I spend most of the day at the APIA ISOC-AU Joint Forum. Seem like the whole gang of the typical IETF suspects (IAB & IESG) are here among other speakers.
The speech of the day has to come from Chris Disspain from auDA at the last session. His description of the prepcomm3 of the WSIS process can be summarized by one comment he made (I am writing from memory): “One government official said: It is great that WSIS is a open transparent multi stakeholder process but never forget the government is in charge”.
This is pretty much consistent from what I gathered from other folks over the last few days: WSIS Tunsia is quite a disaster. Other stories includes countries asking for basic stuff like “I need power station in my country” and some outright asking for money. The sense I got was many are glad that WSIS is finally over although IGF is still around.
Now, this is not to say I have no sympathy for those who ask for money or basic infrastructure like power but obviously it is the wrong forum. More importantly, I am extremely scared these folks has an equal (and often veto) voice in the process.
Not all of WSIS is bad: At least a lot of countries has an understanding what Internet is about and how it is coordination function after 5 years of activities.
Personally, I believe something like WSIS is a good thing. Network is global and there are many things governments could and should work together, like cybercrime, spams, phishing etc etc. Unfortunately, WSIS tries to do too much in too little time without enough clue. Perhaps it is not meant to be for now.
Reminder to self: As I was trying to find some clueful folks to help me to solve a routing problem in SingAREN GIX, one said: “Is this related to TEIN2? TEIN2 routing is one of the most complex network, far more then any commercial networks I know.” Coming from Randy Bush, that say alot. I probably should pay more attention to the routing group in TEIN2.
