APNIC Annual General Meeting - 22nd February 1998 Introduction David Conrad opened the meeting and welcomed the members to the APNIC Annual General Meeting in Manila. APNIC Membership and Financial Status Reports Kyoko Day gave a report on the APNIC membership and the status of the APNIC finances. All the information presented is also available in the APNIC Annual Report. Membership Report The following is a breakdown of the current membership at the end of 1997. Large 20 10% 7 confederations Medium 30 15% 2 confederations Small 150 75% 1 confederation Total 200 members The membership trend is upwards with dips in June/July, and Sept/Oct - due to membership drop out. The number of new members per month generally reducing. This may be a reflection of the current Asian Economic crisis. The largest number of members are from Hong Kong with 39 members, Australia has 37, Indonesia has 19, China 18, Thailand 13 and so on. Hong Kong and China together are approx. 25% of APNIC membership. They are also the largest contributor if combined. APNIC is serving 25 countries. Financial Report Income from membership fees during 1997 amounted to US$750,000. Other income is derived from start-up fees, non-member fees, and interest (mainly from Singapore bank account - Japanese account pays negligible interest). The APNIC total income for 1997 is US$880,000. Total expenses for 1997 was US$721,000. Major expense was underwriting APRICOT by US$86,000. Major expenses are US$242,000 on payroll, US$104,000 for travel, US$50,000 to IANA, US$66,000 to contractors and US$45,000 for accounting/management fee. The actual balance sheet is on pages 15/16 of the Annual Report. APRICOT 97 expenses are on page 27 of the Annual Report. Total expenses were US$318,000. The most significant expenses were hotel charges at US$115,000, and speaker fees at US$107,000. The revenue was US$231,000 which came mostly from sponsors at US$120,000. For 1998, the initial costs look similar to 1997, but increased sponsorship and local assistance looks like the losses will be less. Summary Steady growth of membership. The APNIC is financially stable for the time being. Factors affecting income include Asian economy, competition in industry, deregulation, confederation charging, non-members, etc. Factors affecting expenses include staff hire, equipment purchase, activities and so forth. Questions? There was a question concerning whether the APNIC had in fact paid tax to Japanese authorities. Kyoko answered indicating that no tax had been paid yet, as APNIC was not registered in Japan. It may be the case that Japan may come and ask for tax however. Question on Brisbane location and affecting staff. Randy indicated that Kyoko will move in March, Yoshiko will stay in Tokyo, Anne already based in Brisbane, Randy's situation unclear as yet for obvious reasons. Resource Allocation Status Report Yoshiko Okazaki Chong gave a report on the allocation of resources at the APNIC. For more detail please refer to the appropriate section of the Annual Report. IP Allocation Review The amount of IP address space allocated is increasing linearly. The number of resource requests peaked in July, low in January (this is number of request forms submitted, not number of requests). APNIC Request Statistics IP address requests - 10237 were received over the year with an average of 86 per month. For AS number requests, 269 were received with an average 23 per month. To break this down some more, on a per country basis, large number of requests are from Hong Kong, Australia and China. AS requests are mostly received from Australia, Hong Kong and then Thailand in terms of volume received. Allocation Statistics Total number of IP allocations made in latter half of 1997 is 169. In terms of the number of AS allocation made per country - the majority come from Australia. Hostmaster Mail Activity Questions are averaging around 70 per month. Other e-mail averages around 300 per month (any mail exchanges covering hostmaster conversations). Assignment policy changed last March, with /19 being allocated to new members. Assignment window of zero for these, so they are supposed to seek second opinions before assigning. Few second- opinion requests were forthcoming until about July. Hostmaster Time Consumption An experimental time analysis was done by measuring how long the editor is open when hostmaster is replying. This clearly does not measure the whole time processing requests, but a single metric to see the time consumption. Using this, the most time was spent per country on Australia, Hong Kong and China. The most time spent per account per country was on Korea. Summary We are almost burned out! Compare hostmaster/member ratio compared with other registries, comparison in annual report. If hostmaster does not respond within a day or two, e- mail resent, adding to the workload. Please try to understand and to be patient. Activity Report - David Conrad Resource Allocation Already covered by Yoshiko. APRICOT'97 There were approximately 600 attendees in Hong Kong and 23 sponsors. As reported previously a loss was recorded for the event and underwritten by the APNIC. APNIC relocation Moving to Brisbane, Australia. A 5 year lease has been signed for 216 sq metres of office space. Larger than needed now, expecting to grow into it. Also lower rent because of long lease. Incorporate as Australian company, with same by-laws and membership agreements. Some modifications have been mad e and these will be posted to the web. Consultation/Observation APNIC attends one or more IETF, RIPE & NANOG meetings in a consulting/observation role. Also some monies were spent on consultants/accountants which was mainly in association with the relocation. Travel budget was $104k, or about $500 per member. List of travel given - significant amount was due to relocation discussions. Software Development The APNIC is in the process of deploying a request tracking system. Members will be able to query the ticket numbers via e-mail and web. APNIC registry database system will be replaced. Using old RIPE database currently. Will use RIDE format for data interchange with other registries. Will be web driven, but continue to support e-mail updates. RIR co-ordination APNIC has met with ARIN and RIPE-NCC to facilitate communication and co-operation. Attended RIPE meeting in Dublin, NANOG in Phoenix and Albequerque. IANA restructure discussions APNIC has been involved in this process. APNIC contributed 50k to IANA. Concern has also been expressed over the close ties between address and name registries, which is not felt to be a good thing for the address registries. Future activities Service requirements survey - to gauge APNIC's service level with membership Education and Training - to reduce APNIC's workload by being pro-active rather than re- active. Database Cleanup - e-mail probes on contact information. Questions There was a question concerning IANA and APNIC funding it? Randy answered saying that the APNIC was actually invoiced by IANA. All 3 RIRs were asked to contribute US$50,000. There was a question concerning changes to the By-Laws and Article of Association? Randy answered that they would be available as soon as could put them on the web. Will there be shareholders of APNIC? Randy answered that this didn't quite map over to Australian law. The Australian lawyers referred to the concept of trusteeship as appropriate. A single share of APNIC is held in trust for executive council members by one executive council member. APNIC is tax exempt for its membership fees - not a charity. Geoff Huston clarified this further. In Australia, only charitable organisations are tax exempt. However, as a non- profit making organisation, the APNIC membership fees will be tax exempt. However not tax exempt are services and payroll monies. The Queensland state payroll tax is applicable only if the salaries bill for the organisation is over AU$850,000. He felt that the APNIC was unlikely to hit this for a while. There was a question concerning the need for new Membership Agreements? Randy answered that this has been modified and will be posted on the web. Members will need to sign a new membership agreement, migrating from the Seychelles company. Also in the process original membership agreement was "cleaned up". There was a comment that the previous agreement a bit troublesome referring to Tokyo office. Randy answered that this has now been fixed. The principle office needs not to be listed in Australia, only the registered office which is KPMG (the accountants) in Brisbane. Clarification over the relationship between IANA and APNIC was requested? The IANA delegates resources and authority to the APNIC, as a Regional Internet Registry. There is no formal contract between the parties. There was some concern over what would happen if the US Government made the relationship between IANA and APNIC difficult? Geoff Huston answered to say that nothing has shown that the structure is likely to change. Current political issues are far away from IP addresses, focusing more on domain names, non- national domain names, rather than anything to do with addresses. However, Randy commented that since IANA is based in US, it is true that the APNIC is bound by legal system in US. More significant is the current basis of the IANA which exists as an academic entity in the field of Internet Research. All the regional registries have been trying to get IANA to incorporate as independent organisation to protect against any US government changes. The APNIC has been in contact with Ira Magaziner - the White House governmental advisor, to express the opinions of the APNIC. There was a question concerning the future of the registration of "APNIC Seychelles". Once the members move over to APNIC Australia it makes sense to remove the registration of the company from the Seychelles. What procedures are required to move from one membership agreement to the other? It was noted that the Executive Council would be sending out new membership agreement forms. When the new forms are on the web, e-mail will be sent to the ap-talk list for discussion. APNIC Australia will become operational during March. Aim is to terminate the Seychelles company by next APNIC meeting in 6 months time. Geoff Huston further added that the existing membership agreements terminate in the next 12 months. We will send notice that these won't be renewed - automatic time limit. Agreements with the Australian company come after that. It was queried whether the APNIC would move again? Randy commented that the lease has been taken for a 5 year period in Brisbane and as a move is extremely disruptive, it would not be considered a good thing to move. Some concern was expressed over Australia as a choice of location for the APNIC. It was further commented that the Seychelles company was on reflection, very bad for APNIC activity. Japan is not good on tax for companies, which means Australia is probably better - not the best, but better. There was a question about the staff recruitment plan in the future with a suggestion to recruit multi-lingual staff. The recruitment plan is documented in the Annual Report. The multilingual staff suggestion was accepted as a good one and this requirement would be put into job. There was a suggestion to have APNIC subsidiary offices in other countries? It was felt that this was a policy issue that should be taken up with the Executive Council who would in turn take this up with membership. Cost is concern. Legally it is possible. Branch office shouldn't be a problem, apart from North Korea. Investigate taking individuals in on student visas for a year, allowing them to work, then return to provide registry services in their own countries. Any proposals should be sent to the to APNIC member mailing list for discussion. It was commented that the Regional registries should co-ordinate to avoid "stealing" of prefixes. In fact the registries are co- ordinating, and we had one example this year. Discussed on IEPG list, and some ISP's filtered out the unallocated address space. Miscommunication was the cause. It was noted that this is very difficult to track. There was a suggestion to strengthen the role of the national NIC's or confederations in the role of a "local APNIC office". The main motivation for this would be to cut down the costs and workload of the APNIC. Geoff Huston commented that while this was a suggestion with merit, this in fact was a policy issue. He further added that at this time, the primary concern for the membership should be to preserve the stability of the APNIC as a regional entity and finding a replacement for David Conrad should be the primary focus after relocation. Dispelling Rumours - Randy Conrad Why did I quit? Rumour - forced out by Japanese members of APNIC due to Australian move Reality - no attempts by anyone to move me out of APNIC. Rumour - forced out by Japanese so that JPNIC could take over APNIC role Reality - JPNIC big supporter of APNIC. Also, unlikely that a national NIC would ever be promoted to APNIC. Rumour - he was attempting to deliberately destabilise APNIC now that ARIN exists so that AP region have to go to ARIN. Reality - didn't work for 4 years to create APNIC just to hand it over to ARIN. ARIN has enough to do without AP to worry about Reality - Randy felt that his talents were as an engineer, not a business person. APNIC is a small (non-profit) business. He had promised himself that once APNIC reached its goal of having 6 months operational budget in the bank that he would go back to doing interesting things. Also, APNIC is being forced to play a more active political role which is not something he particularly enjoys. He also felt it was somewhat inappropriate to have an American to represent the AP region. Rumour - APNIC had a visa application denied Reality - APNIC is in process of obtaining visas for all who want to go to Australia. No VISAs denied. More difficult to get visas in Japan than Australia. Rumour - APNIC will face significantly higher cost in moving to Australia Reality - additional costs due to more staff. APNIC so far has been receiving free connectivity and office space and utilities. Rumour - APNIC is financial unstable Reality - APNIC has US$400,000 in the bank, as mandated by Executive Council. APNIC is not dependent on any single organisation for funding. Any other rumours? There was a comment expressing appreciation at the candour and openness of the APNIC. Any other rumours should be discussed and openly dispelled in this room. There was one final question concerning who would oversee and ensure that the transition to Australia is done effectively and efficiently. Randy commented that he would remain acting DG as long as his services were required by the Executive Council. Executive Council Elections There was quite some discussion about voting procedures due to the ambiguity in the By-Laws. Proposed wording of revised voting procedure from Geoff - "Each member has three selections. Each selection is multiplied by the number of membership votes." More questions seeking clarification, especially regarding weighting and keeping in line with the By-Laws. Revised wording from Geoff - "Each member has 3/6/12 votes. You must place a number of votes against one or more candidates which must not exceed the number of organisational votes." Further discussion about voting procedures. Randy explained Geoff's "wording" once more. Suggestion from floor - if any votes are improperly made, secretary's office can explain what is wrong rather than making votes invalid. Randy - agreed and good suggestion. 13 nominations, 3 wish to stand down. They are: Pindar Wong, Mathias Koerber, Jun Murai. 5 minute break while delegates discuss how they are going to vote. Candidates invited to give 5-minute presentations. Those who did give brief presentations were Kuo- Wei Wu. Toru Takahashi, Che-Hoo Cheng, Mahizzan bin Mohd Fadzil (by representative), Tommi Chen. Others either not present or didn't wish to speak. Issues Voting Three issues up for voting: Revision of confederation fees Removal of self-determinacy Maintenance fees for terminated members Voting issue number 1 Currently confederation fees are based on number of members - difficult to implement due to size self-determination. Proposal to revise the fees based on the amount of address space allocated. Number of votes depends on the amount of money paid. There was quite some discussion over this issue among the members. There was a question over whether any of the existing confederations charged for IP address allocation? It was noted that the JPNIC does. There is a per address fee which is an allocation fee, as well as a "transaction fee". There was also a query over why should everyone vote for it, not just confederations? Randy - this is a membership issue, it affects the financial status of APNIC. This replaces the "per member fee". There is no charge for previously allocated address space. It is for new allocations, and only charged at time of allocation. Geoff Huston spoke in favour of the new scheme as he felt it removed some of the administrative overheads, and makes interaction of APNIC much simpler. Randy commented further that the APNIC has asked all confederations many times for their membership numbers. So far only one has done has given this. Obviously this is problematic when it comes to collecting fees. This revision should improve the means of accounting for confederation and their member activities. There was one comment from a confederation concerning the amount of financial buffering needed in order to be able to request address space. Voting issue number 2 Currently APNIC allows self-determinacy. APNIC has seen a significant movement from large to medium to small status. It became apparent that APNIC could be in financial difficulties if this trend continues. The proposal removes self-determinacy. Three options: flat fee for everyone. base the amount paid on the amount of address space allocated. </18 - small, /16 - /18 - medium, >/16 - large. Leave things as they are. There was a question as to whether this would affect vote status? Randy - it will if we go flat rate. If Large/Medium/Small chosen, still 4/2/1 votes will be applicable. If everyone went to small, APNIC will eventually go out of business. This does not affect confederations. Per address charges have been set to map closely to per member fee according to the projections. Voting issue number 3 Should there be a maintenance fee for terminated members. There have been several occasions where organisations pay the APNIC fee, get address space, then go away again. The "non-member" fee normally covers this situation, but that is more expensive than becoming a member. The result is that APNIC membership pays for the database maintenance fee for "ceased" former members. The proposal is that APNIC should apply a maintenance fee to members who terminate their memberships. If they don't pay, the address space is returned to the free pool. The alternative to this is to maintain the status quo. There were a few questions and comments from floor clarifying the above. Results of Voting Executive Council Elections resulted in the following successful nominations: 1 Toru Takahashi (new member) 2 Che-Hoo Chen (new member) 3 Geoff Huston Confederation Fees: Yes 51 No 29 Self-determinacy: Flat fee for all 15 Per address 32 No change 37 Former member fee: 80 yes 4 no Member Reports: JPNIC - Naomasa Maruyama A presentation on the JPNIC can be found at ftp://www.nic.ad.jp/jpnic/publication/presentation/apri98.ppm To summarise, the organisation has 221 Members, 15 Board members and 2 Auditors. History - began in 1989 as JUNET admin, in 1991 called JNIC, introducing JP domains. No financial basis, all voluntary. JPNIC began in 1993, charging registration fee. In 1995 got an office, and became a registered organisation in 1997. They are a non-profit organisation for "public welfare". Clearly they take a neutral position in order to be supported by all ISP's. Must provide common infrastructure for Japanese Internet. No commitment to provide connectivity and routing. Anticipate the commercialisation of the Internet. At the start had 10 members, now over 200. ftp://ftp.nic.ad.jp/jpnic/statistics/num_of_members. Intially only one commercial provider. Large number of trustees (in Japanese, so can't document here). Budget - FY93, 10 million yen budget (~100k USD). FY97 budget is 4.7million USD. Fees - entrance fee is US$5000. Annual membership fee is US$100 * organisations (number of connected domains) for academics. Commercials have a flat fee of US$3000 in addition to the academic conditions. Assignment fees - part for assignment (registration) and part for transaction. Latter is taxable. TWNIC - Shian-Shyong Tseng Constructed 4 years ago. 3 major ISP's, TANet (academic network, run by ministry of edu), HiNet (set up in 1994 by Taiwan Telecom) - largest ISP, and SEEDNet (started in 1992, run by III). HiNet backbone to US is now T3. Also have several T1 links to other Asia Pacific countries. TANet is in 3 tiers. National T3 based ATM backbone. 13 regional network centres run by local university/college. They provide services for the schools/colleges in their region. Third tier is county educational network centre, linking schools. 30% of senior high schools have access to Internet. By end of '98 all high schools will access Internet. SEEDNet backbone is T1, plus 7xT1 international link to US. Plan to upgrade to T3 later this year. Several small ISP's, number has increased from 40 to 64 last year. Hostcount has increased quite dramatically. Start of 97 had 50,000, Start of 98 at half million. Domain name growth is about 100% - now have 12,000 domains, 90% are from the commercial arena. In terms of IP 15,000 /24s allocated. TWIX exchange point has started on 26 November 1997. Second IX centre will be established later this year. TW-CERT - member of FIRST and CERT. Prototype at the moment, exchanging info with other CERTs. Working groups/forum, with information exchanged regularly. http://www.cert.org.tw. Web site is http://www.twnic.net. KRNIC - Seungmin Lee Provide registration services (IP addr, AS numbers, domain, in-addr.arpa reg), information services (web, gopher, whois database, anon-ftp), statistical reports. See http://www.krnic.net. Large number of ISP's, links provided by Sprint, IMnet, MCI, etc. Showed Internet connectivity map in Korea. Hosts allocated - 160,000 in Jan'98, mostly under .ac.kr. Domains registered - 8700 in Jan'98, mostly commercial. More people are going for gTLD rather than .kr domains. 16,000 /24 received from APNIC. Currently 19 AS's allocated in Korea. Domain name registration policy - must be connected to Internet with authorised IP addr. Only allocated to organisations in Korea. Must have at least two useable name servers. First come first served basis. Organisations need to provide certificate of corporation (or similar). Propose to establish a mailing list to co-ordinate policy between confederations. It was noted that the APNIC would be more than happy to host the mailing list address. Proposal should be sent to the apnic-talk mailing list. Closing Comments - Randy Conrad APNIC has now reached a level of stability where a move won't cause a problem. Thanks to all those who have supported it so far. He commented that he has attempted to make the APNIC an open, transparent, and independent organisation which has no bias, no secrets, no hidden agendas. Anyone can become a member. Executive Council decided to contact a professional executive search firm to find new DG. Candidates will be submitted to EC in 8 weeks. Shortlist for interview there after. Secretariat will conduct the initial interviews. Randy expressed his own personal thanks to Jun Murai and the AP Region Internet community for providing the opportunity to build APNIC. His parting words of "caution" were to advise the members to be wary of attempts to pull the APNIC into unnecessary politics. APNIC should be a service organisation, not a political battleground. Vote of Thanks There was a final proposal to David Conrad to thank him for all the work he has done for APNIC and wish him all the best in his future.