IGF, a communication forum - ICANN

Remmy Nweke,
San Francisco, California, United States

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has warned that the extension of the five-year tenure for exploration of stakeholders engagement under the Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

Speaking at the on-going Silicon Valley public meeting of ICANN in San Francisco, Northern California, ICANN president, Mr. Rod Beckstrom noted that it’s not a regulatory negotiation but a communication forum.

According to him, IGF serves as a valuable platform for a wide range of stakeholders to exchange views, and ICANN fully supports extension of its mandate.

On the Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) issues, he noted that a fortnight ago, it was part of a diverse group of Internet leaders who met to acknowledge a historic milestone - the allocation from IANA to the

Regional Internet Registries of the last address blocks of Internet Protocol version four (IPv4).

“ The Internet protocol that has been largely unchanged for 35 years,” he declared, stressing that the expansion to IPv6.

He also said, it is a vivid illustration of the Internet’s amazing growth, and an essential path to a future of

continuing innovation and communication.

He explained that IPv6 offers a quantity of addresses beyond the human imagination.

“… Trillions of times larger than under IPv4. There are more IPv6 addresses than stars in the

Universe,” he said. Literally.

Beckstrom pointed out that full adoption is essential to ensuring that the Internet has room to grow, to

accommodate the Internet of things and the ideas yet unthought-of.

“The ones your sons or daughters may be dreaming up on their smartphone. For that

vision to become reality, we need global adoption of the new protocol,” he said.

Further, he described IPv6 as the platform for tomorrow’s technology, which once fully deploy, the future will be limited only by the boundaries of our imaginations, not by the absence of

Internet addresses.

ITRealms Online recalls that Internet Governance Forum commenced as an outcome of the second phase of the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis of 2005; having previously held in Geneva, Switzerland in 2003.

In what has come to be known as the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, governments through the United Nations Secretary-General upheld convention of a new forum for policy dialogue to discuss issues related to key elements of Internet governance so as to foster the Internet's sustainability, robustness, security, stability, and development.

The first five-year phase of IGF ended in 2010 with another endorsement for continuous dialogue now extended by another five year period, during which a lot of progress are expected given the all inclusive nature and bottom-up policy structure of ICANN.

Although IGF is known to be a decision-making body, its influence cannot be over-emphasised, especially involvement of all participants as equals.

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