[kictanet] IG Discussions- Day 4 of 10: Critical Internet Resources, IPv6, TLDs

[John Walubengo]

I wish to thank all the previous contributors and remind Listers that they can still contribute belatedly on previous themes - as long as they pick the corresponding/correct subject lines.

Otherwise getting onto today's theme -IPv6 & Country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) Management.

Just some brief background:
1) IPv6: is the new protocol (procedure,standard) for any device (PC, phone, server, camera, etc) communicating over the internet. The old protocol IPv4 is set to reach its limit within 2-3yrs. The prominent item with these protocols is a unique number allocated to each device that wishes to communicate over the internet.  These numbers for IPv4 are getting depleted and will be exhausted by 2011/12/13 depending on which scientists you subscribe to.

Issue: Put in bread and butter terms, if your organisation wanted to extend internet communication to your new branch in 2011/12/13, most likely you will not succeed unless the Kenyan social and technostructure was ready for the IPv6 transistion. How ready are we in terms of technical know-how to transit devices, networks, applications, users, etc onto the new IPv6 platform? In particular what is the Kenyan status on this issue? Whose monkey is it to make us ready for the transistion and how far are they in terms of IPv6-readiness? Or should we just relax, sit back and wait for 2011?

2)Top Level Domain: Each countries is reserved with an internet name (.KE for Kenya, .UG for Uganda, etc) which by extension covers corresponding sub-domains such as xyz.co.ke, xyz.ac.ke, xyz.or.ke, etc.  How this is managed varies accross countries. Indeed in Uganda, the .UG namespace was created and managed by some private individual (hope this has changed). In Kenya, the top level domain name, .KE is managed by KENIC, www.kenic.or.ke, under a Public-Private Partnership.

Issue: Apparently the management of the Kenyan .KE namespace is set to change - actually has changed - according to the recently enacted Kenya Communication Amendment Act (KCA Act 2008).  The .KE namespace will now be exclusively managed by the Regulator, CCK. Is this good or bad for the internet community? Again, putting it in bread and butter terms, how would you like the idea that your e.g. www.nation.co.ke site is alive but could be disabled by our legally Independent Regulator?

We have only 1day on this - tomorrow we move onto the National IXP infrasture theme. Floor is open for comments, clarification, corrections and opinions.

walu.