarily as a set of mailing lists on a machine at the University of Tokyo in Japan. The staff mailing list implementing most of the APNIC functions currently consists of 25 people from the countries of Australia, China, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and the US. This informal group comes to a rough consensus on requests for information and/or address space assignment and fulfills those requests typically within one to two working days. In terms of physical existence, again, distributing the responsibilities is the means and the goal of operating the pilot project. The APNIC pilot project currently shares a Sun SparcStation of the Japanese national NIC, JPNIC. On this machine, which has as one of it's names apnic.net, the pilot project maintains mailing lists, APNIC archives (available via anonymous FTP and gopher), the Asia Pacific network database and whois server (currently running the InterNIC's rwhois server software), and a DNS server holding a set of CNAMEs to machines which provide the APNIC services. One of these CNAMEs, ns.apnic.net, points to a machine operated by the Australian national NIC, AUNIC, which maintains the 202 and 203 IN-ADDR.ARPA domains. Another CNAME, www.apnic.net, points to a machine operated by the Korean national NIC, KRNIC which houses an experimental WWW home page for the Asia and Pacific Rim regions. By distributing the NIC services, the APNIC pilot project has been able to take advantage of talents of personnel at the national NICs and thus does not require extensive expertise to be located centrally at an APNIC facility. With the experiences gained from the distribution of both the decision making process and the project hardware, the APNIC pilot project staff has proposed that the permanent APNIC should be distributed functionally to various national NICs[4]. This model of organization is similar in concept to that of the InterNIC in the US which is comprised of three commercial companies, AT&T, General Atomics, and Network Solutions, each providing a specific part of the InterNIC's functionality [5]. In the case of APNIC however, the NIC services will be distributed to national NICs instead of commercial companies. This organizational model would establish several independent functional areas which would be assigned to national NICs for some "contracted" period of time, transitioning to another national NIC when the "contract" expires. This rotation of the responsibilities of APNIC is seen as a way of generating technical expertise in the area of providing NIC services in the various countries as well as serving as a way to provide the services required of a regional NIC. With such decentralization, one obvious concern is overall coordination. In order to address this concern, the pilot project staff proposes that the services provided by the national NICs should be coordinated by a small organization within APNIC, tentatively named the AP NIC Coordination Center (APNCC). This coordination center would be ultimately responsible for the proper operation of APNIC and would supervise the transition of APNIC functions from one national NIC to another, providing technical advice and support as necessary. As a further responsibility, the APNCC would provide the services for which no national NIC is willing or able to accept responsibility. Thus, the proposed organizational plan would provide for an APNIC that would exist as a cooperative organization of national NICs, coordinated by the APNCC. While all the functions that APNIC should provide have not been fully defined, the APNIC pilot project is currently experimenting with this functional delegation scheme as previously mentioned. These experiments have progressed exceedingly well, primarily due to the expertise and talent of the individuals implementing those APNIC services. With the assumption that additional talented people from other national NICs will be able to provide their talents, there is reason to believe the KRNIC proposal will prove to provide a functional organizational model for the ultimate APNIC. Funding The APNIC pilot project is funded in its entirety by the Japanese national NIC, JPNIC which has very generously allocated 10% of its operating funds for the duration of the APNIC pilot project[2]. Obviously, since APNIC will be an organization providing support to the entire Asia and Pacific Rim regions, it is neither desirable nor likely this funding situation will continue. As one of the APNIC pilot project's primary goals, the determination of a stable funding model has been under significant discussion. For the APNIC, a stable funding model would be one in which the APNIC can have some level of assurance of continued existence, without the need for the staff of APNIC to spend most of its time scrounging up money. In the process of researching the issues of a stable funding model, the APNIC pilot project staff has looked at the means by which InterNIC and RIPE-NCC, the other regional Internet registries, obtain their funding. The two registries, while having sharing some of the same functionality, have radically differing budgets and funding models. The InterNIC is primarily funded by a grant from the US National Science Foundation with the three parts of the InterNIC being funded differently[6]. For Registration Services, the NSF provides full funding via a grant of just over US$ 1,000,000/year for the duration of the 5 year cooperative agreement. The Database and Directory Services award has a total cost of approximately US$ 2,000,000/year with approximately US$ 600,000 coming from NSF, and the remaining cost being split approximately equally between cost-sharing and project related income. Information Services totals approximately US$ 1,300,000/year with NSF providing a declining amount each year, the remainder of the funds being generated by project related income. RIPE-NCC, the European regional Internet registry, which has a total 1994 budget of ECU 260,000[7] has given much thought to the issues of funding models for Internet registries (in particular, see the RIPE document, RIPE-084[8]). Initially, RIPE derived its funding from RARE, but has developed a funding model that relies on 'voluntary contributions' from the IP service providers RIPE-NCC supports. In the event that the IP service providers do not provide enough money for the operation of RIPE-NCC, RARE guarantees sufficient funding for the continued existence of RIPE-NCC. One aspect shared between both the RIPE and InterNIC funding mechanisms is the existence of a external funding authority which can provide economic assistance. Within the Asia Pacific region, no such organization has been identified. Thus, the APNIC funding model needs to take into account the fact that there is no single organization to which the APNIC can turn for money. In addition, the RIPE funding model implies the existence of a sufficient number of service providers with sufficient cash reserves to make voluntary contributions. Perhaps due to the high cost of connectivity, the AP region does not at this time have the wide variety of Internet service providers, especially in the commercial realm, as exists in Europe. Thus, due to the nature of the AP region, the APNIC pilot project staff has been unable to make a convincing argument for implementing either the InterNIC funding model nor the RIPE funding model. The APNIC pilot project staff has therefore concentrated on leveraging the APNIC organizational model. The inherent assumption of the APNIC organizational model is that national NICs will be providing APNIC functionality as an adjunct to functionality they must provide for their own constituency. If this assumption is extended to providing some part of the national NICs funding to support the operation of APNIC, the APNIC funding issue may be resolved. Even though the APNIC pilot project staff expended significant cycles on funding models, no firm decisions has been made at this time. This issue, a significant problem for not only APNIC, but for the other regional registries as well, will need to be discussed in detail at the upcoming APCCIRN/APEPG meeting in Prague before a stable funding model can be assured. Lessons Learned At this early stage, the APNIC pilot project has been receiving a fair amount of traffic and that traffic has proven quite instructive to the pilot project staff. Prior to the acceptance of delegation of the 202 and 203 address blocks, the APNIC pilot project staff received 1-5 messages a week, mostly for information regarding Internet connectivity in the AP region. Since the delegation, the pilot project staff receives approximately 5 to 10 email messages and 1 to 5 fax messages a day. It is expected in the future, the number of messages the APNIC staff receives will grow proportionally to the growth of the Internet in the AP region. From the experiences gained in handling this level of traffic, the APNIC pilot project staff have learned several lessons. Perhaps foremost among the lessons learned is that which should be fairly obvious, namely that running a regional NIC requires significant investments in both time and talent. A regional NIC becomes a magnet, both for informational questions such as "my girlfriend lives in Uzbekistan, how can I find her email address" to technical questions such as how to use variable length subnet masks to make the greatest use of small amounts of address space. The former type of question, while typically not technically challenging, can be time consuming to answer and requires knowledge of how to navigate the Internet to search for possibly well hidden data. The latter type of question typically requires extensive knowledge of the current popular techniques for building and maintaining IP networks, and can also require significant amounts of time to resolve. The APNIC pilot project staff has also learned the functions associated with running an Internet registry such as address allocation can not only be time consuming and require significant knowledge regarding routing techniques and protocols, but also can require the individual responding to the request to appear nearly monomaniacal with respect to not allocating the requested amount of address space if the request is not sufficiently justified. Since allocations of network addresses must be carefully considered, with special emphasis placed on the allocating the appropriate amount of address space in a way that conforms to the requirements of CIDR, the APNIC project staff has had to explain Internet addressing and the global routing table situation many times, sometimes more than once to the same individual. In the AP region, this sort of situation can have added complexity due to language and cultural differences and typically must be handled with some care. Thus, briefly stated, the primary lesson the APNIC pilot project staff has learned is that running a regional NIC is not for the weak of heart, shallow of mind, or shy of disposition. The pilot project staff has found that, in order to provide a high level of service both to the clients of APNIC, and to the Internet at large, APNIC staff must be willing to spend significant time educating requestors, be thoroughly knowledgable in a wide variety of networking technologies and techniques, and must be able to say "no", albeit politely, when appropriate. Conclusions In terms of the future APNIC, it is believed by the APNIC staff that the organizational model proposed will provide a flexible and effective means to ensure APNIC can operate effectively given the Asia and Pacific Rim regional constraints. The distributed model has been shown to be workable both in the US with the InterNIC, and via experiments conducted within the APNIC pilot project, and should allow APNIC to provide timely and effective services. With respect to the APNIC funding model, basing the funding mechanisms upon the concept of leveraging the APNIC organizational model should provide a way of ensuring enough funding to make APNIC viable. It is obvious however that additional work is required in this area, perhaps in concert with the other regional registries. Obviously, for the APNIC pilot project, the most significant event in the future is the conclusion of the pilot project phase on June 30, 1994. The pilot project staff will be presenting a final report on aspects of the project and will be presenting this report to the APCCIRN/APEPG at their meeting following the Prague Inet meeting. It is believed that the results of the pilot project should provide enough information, techniques, procedures, and software to enable a smooth transition to the permanent APNIC. -------- [1] Murai, J., and Hirabaru, M., "A Proposal for APNIC Experiments", ftp://nic.nm.kr/apccirn/020.apnic.proposal, January 1993. [2] Murai, J., and Conrad, D., "Asia Pacific Network Information Center Pilot Project Proposal", ftp://apnic.net/apnic/docs/english/apnic-003.txt, August 1993. [3] Gerich, E., "Guidelines for Management of IP Address Space", ftp://ftp.iij.ad.jp/pub/rfc/rfc1466.txt, May 1993 [4] Park, T., "Proposal for Distributed APNIC Operations", ftp://apnic.net/apnic/docs/english/apnic-007.txt, December, 1993. [5] US National Science Foundation, "NETWORK INFORMATION SERVICES Manager(S) FOR NSFNET and the nren, Project Solicitation" National Science Foundation, March 1992 [6] Mitchell, D. and Goldstein, S., Private communications September, 1993 [7] Karrenberg, Daniel, "RIPE NCC Funding Situation", ripe-list@ripe.net electronic mailing list, October, 1993 [8] Blokzijl, Rob, "RIPE NCC Funding", ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-docs/ripe-084.txt, May, 1993 -------- David "Randy" Conrad holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park. He has been working in the networking field since 1984 and has been involved with networking in the Asia and Pacific Rim region since 1990, initially working with the PACCOM project at the University of Hawaii. Since 1992 he has worked for Internet Initiative Japan, Inc., a commercial service provider in Japan, as a R&D engineer. In addition, since Sept, 1993, he has also been the technical contact for the APNIC pilot project and a member of the APNIC pilot project staff. He can be reached as: davidc@apnic.net