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Board of Trustees of the Internet Society
Fifth Meeting
Praha, Czech Republic
13-14 Jun 1994


Document:   94-225
Title:      New programmes and activities
Author(s):  Rutkowski 
Date:       5 June 1994
Committee:  ISOC BoT
Revision:   basic
Supersedes: a
Status:     Draft
Access:     Unrestricted
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1. Operations Forum

One of the more critical needs facing the ISOC is putting into place a
viable Operations Forum.  The Internet is rapidly scaling, the entry of
large numbers of providers is occurring, the new NAP architecture taking
place in early 1995, the Internet has become synonymous with GII/NII,
and business applications on the network about to become widespread.  As
a result an Operations Forum is an imperative need.

Already the loose operations arrangement known as the "NSF Techs Group"
has just morphed into the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG)
and is holding its first meeting in Washington DC in early July to explore
a broad range of operations and institutional issues.

A few days ago a number of Internet product and service providers formed
the Internet Business Association.

 SAN JOSE, CALIF.  June 2, 1994--InterCon Systems 
 Corporation, Performance Systems International, Digital Express Group, NETCOM
 On-Line Communications Services, Portal Information Network, Inc., 
 and Frontier Technologies Corporation, leading suppliers of Internet access
 software and services, today announced the formation of the Internet Business
 Association (IBA). This trade association will be responsible for representing
 small-to-midsized suppliers of Internet products and services on Capitol Hill,
 monitoring the complex regulatory and privacy issues surrounding electronic
 communications, promoting responsible use of the Internet's vast resources,
 and educating businesses, the media, and the general public about the
 Internet.  The IBA charter and membership details will be available by the end
 of June to all vendor companies who are interested in joining the Association. 

I have begun working with John Williams and others who are hosting the
NANOG group and conference.  They are willing for ISOC to become a non-liable
co-sponsor of the conference as well as have a panel at the conference to
raise and explore broader operations issues - especially a global operations
infrastructure.

Along slightly different lines, the CIX continues to grow rapidly, and its
Executive Director Bill Washburn is moving his secretariat to the Washington DC
area.

Recommended Action:

ISOC needs to bring into existence an Operations Forum with all deliberate
speed.  It also needs to do this gracefully with the full consent and cooperation
of all the involved parties.  The possibility exists to facilitate the NANOG and
CIX secretariats locating very near the ISOC Secretariat.  (It's even possible
to sublet space to them.)  The exact relationship of these and other potential
operations groups to the ISOC may also need to be a relatively autonomous one
where they fit under a general umbrella of an ISOC Global Operations Forum.

This action should also include the FIRST organization which is newly active
and can serve as an effective international body in the security emergency
response arena.  It would a useful adjunct to ISOC's existing NDSS conference.


2. IETF Secretariat

There appears to be increasing interest among diverse parties in bringing the 
IETF Secretariat into a closer working relationship with ISOC - particularly
as there is already a basis for funding and it comports with the basic purpose
of ISOC.

Recommended Action:

Work with the IETF, IESG, IETF staff, CNRI, and funding agencies to
pursue the feasibility and timeframe of the transition.

Consider the creation of a special category of ISOC membership that would
further this end.


3. Long range secretariat strategies

It is expected that the funding of all Internet related administrative 
activities and secretariat activities will eventually transition to ISOC.
A number of parties have indicated the need for a business plan covering
a several year period.

Recommended Action:

Develop a business plan that identifies Internet secretariat and administrative
support activities and the feasibility of ISOC funding over the next five years.


4. Internet Global NIS

The Internet GNIS is a concept to effect one of the primary missions
of the Society (serve as a source of current definitive information about
global Internet developments).  This meets one of the critical needs today
in the Internet environment.  It also in part provides justification for
the donation by Sun Microsystems of a rather impressive server.  Among 
other things, the concept is infinitely extensible to encompass a great 
many information services, including an associated "International Infoscout."

Several UN organizations, the NSF, and VITA have all indicated an interest in
funding or contributing TDY personnel for some or all of this initiative.
The concept is fully described in Annex 1, below

This would also include suggestions such as Charles Brownsteins for
software or pointers to the best of what is available on an ISOC server.
I.e., "Internet Gems" or some such. He notes that ISOC ought to be the 
one stop fetching location for innovative connectivity software.


5. TIIAP Proposal

Somewhat related to the Global NIS, above, was a proposal submitted to the
US Dept of Commerce to provide NII GlobalLink services that would have
ISOC play the international intermediary role between US DDC funded Internet
based information infrastructure initiatives and other nations and international
organizations.  See Annex 2, below.

5. Community and K-12 Networking

There has been a wealth new and ever expanding activity associated with
community and K-12 networks/networking.  Community networks is a broad concept
being pursued by one of ISOC's organizational members - the Morino Foundation.
Morino is seeking a close working relationship with ISOC for demonstration
projects, workshops, counsel, and international cooperation.

Additionally, other organizations active in the K-12 field such as the Coalition
for School Networking (COSN) are exploring potential cooperative relationships
with ISOC which presently has a relatively inactive K-12 committee.  ISOC's
K-12 chair sits on COSN's Board.

This is an area which major potential, as Global Information Infrastructure
as presently being articulated, puts considerable emphasis on community Internet
based nurturing.  The ISOC will be expected to play a global facilitating role.


6. Workshops and Training

ISOC receives constant inquiries regarding training and training materials
related to Internet and its techologies.  Recently, one of the more notable
Internet applications developers who is very active in the IETF, approached
the Secretariat, proferring his services for workshops and training.

In addition, the highly successful Network Technology Workshops convened annually
in conjunction with INETs under George Sadowsky's direction are held in such
high esteem that a variety of organizations wish to see these on a much more
frequent basis.  Some suggest that these could be organized by the ISOC
International Secretariat and held monthly or quarterly at or nearby ISOC
headquarters.

Recommended Action:

Decide whether to pursue this proposal or to play a more passive role in
just providing lists of people and organizations providing such services.
The primary problem with the latter is that there is no easy method to
assess the quality of such services, although ISOC could require testimonials
to be submitted with any request to be placed on such a list.

The more frequent Network Technology Workshops could be a part of this
proposal or organized entirely separately.  Ideally, George Sadowsky
himself would head such an initiative.


7. ISOC Volunteers

The Secretariat is receiving a continuing stream of members willing to volunteer
their services part-time, as an intern - especially during the summer.  The ISOC
staff has begun to organize a volunteer program to take advantage of this talent.


8. Product and Service Sales

The Secretariat has organized a small product sales effort that will be advertised
at INET'94 and advertised in ISOC News.  This includes offering Tee-shirts with
the new ISOC logo printed on the front with the words "The Internet is its own
revolution" in half a dozen different languages; low cost sets of the ISOC presentation
slides in 35mm format, and issues of ISOC News and conference proceedings. 

Additionally, suggestions have been make for ISOC to host WWW implementations
for its organizational members who are presently without the ability to do
so.


9. NSPAW - Network Service Providers Around the World

A very frequently asked question is "how do I get connected."  The Secretariat
has developed a FAQ sheet, as well as pointed to existing books on this subject.
However, information about service providers is very rapidly changing, and no
available lists provide good current reference information outside of the USA.

ISOC member Barry Raveendran Green has recently assembled an excellent NSPAW and
is now maintaining it on ISOC's host.  He has recently become responsible for 
engineering and operations for SingNet in Singaport and will continue to maintain
it from there.


10. VISIA - China

 The purpose of the VISIA project ('Volunteers of the Internet Society In
Asia') is to assist developing countries in Asia (beginning with China) to
access the educational and scientific resources available on the Internet.
VISIA will be a cooperative program sponsored by the Internet Society and
the Bridge to Asia Foundation, and will send volunteers to China to train
new users of the Interet.

ISOC will recruit, screen and orient the volunteers, and BTA will arrange
placement and in-country support for them. The volunteers will be drawn from
university campuses that have large amounts of Internet traffic, in the
U.S., Canada, Western Europe, and Japan. They will be veteran navigators of
the Internet and expert users of Gopher, WAIS, WWW and other tools. They
will be posted in teams of two (one graduate and one undergraduate per
team), for a period of six to ten months at the host institutions of
Tsinghua University in Beijing, Fudan University in Shanghai, and Zhongshan
University in Guangzhou. Dr. Franklin Kuo will be VISIA program director.


11.  Disaster assistance

Peter S. Anderson, Associate Director at the Centre for Policy Research on 
Science and Technology, Simon Fraser University, has recently become chair
of ISOC's Disaster Assistance committee.  With the past few weeks, he has 
attended a conference convened by UN IDNDR in Geneva to plan for the
International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction.  He succeeded in getting
an Internet based server designated EPIX to provide the focal point for the 
IDNDR Secretariat to promote Decade activities.  He recently attended the
World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Yokohama.  Connectivity was 
facilitated by Board member Ishida-san and Jun Murai.

Peter believes that a carefully planned and flexibly
structured ISOC Committee can also be a significant contributor (and
perhaps even a facilitator/coordinator).  He suggest raising this matter
at INET94.


12.  The Global Diffusion of the Internet: Patterns and Problems 

Sy Goodman of the Univ of Ariz., Larry Press of ISI, Steve Ruth of
George Mason Univ and the Exec Director have been collaborating on 
a study that seeks to articulate an Internet diffustion model and
quantify its factors.  This could be extremely valuable in dealing with
national and international officials and PTTs on policy and tariff
matters.  A project proposal has been finalized.

13.  Several serious suggestions have been made to ISOC officers and
the Executive Director for ISOC to spearhead several initiatives to
get Internet connectivity introduced for Least Developed Countries.
Some definitive actions may occur in the near future.


14.  Funding ISOC

ISOC funding needs more methodical and targetted treatment.  One potential
method involves the use of the NSFNet traffic statistics to identify major
Internet users and to target them with requests to fund the organization that
primarily helps make their use of the internet possible.  Another alternative
is to target product vendors who are primary benefactors based on their
relative visibility at Interop.  The Secretariat is presently pursuing both
approaches.


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Annex 1
v. 1.2  18 May 1994

      The Internet Global Networked Information Service (NIS)


The Environment and Needs

The Internet today is far more than just the world's largest computer
network of networks.  It is a technological platform implemented in
tens of thousands of organizations and tens of millions of computers.
It is a development and collaborative mechanism that "flattens" 
organizations and enables direct peer exchanges and instant global 
workgroups.  It allows a vast array of new information services and
products to be provided to a worldwide audience.  It is a dynamic 
exponentially expanding marketplace without boundaries.

The Internet in all its manifestations is also growing rapidly
in scores of countries throughout the world.  As a result, there
is a surging need for information about what's occurring in each
country and user community, and a corresponding demand for assistance 
at national, regional, bilateral and multilateral levels.

The Concept

The Internet Global NIS is a continuing programme for maintaining
an international "place" that people and organizations can contact 
or virtually visit via the Internet for reference information
and assistance in dealing with global developments concerning the
Internet and its technologies and applications.

The Platform

The NIS was conceived and is operated by the Internet Society -
the international organization for the Internet world via its
international secretariat located in Reston, Virginia USA.
Through its liaisons with its national chapters, other international 
organizations, annual Internet Networking Conferences, and worldwide 
"infoscouting," the Society is ideally situated to maintain the NIS. 

The Global Infoscout concept is an extrapolation on the USA national-
oriented infoscout conceived and popularized under the NSF InterNIC
program.  The global infoscouting has a worldwide international 
orientation and focus - and is aimed at discovering information of
use in developing Global Information Infrastructure or assisting
programmes of international bodies and organizations.  There will
also be emphasis on the availability of information in local languages
to the extent feasible.

It is important to emphasize, however, that the NIS implementation
will be globally distributed as much as possible.  Although the 
programme is centered at the Internet Society headquarters with a master
network server and staff located there, extensive use is made of
network pointers, globally distributed "mirrors," and regional sites.

Most of this information is maintained on powerful computer servers 
with a high speed link to the Internet.  It supports a variety of 
platforms from multimedia hypertext browsing using the World Wide 
Web service to Gopher, Anonymous FTP, and listserve email based 
retrieval.  Direct computer-based faxing is also available.

The information is presented to users using a broad global view
of the Internet and its technologies and applications that is
regularly adjusted to accommodate new developments.  The intent 
is to be global not only geographically, but for subject matter as well.
Thus it encompasses everything from Internet infrastructure initiatives 
and networks in each country and other international organizations, to 
user groups, application areas, security, policy issues, regulatory 
matters, economic and legal studies, provision of services and software, 
standards activities, technology advances, conferences and meetings.  

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Annex 2



                      Narrative

             The NII Global Link Initiative


Overview

The Internet Society's NII Global Link Initiative is a demonstration 
project designed to provide a critical international adjunct to NTIA's 
TIIA Program.  As conceived and implemented, the TIIAP is essentially 
focussed on domestic U.S. projects.  However, there is are larger 
international component exemplified in Vice President Al Gore's recent 
Global Information Infrastructure keynote address at Buenos Aires.  

There are major synergies and benefits of global cooperation in the 
context of NII activities that are bidirectional.  For example, there 
are many projects and expertise in other countries that may be highly 
relevant to TIIAP awardee projects.  Conversely, there is a worldwide 
audience of researchers and policy makers who will be keenly interested 
in knowing about TIIAP projects in the U.S. to initiate and further 
their own NII projects.  Everyone benefits by this kind of global
cooperation.

The Internet Society in its role as the global international organization
for the Internet, its technologies and applications, wishes to facilitate
global cooperation in the TIIAP projects.  The Society has recently
initiated its own Internet Global NIS programme, and we envision 
establishing the NII Global Link as part of that effort.

Thus ISOC's Global Link initiative can be viewed as leveraging the entire 
TIIAP Program and the associated expenditures through innovation and 
experimentation in the uses and benefits that accrue from international 
information infrastructure and cooperation.

The Global Link Initiative would use of the Internet to:

o discover and provide information (similar projects, researchers, etc)
  in other countries relevant to other TIIAP projects,

o disseminate current information about TIIAP projects on a worldwide 
  basis via the Internet and appropriate international forums, and

o foster and enhance cooperation and collaboration between the TIIAP 
  awardees and their counterparts, peers, or appropriate parties in 
  other countries. 


Platforms Utilized

The Society would implement the proposed NII GlobalLink project using 
its new Internet Global NIS (Network Information Service).  The NIS is 
a major project and capability of the Internet Society for producing a 
constantly evolving a structured knowledge base of worldwide Internet 
and related activities.  It includes information about and links to 
myriad user developmental activities, communities, organizations, 
technologies, regulatory and policy information, and applications.
A fuller description is attached.

It is resident on powerful computer servers accessable to millions 
of users via a high-bandwidth Internet connection, and employing 
multiple platforms spanning simple email to Mosaic multimedia interfaces 
to World Wide Web hypertext links.  In addition, the Society will
contribute use of its facilities that allow direct faxing from
electronic files for communicating with parties without Internet
access.

This system was selected because it is highly accessible worldwide and 
appropriately spans a very broad range of end-user technology platforms.


Services Provided

The Internet Society would provide:

1) Further concept development, promotion, and management of the 
   NII Global Link Initiative.

2) Continuing timely liaison with TIIAP grant awardees and NTIA staff 
   to obtain current summary information about each project.

3) Placement of that information on the Internet Global NIS including 
   available gopher and html links to each project site.  Information 
   would be available both by subject matter and geographical location,
   using all common access protocols.

4) Provide continuing international "infoscout" searching for likely 
   organizations and individuals outside the U.S. who may be engaging 
   in similar or related projects as the TIIAP grant awardees, or otherwise 
   may be facilitative to the awardees' project objectives.  This would 
   be done largely via the Internet, but may also include attendance at 
   international conferences or travel to locations outside the U.S.  
   This information would also be made available on the NIS.

5) Foster and support international collaboration with those involved
   in TIIAP Projects through Internet EMail-based discussion groups, or
   new emerging Internet-based collaborative technologies such as
   multicasting, CU-See Me, Collage.  The Society would seek out new
   emerging collaborative technologies and attempt to implement them
   among the TIIAP awardees and appropriate participants in other
   countries or international organizations.  We would also seek to
   indentify technologies aimed at enhancing the ability of those with
   physical impairments to collaborate more effectively.

6) Maintaining public server-based archives of discussion group
   dialogue.

7) Translation of materials into other languages.


Service Provisioning

The Internet Society would provide these services through the use
of its international secretariat headquarters facilities and systems
located in Reston, Virginia, USA, and its national chapters worldwide.
Additional computers, Internet access bandwidth, and support staff
would be acquired for the project.

The area served by the project is the entire world.

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