IGF 2009

Event
Process	IGF
Date	Nov. 15, 2009 – Nov. 18, 2009
Region	AF
Country	Egypt
City	Sharm El Sheikh
Venue	Maritim Jolie Ville Royal Peninsula Hotel & Resort
Websites	intgovforum.org/en/archived/the-igf-2009-meeting
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IGF 2009, the fourth annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Meeting, was held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, from November 15 - 18, 2009.

Context

The meeting was attended by stakeholders from 112 countries, with over 1800 participants. 96 governments were represented, and 122 media representatives were accredited. The meeting provided an opportunity for consultations among Forum participants on the desirability of the continuation of the Forum beyond its five-year mandate.

In his opening address to the meeting, Sha Zukang, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic & Social Affairs, reminded the meeting that the Tunis Agenda called on the Secretary-General “to examine the desirability of the continuation of the Forum, in formal consultation with Forum participants, within five years of its creation, and to make recommendations to the UN membership in this regard”. So, he encouraged all participants to contribute fully to the consultations, explain the value of the Forum, how its purpose has been fulfilled and how it might be improved. Based on the consultations, he would report back to the Secretary-General, who would then make his recommendations in his annual report to the General Assembly, next year, on WSIS follow-up and implementation.

Theme

The overall theme was "Internet Governance – Creating Opportunities for All" and the agenda was structured along the following themes:

• Managing critical Internet resources;
• Security, openness and privacy;
• Access and diversity;
• Internet Governance in the light of WSIS Principles.

Discussion

The sessions corresponding to the themes "Managing critical Internet resources" and "Internet Governance in the light of WSIS Principles" were held in the form of open discussions (without panelists).

First Session

The "Managing Critical Internet Resources" was chaired by Nitin Desai, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Internet Governance, and moderated by Chris Disspain, CEO of the .AU Registry and Chair of the Council of Country-Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO); and Jeanette Hofmann, Senior Researcher of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)/Social Science Research Center Berlin. focused on four main topics:

• the transition from IPv4 to IPv6;
• the importance of new TLDs and IDNs for development;
• the Affirmation of Commitments and the IANA contract and recent developments in the relationship between ICANN and the U.S. government;
• enhanced cooperation generally and the internationalization of critical Internet resource management.

The chair noted that many of the issues were discussed at the IGF in Hyderabad in 2008, and requested that remarks focus very sharply on what had happened over the past year.

Paul Wilson, Director General of the Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC), was called to discuss the transition from IPv4 to IPv6. He explained that this "transition" had been deployed in what was known as a dual stack implementation, where both IPv4 and IPv6 were run at the same time. In the future, IPv4 would remain, even when IPv6 was dominant, and network translation systems would allow both systems to work. For businesses, it would make sense to transition according to the will of the clients. Governments were paying more attention to this matter.

About TLDs and IDNs, it was noted by Patrik Fältström that, in 2010, DNSSEC would be introduced and the root would be signed by many TLDs. IPv6 addresses for DNS services, new TLDs, in ASCII and IDN, and IDN ccTLDs, under a program that ICANN launched just a few hours before the session began, the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process, would be added to the root.

Africa, according to the ICANN Geographic Regions (ICANN Geographic Regions).

Internet Governance Forum

World Summit on the Information Society

Country Code Names Supporting Organization. Develops and recommends to the Board global policies relating to country-code top-level domains (ICANN Bylaws).

Top-Level Domain

Internationalized Domain Name

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

American Standard Code for Information Interchange

Internationalized Domain Name

Country code top-level domain. Determined by "ISO 3166-1: Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 1: Country codes".