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.