Once Again Mexico Hosts the Internet Community

29/06/2011

Once Again Mexico Hosts the Internet Community

A new edition of the regional Internet community’s annual meeting, LACNIC XV, was held in Cancun, Mexico, on 15-20 May 2011.

It had been nine years and twelve meetings since LACNIC had met in Mexico. This time LACNIC met in Mexico hand in hand with NIC.mx.

The contrast was evident. Eight years ago LACNIC III was the meeting of an organization that was taking its first steps. Even so, 80 people participated in the discussions and contributed to molding the reality of the Internet as we know it today. Back then the organization had little under 120 members, whereas today LACNIC is made up by 1680 members.

LACNIC XV was the result of unique process thanks to which the meeting has been able to visit 11 different countries, progressively integrating their communities into the regional development process. Current reality shows an organization that has become consolidated and is focused on serving the needs of a diverse region such as Latin America and the Caribbean.

This time the event was attended not by 80 but by 300 participants. Not 2 but 6 days were necessary for participants to contribute their presentations, discussions and panels on technical and political aspects relevant to the development of the Internet at regional level.

It is the community in full exercise of their rights who shape the organization and build the road that must be travelled.

LACNIC III and LACNIC XV are two milestones in the same story.

LACNIC XV highlights:

• Seven (7) policies were presented and debated by the community at the Public Policy Forum (PPF) in Cancun. Three of these achieved consensus and continued the process for their implementation, while the remaining four did not reach consensus and will therefore return to the Forum for further discussion and development and their eventual presentation at the next meeting.

• LAC-IX: A new regional entity
  Network operators and Internet exchange points (IXPs) of the region met and signed an agreement for the creation of a new entity that will bring them together. LAC-IX is a non-profit organization, the purpose of which is to exchange information and promote new traffic exchange points within the region.

• Resource certification − RPKI
  The deployment of an Internet resource certification program within the region represents a major milesetone. Both the tutorial as well as the different sessions and presentations that were conducted allowed LACNIC to become the second registry (RIR) in terms of the number of certified routes.For more information, please visit Avances sustantivos en la certificación de recursos de Internet

• +Raices Project
  LACNIC and the Internet System Consortium (ISC) −the organization responsible for administrating the ‘F’ root server− signed a new agreement for deploying 3 additional copies of this server in our region. With these, a total of 10 copies will have been deployed under this program, which LACNIC has been executing since 2004.

• Sponsorship program
  The sponsorship program was created in response to the need of financial assistance for members of the community to participate in LACNIC events. On this opportunity 75 individuals (52 members) received partial or full financial assistance to participate in the meeting. For many of them this was their first chance to take part in an event of this nature.

• LACNIC elections
  Fiscal Commission: Gabriel Adonaylo of Argentina was elected for a period of 3 years; Guillermo Cicileo was elected for a period of 1 year.
  Electoral Commission: Alejandro Acosta of Venezuela was elected for a period of 3 years.
  In addition, Nicolas Antoniello was elected for a new 2-year term as Public Policy Forum Chair and Alejandro Acosta was elected Chair of the Latin American IPv6 Forum (FLIP6).
  The LACNIC Member Assembly elected Alejandro Guzman of Colombia as one of the 3 delegates to the ICANN ASO.

A detailed report of the event can be found at:

http://www.lacnic.net/en/eventos/lacnicxv/

A special acknowledgement to all those who made the event possible, particularly NIC Mexico who hosted the event and the meeting’s sponsors:

Nic.br/CGI.br, Antel Uruguay, ISOC, Micronet, Google, Sedo, Afilias, Nic Chile, Internexa, Cablemas and Telmex.