[kictanet] ICANN report on DNS in Egypt

[Edith Adera]

Reminds me of our dark days Dec 2007/Jan-Feb 2008 - was Kenya also contemplating the same for both Internet and mobile?

what protects civil rights under such circumstances?

Edith
________________
Edith Ofwona Adera
Senior Program Specialist
ICT4D Program and Climate Change & Water Program
International Development Research Centre | Centre de recherches pour le développement international
Regional Office for Eastern and Southern Africa
Tel: +254202713160 | Fax/Téléc: +254202711063 | Skype: edithadera
eadera at idrc.or.ke<mailto:eadera at idrc.or.ke> | www.idrc.ca<http://www.idrc.ca/> | www.crdi.ca<http://www.crdi.ca/>
________________________________
From: kictanet-bounces+eadera=idrc.or.ke at lists.kictanet.or.ke [kictanet-bounces+eadera=idrc.or.ke at lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of Alice Munyua [alice at apc.org]
Sent: 01 February 2011 09:44
To: Edith Adera
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
Subject: [kictanet] ICANN report on DNS in Egypt

Hi GG and all


Events in Egypt must have slowed down the discussions on our media council bill and I apologize for diverting you again.
 It is worrying that a government can  shut down the internet. There are permissible limitations/restrictions on expression and communication contained in International laws, however these are for narrow circumstances defined in, for example the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, where National security and pubic order is included, but  it should not be used as an excuse.  Governments should ensure that the limitations of restrictions are provided for by clear and precise laws that demonstrate necessity to meet the specific purpose.

Anyway, Google has since introduced a speak to tweet service  for people in Egypt and see below a report by ICANN on DNS: http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/31/twitter-by-phone-egypt/

http://blog.icann.org/2011/01/status-report-on-the-dns-in-egypt/Status
Report on the DNS in Egypt

Along with the entire global Internet community, ICANN is watching the events unfolding in Egypt with great concern for the safety of the people of Egypt and for their ability to use the Internet. On January 27, most Internet connectivity to Egypt was shut down, apparently on the instruction of the national government. This has led to the inaccessibility of the main domain name system (DNS) server of the Egyptian ccTLD (.eg).

Egypt’s top-level domain .eg is operated by the Egyptian Universities Network (EUN) (http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/eg.html). The Arabic script top-level domain .masr (مصر, http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/xn--wgbh1c.html) is operated by the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of Egypt (NTRA) (http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/xn--wgbh1c.html).

The primary servers they operate have been inaccessible to those outside of Egypt since January 27. Secondary DNS servers for .eg, located in Austria and the United States, have continued to function with data provided before the shutdown.

The .مصر DNS servers are exclusively in Egypt and there do not appear to be any secondary DNS servers outside the country. This means that service to sites served by this top-level domain are unreachable by the rest of the world.

Secondary servers copy their data from the primary server at regular intervals. Data in the secondary DNS servers, serving anyone in the world wishing to receive .eg DNS services, have an expiration date. Secondary servers require regular updating from the primary server at specified intervals – called “time to live” (TTL) – and that time is set to expire in 140 days.

Normally when primary servers fail – for example, following the earthquake in Haiti – the operator wants secondary servers to continue operating with the last zone file they had provided. This allows users around the world to connect to functioning servers in their zone.

ICANN’s Manager for Regional Relations for the Middle East has been communicating with both TLD operators, EUN and NTRA. The operators of .eg have communicated with ICANN and through ICANN are communicating with the secondary operators outside the country. They have requested that the secondary operators continue using the existing zone files past their time to live timeframes, if necessary.

This experience offers a number of lessons, among them that a policy to encourage the establishment of secondary servers to promote continuity of service as well as DNS stability could be useful and in the global public interest. ICANN will ask the ccNSO to consider proposing a policy to address this type of situation.

ICANN helps to ensure a secure and stable global Internet through its coordination of the domain name system, and is the global policy development body for the DNS and related matters. More than 100 ccTLD operators are voluntary members of the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO), a formal ICANN policy and coordination body.

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