The sky looks a bit polluted which really spolit this great view. But the weather is great here!

I just packed my stuff and head for Hanoi to attend the Workshop for Network Security for ASEAN CIOs. I will be giving a talk on NGN and Security…I haven’t finish the slides yet but here is one for you :-)

This will be my second trip to Hanoi. The first one was done 3+ years ago to attend the Ideographic Rapporteur Group (of SC2) meeting when we were doing CJK Extension C of Unicode. I remember fondly of the place…

The highlight of the day should goes to Geoff Hutson’s keynote on Convergence. Geoff as I noted previously has a talent for writing and giving really good speeches. A short summary:

1. Convergence is something the industry has always being doing constantly.
2. Triple Play is game over. Bittorrent has won!
3. What your users wants may not be what you want. But focus on doing what your users want you to do – shuffle the bits!
4. All the exciting stuff is happening above the network so stop trying to build smarter network.

(3) is similar to what I had said before: “Stick to what you do best (within your layer) and you will still make your money, in ways you never expect to be in future.”

Oh, one slide is particularly interesting

As you can see, the market already redistribute to value applications service providers and the supplier higher than infrastructure providers. :-)

I agreed with almost everything he said and I doubt I could do a better job in delivering that message. If you are interested, here are his slides which is an adaption of his paper published at ISP Column.

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.

One of the problem of not attending meetings for a while is you start to forget someone name. Okay, at least I have that problem. So many times that someone come forward to say hi and I have to struggle to remember their name, esp. I cant see their name tag.

For those whose name I forgot, I am sorry. I have a good memory for faces but very bad with names. Its nothing personal.

Anyway, I dont really remember much what happened today. I was in a series of meetings, then running around finding people to talk to on a project I am working and poof dinner time. Oh yea, I had dinner. Twice. Once with Prof. Qian, Mao Wei and Wu Guowei and then another hosted by PIKOM chairman.

Between the geek talks, the usual WSIS/ICANN stories (gosh, the Tunsia hotel story was funny :-), one particular incident left a strong impression on me. One of my friend has a Thai wife who also attended the latter dinner. It is obvious she is anti-Singapore anti-Thaksin (at least at this moment). My friend, her husband, said this to me: “To her, Temasek is the like the invader of Thailand”.

To a country who is very proud that they never being conquered in the last century, not even World War II, and the only southeast asia that never colonized by Western power, that say a lot. I guess that’s why there is 200,000 people turn up for a protest right now.

On a lighter side, she also mentioned she holds a PPS card and that they fly in here on SingaporeAir. She wasn’t too happy when I told her SingaporeAir is owned by Temasek :-)

I missed my flight from Singapore to Perth. It was really silly; I was doing my email in the lounge and I forgot the time :( By the time I ran to the gate, they just closed it. *sigh* The next available flight was at 9:30am the next day, so I ended up having to stay at the transit hotel for a night. That’s was really werid.

Anyway, as I only arrived in Perth in the afternoon, I missed the APCAUCE regional update on antispam activities. *sigh*

But not too late to join the APRICOT workshop reception. While there were only 50+ people attending the pre-conference workshop, seem like everyone was pretty happy with the workshop. And the dinner was good.

Over dinner, Bill Manning mentioned that the DoC is doing a request for information on IANA. It was quite werid because I cannot find it on NTIA website. Anyway, the request for information can be found at FBO website instead. Particularly, note this “The Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (DOC/NTIA) is exploring options for Contractor performance of three, interdependent technical Internet coordinating functions.“.

Not too sure what it means but my gut feeling says this is pretty significant.

Btw, a couple of people gave me funny looks when I login to Warcraft. Speaking of which, you might be interested to check out some news on our guild: C|net and 1Up, both got Slashdotted. It’s a really cool guild. Just a couple days ago, after a semi-successful run with some guildies, Joi whispered me: “You know the warrior in your group? It would be funny for you to know he is John Crain from ICANN.” John and me know each another…we just didn’t know each another in the game :-)

I am now waiting for my flight to Perth for APRICOT 2006. Sitting at the Krisflyer lounge, I have a feel a bit out of place…Perhaps I havent travelled for a while. Ever since I told my boss I am leaving IDA, I grounded (myself) from any travelling. Its going to difficult for me and my boss to justify given he knows of my intention to leave.

So in some way, I am glad it is over and I am now able to travel again. I feel so out of touch…;-) Anyway, see you in Perth!

The Blogger Panel was a smash – they schedule it as a main session rather than a breakout session which means we have much more audience than last year. Andy was a great moderator and my fellow panelists didn’t hesitate the take any questions, even the tough ones like why are we qualified to be up there :-)

I didn’t have the chance to take a shot at the “China story” but we have many other interesting discussion like what will shape the VoIP industry in the next two years – more start-ups, more mega buyouts, more innovative applications and more regulations. The last is mine and Jeff jump at it the moment I said the word “regulation”.

After then panel, we got together for dinner and debate never stop :-)

Oh yes, David Isenberg joined us for dinner. I was sitting at the other corner with David, Tom, Aswath.

I spent most of my time at the Communication Policy Summit.

The most exciting session got to be Lawful Intercept session, with speakers from Drug Enforcement Administration and Federal Bureau of Investigation explaining why they need CALEA and they did a great job. Unfortunately for them, their opponents John Morris and Brad Templeton did an even better job. In short, no one deny the law enforcement agencies the right to do legal intercept but the objection is how it is implemented. As it is current proposed, it is trying to retro fit a new technology into an old model, making technical requirements like 0.2s timestamp that increases the cost of implementation without any explaination why it is needed, and most importantly, why the industry should spend millions/billions of dollars to implement which is incomplete and easy to circumvent (it does not deal with IP-to-IP so all the terroist needs to know is www.skype.com).

The other session I enjoy is session on policy reformation. The two hour session is extremely informative covering topics like (1) inter-state/carrier settlement (2) universal access fund (3) VoIP jurisdiction. For (1), it looks like US Congress don’t really know what they want but they want FCC to solve it. Conclusion is that it is not going to be resolved anytime soon. For (2), the issues seem simpler, or at least California Commissioner Susan Kennedy thinks it can be resolve easily by associating the contributions with phone numbers. The debate is more of a re-definition of what is “universal access” as no one wants to use the money to build an old copper infrastructure especially if you can get broadband IP infrastructure for cheaper cost. (As it stands, the universal services is bias towards copper network). For (3), Susan surprised me by saying she supported FCC to have jurisdiction over VoIP instead of the PUCs. In her words, “take it away from us before we hurt ourselves”.

Well, I disagreed so we had a little discussion. Her final statement surprised me but it also explained a question I had for a while: after FCC waive the “right-of-way” for new fiber laid, how are they going to balance the market? Where is the wedges they can use on the fiber operators?

The discussion goes this way:

Me: I agreed with everything you said. I believe in free market and I prefer competition over regulation. But as you said, you have 80% DSL and 92% cable pentration so there are still some small pocket people who has no choice in their carrier and …

Susan: For them, we have universal access funds.

In other words, the universal access funds are being used to create competitions (she confirmed this after the session).

Everything makes senses now: Using universal access funds to create competitions at the same time deregulating the “right of way” (The government should avoid regulating a monopoly in the hopes of making it “The Good Monopoly”. Instead, devote resources to promote competition and abundance. see Lessons learnt from history).

But shouldn’t it be called “Universal Competition Funds” then?