The UN organises an annual ‘Internet Governance Forum’ each year when several thousand delegates discuss the consequences of the Internet, rather than the technical standard’s themselves. The discussions touch on technical, legal, economic and sociological aspects.
| The Internet operates with a hierarchical structure of electronic sorting offices called the Domain Name System or DNS, and the management of this is in the charge of the US based organization, ICANN. This is itself the subject of controversy, with some arguing that this should be done by an independent body like the ITU. This apart, ICANN is now allowing International Domain Names - IDNs in scripts other than Latin, such as Arabic and Chinese. There are many technical, management, and policy issues to debate, about who will do what and where. IPv6: wait and see? |  |
The evolution of Internet Protocol has been slow. It is over ten years since the successor protocol to IPV4, termed IPv6 was developed. This has a greatly extended address capacity and other features . Most developed countries have been slow in adopting it, because it does not benefit them very much – it is largely the developing countries that need it. This Conference will probably still leave the developed countries in a ‘wait and see what happens’ mode, but its use is slowly advancing.
All in the cloud?
Another issue is that of ‘cloud computing’. This is the tendency to use vast remote ‘server farms’ to store e-mail (as is done today with services like Gmail), any kind of data, media, calculations, and eventually take over all the Internet and computer tasks we have. Those at the IGF ask how the eventual complete reliance by humanity on these server farms will affect society, how will it be possible to protect our personal data, and whether storing data about and from nationals of one country in another country is a good idea. There are also many matters of data transfer standards.
The EBU has been leading a discussion on accessibility of web sites for those with disabilities. We also see the beginnings of the discussion about the implications of ‘Hybrid Broadcast Broadband’ the systems being developed to combine Internet and broadcasting. Read more on David Wood's IGF blog.