Notes from a visit to the Commission

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no>]

Passed around in case people are interested....
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IETF Chair visit to Brussels, October 9-10, 2003

Purpose: meet and greet, investigate issues of common interest

The meetings were arranged with the assistance of Matthew Shears of Cisco 
and Gordon Lennox of the Commission; these were along for most of the 
meetings.

Thursday 1400: Research and Development
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People present:
- Joao da Silva, head of unit, "Communication and Network Technologies"
- Andrew Houghton, principal administrator (of what?)
- Gordon Lennox, Internet related services, our guide
- Mario Campolargo, head of unit F3, "Research Infrastructure"
- Pertti Jauhainen, Scientific Officer, CNT

The meeting started off with discussion about "problems in the Internet". 
Spam is a political hot issue - at the Commissioner level, it's being 
talked about as "THE most important issue on the Internet". I pointed at 
the relative weakness of standards-setting as a mechanism combatting spam, 
and urged the creation of legal frameworks as well as enforcement efforts.

The discussion turned to IPv6. Multiple people are advocating IPv6 these 
days - some because they have products to sell, others because they need 
the functionality. The German defense forces have followed the US DoD in 
mandating IPv6.
One "major" problem seen with many sites is the dependence on ISPs for 
address space - this may be more of a political problem than a technical 
problem; overtones of number portability. I pointed at the work on ease of 
renumbering in IPv6, and whispered about the work in Multi6 - pointing out 
that there's a related technical problem, even though the problem at hand 
may be more political than technical.

Andrew Houghton wanted to challenge me on the "shape of the next generation 
of networks" - what would "shape what comes after the Internet". I 
responded with talking about the need to focus on what's useful - a new 
networking generation won't appear because the clock ticks past some 
magical number, but because new technology appears that fulfils needs the 
older technology couldn't do. This idea (under the guise "next generation 
networks") was to appear repeatedly over these 2 days.

Joao da Silva was worried about the "freenet" phenomenon, where "nobody is 
held accountable for anything", facilitating music piracy and other types 
of copyright violation. I pointed out that this is not a new thing, and 
that what's illegal remains illegal; probably the most effective thing to 
do is to make it easy/trivial for consumers to do the right/legal thing - 
such as Apple iTunes.
This branched into a long discussion on wiretapping and the needs of law 
enforcement versus corporations' and individuals' requirements for security 
and privacy - the need to balance these needs was acknowledged by all 
parties; where to balance it was left as an exercise for later...

Joao expressed concern with the "americanism" of the IETF - I pointed out 
that we had many significant contributors from Europe, including some who 
had moved so many times across the Atlantic that it was hard to tell what 
to classify them as. But I acknowledged the problem, and said that I 
encouraged more European (and Asian!) participation. Having an European 
accent is good here - but it's not enough.

There's a problem with network research in Europe, which is that there's 
really not that much happening beyond the people already signed up for IPv6 
pilots. Very little enthusiasm to be found, and few centers of excellence 
where new ideas can be germinated.
The EU controls a research budget on the order of EUR 4 billion - this is 
not an insignificant source of funding, but it's hard to see how to use it 
*effectively* - far too many projects have turned into nothing but 
researcher employment funds.
There are particular types of funds - such as "straps" (?) that are 
available for "small" projects, and "networks of excellence", which are 
based in academia and provide 100% funding for their efforts - the big 
projects are called "instruments", and are multi-year, multimillion 
projects.
The Global Grid Forum has proved a good veichle for some consultations; the 
IAB research report was pointed at as a great initiative that could spark 
things - what's mainly lacking is the vision, not the money!

The feeling from the meeting was a miasmic sort of pessimism - "we have 
spent all these euros, we've run all these projects, and still we have 
achieved so little". Not good.

George Papapavlou
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After that meeting, I ran into George Papapavlou, head of unit B5, 
"Internet related services" (Gordon's boss). He talked a little about the 
World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) and ICANN. It seems that there 
are about 4 different opinions on how Internet governance should be run, of 
which none say "ITU" - most of them seem to focus on somehow making the GAC 
more powerful or creating a new intergovernmental organization to "control 
everything". Still confusing, and still far from settled.

Friday morning
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The Commissioner for the Information Society, Erkki Liikanen, wasn't in 
town at the time, so instead we met with Tonnie de Koster, Member of 
Liikanen's Cabinet.

We talked a bit about the NGN concept - he did not see a role for the 
Commission in shaping how the technology is developed; the role he saw was 
much more in the area of oversight and making sure competition occurs in a 
fair market. The less regulation, the better - but one should not be afraid 
to do what's needed.

We talked a bit about the difference between "preemptive" and "post-hoc" 
regulation - whether some things could be regulated once they were "out of 
the box" and the market already distorted, and whether that was important 
enough to institute the degree of market distortion, innovation stifling 
and possible wasted effort that "preemptive" regulation incurs.

Liikanen is a strong believer in open standards, and has worked actively to 
promote the "cause of the Internet" in the EU.
de Koster pointed at Paul Verhoef (who was not in town at the time) as a 
central person to speak to on ICANN matters.
A central subject for the Commission is "critical infrastructure security" 
- the limits of which are rather undefined. When challenged about whether 
this is the security of the fibers in the ground, the traffic on the 
network, the applications or the ability to wiretap, the answer seemed to 
be "all of the above".

A lot of the things that have to be done have to happen at a national level 
- but a particularly dear project of Liikanen was the "ENISA" - the 
European Network and Information Security Agency, a kind of "euro-CERT", 
aiming for a 35-person staff and a central role in coordinating and 
encouraging security responses across Europe. Ann Bucher is a name that was 
mentioned. (Somewhat more info at 
<http://www2.europarl.eu.int/omk/sipade2?PUBREF=-//EP//TEXT+PRESS+NR-200310
08-1+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN&L=EN&LEVEL=2&NAV=X&LSTDOC=N#SECTION2>)

The meeting ran over, so we were late for the next meeting....

Peter Scott
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This meeting started out on naming and addressing. Present were Peter 
Scott, Leo Koolen and Sandra Keegan. Philippe Gerart also showed up at one 
point in the meeting.

Peter is head of unit B1, "Policy Development and Regulatory Framework". 
Sandra is Head of Sector, Legal Issues and Coordination (whatever that 
means), Leo has the ubiquitous title "administrator".
There's little love lost between this group and the ITU - the point was 
made a couple of times that when an ITU recommendation and an EC directive 
clash, the directive wins. (Of course this only matters in Europe, but so 
what?)
The ITU recommendation that forbids telco bypass was mentioned as an 
especially ridiculous one.

Leo Koolen has been a chief pusher of the research reports on the "Next 
Generation Network", but in this context, he presented the term as an 
educational veichle to make the players aware that the networks haven't 
stopped changing yet, not as an attempt to force technology to develop in 
certain directions.

A long digression occured into the concept of "Points of control" - the 
obvious ones this week are the physical subscriber line (traditional telco 
PoC) and the SIM card identity (mobile telco PoC), both of which one 
attempts to leverage into control over wider swaths of service offerings. 
The "grx" concept (new to me) was mentioned as an example of trying to use 
SIM technology in fixed networks.
"But perhaps the players are realizing they can't bring it off?" - this was 
said from the EU side of the table.

The developing countries' fear of bypass was mentioned - "the revenue 
stream from telco agreements exceeds the amount transferred in foreign aid" 
- it's serious money for the recipients.

The next section of this meeting was devoted to spam. I spent several 
slides explaining why there are a number of strategies (such as port 25 
blocking) that will NOT work without bringing significant harm to the 
Internet infrastructure model, and require bundling of services that 
otherwise have no reason to be bundled.
I pointed out that neither the Commission nor I get their mail service from 
anyone else - they run it for themselves. Would they want to have their 
ISP, which delivers bits only, have to censor their mail?

The EU ban on "unsolicited commercial email" goes into effect end of 
October - they know that they have a problem with finding out which 
agencies are responsible for prosecuting the crimes committed under these 
statutes, and getting them to actually take action.

Peter Scott expressed a wish that the private sector could "just solve 
this" - I pointed out that a number of factors made this somewhat less than 
optimal, including ISPs' tendency to go for "cheapest means of processing" 
rather than "due process". Be careful what damage you enable when allowing 
"fast, cheap" processes!

The meeting ended about 1300.