A Platform for Internet Integration at the Service of Latin America and the Caribbean

03/11/2011

A Platform for Internet Integration at the Service of Latin America and the Caribbean

Now that the LACNIC meeting has ended, those of us who participated feel that it was a complete success. But, why do we say this? What objective indicators can we show? To understand our feelings of success, let’s review the main results and highlights of LACNIC XVI / LACNOG 2011.

LACNIC XVI / LACNOG 2011 brought together, in Buenos Aires, more than 350 participants from 24 different countries (17 of them part of the Latin American and Caribbean region), all of whom attended the various conferences presented by regional and global specialists. Some speakers specially invited by LACNIC, such as Olaf Kolkman, Geoff Houston, and Russ Housley, were visiting our region for the first time. Participants were able both to benefit from their knowledge and experience on topics such as IPv6, DNSSEC, and the development of standards, as well as to enjoy their histrionic abilities. To this must be added the works submitted through LACNOG’s call for presentations, as even those that could not be included in the agenda had an excellent level. The Internet Society ION Conference also contributed excellent presentations and experts that discussed new technologies such as IPv6, DNSSEC, and RPKI.

The Public Policy Forum (PPF) discussed six (6) proposals, three (3) of which reached consensus and will continue the process (call for comments and ratification by the Board) towards their implementation, while the others were sent back to the list for further discussion and to incorporate some of the comments received during the forum.

The panels on transfer of resources among RIRs and regional IPv6 deployment experiences presented an opportunity for participants and panelists to discuss and debate issues that are extremely important for the region and the global Internet resource administration system. A highlight of the agenda.

The moment when it was revealed that the 2011 Outstanding Achievement Award was to be presented to Florencio Utreras was a particularly relevant and enjoyable moment.

Another highlight was the FRIDA IGF 2011 Awards ceremony, which recognized innovative regional initiatives relating to the central Internet Governance Forum issues.

However, not only the events that took place in the main room were important. The numerous events and meetings that were scheduled in parallel were also highly relevant, among them the following highlights:

• The creation of LAC-IX, the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Exchange Point Operators Association.
• The First regional Latin American and Caribbean meeting of Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs).
• The IPv6 operators meeting, which allowed operators to share their points of view on what they consider should be the next steps towards IPv6 deployment. The decision was made to adopt the IPv6 Week promoted by NIC.br for Brazil and turn it into a regional event. Thus, from 6 to 10 February, 2012 Latin America and the Caribbean will have their “IPv6 Week”.
• F2F interviews. For the first time, during the entire week LACNIC staff implemented an innovative space for personalized, face-to-face meetings with its members.
• RPKI simulation. A Resource Certification (RPKI) and Origin Validation demo was conducted, emulating networks on which Cisco and Juniper routers were tested. These allowed participants to see RPKI in action and use different commands to identify valid and hijacked prefixes.

In addition to the above, it is important to highlight the experience gained by each participant, many of which were attending a LACNIC event for the first time. These participants had the opportunity to interact with colleagues from other countries and top-level experts, both during the conferences as well as during informal breaks and social events, thus building new cooperation relationships that will benefit the region’s development.

The presentations and videos of the different sessions are available at:

http://lacnic.net/en/eventos/lacnicxvi/agenda/lacnog.html
http://lacnic.net/en/eventos/lacnicxvi/agenda/lacxvi.html
http://lacnic.net/en/eventos/lacnicxvi/agenda/ion.html
http://lacnic.net/en/eventos/lacnicxvi/agenda/tutoriales.html