Section 1.2 APCCIRN/APNG

2012.8.10/8.11+

IANW and CCIRN

International Academic NetWorkshop – Asia Pacific (IANW-AP) did not become the first permanent Internet organization for Asia Pacific in 1980s despite its four meetings in 1986~1989. Coordination Committee for Intercontinental Research Networking (CCIRN) which was the IANW’s spinoff was different, and Asia-Pacific Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental Research Networking (APCCIRN) became the first permanent Internet organization for Asia Pacific in early 1990s. This is very different from Europe where several Europe-wide organizations for the Internet and other networks were formed in 1980s.

It was in the afternoon when Ira Fuchs, a member of North American CCIRN and the chair of BITNET asked some of Copenhagen INET participants from Asia Pacific including Australia, Japan and Korea to corner of the main conference room after the INET plenary session in June 1991. He on behalf of CCIRN invited Asia Pacific to become the third member continent of CCIRN after Europe and North America, and requested to form the seven delegates from Asia Pacific for the next CCIRN Meeting as well as its engineering group, Internet Engineering Planning Group (IEPG) Meeting in Santa Fe in November 1991. We discussed on the invitation and formation of APCCIRN and its engineering group, APEPG, and decided to meet in Hawaii. We requested Haruhisa Ishida to call the meeting in Honolulu, possibly before or after PACCOM Project Meeting in August 1991. Unfortunately, we did not document on this informal meeting in Copenhagen.

Preliminary Meetings

The first preliminary meeting for APCCIRN and APEPG in Honolulu two month later in August 1991 was held with participants from Australia and Japan as well as PACCOM Project. Shoichiro Asano from Japan and Robin Erskine were nominated as the acting co-chairs to prepare the formation of APCCIRN.[APCCIRN-021] Jun Murai from Japan and Torben Nielson of PACCOM Project were similarly nominated to prepare the formation of APEPG. We did not have any meeting record such as the meeting agenda or the meeting minutes, and the exact information is not available.

The second preliminary meeting was held in Santa Fe three months later in the morning of 1991.11.12 as the meeting was called by Robin Erskine. The meeting minutes were made as APCCIRN-003. The meeting was attended by Australia, Japan, Korea and New Zealand in addition to PACCOM Project and the observers from CCIRN. A Terms of Reference for APCCIRN had not been prepared, and it was resolved to place the item on the agenda of the next meeting. APEPG activity proposal was presented by its co-chairs; Torben Nielson and Jun Murai including a program of engineering a comprehensive Asia Pacific infrastructural common communications facility. The next meetings was planned in March/April 1992 in Honolulu and 1992.6.9 in Tokyo.

The third preliminary meeting for APCCIRN was not held in March/April in Honolulu, and it was held in Tokyo in June 1992. [APCCIRN-021] The meeting record was made.[APCCIRN-006] The meeting nominated Kilnam Chon as the acting chair to hold the first official APCCINR meeting. The draft terms of reference was produced in July 1992, and was circulated among the members to review and approve during the summer of 1992.

First APCCIRN Meeting

The first official APCCIRN meeting was finally held in Honolulu in 1993.1.12-13, after the three preliminary meetings in 1991 and 1992. The chair elections of APCCIRN and APEPG based on the terms of references were held at the meeting. Kilnam Chon and Jun Murai were elected as the first chairs of APCCIRN and APEPG, respectively. The meeting created many work items [APCCIRN-work];

1. Traffic Analysis

2. Internationalization and Localization (i18 n & l10n)

3. Link/Connection Model

4. Funding/Charging Model

5. NIC

The meeting approved APNIC Experiment Proposal, and requested to revise the proposal as the first APCCIRN project including the experiment date to start in the summer after appropriate preparation.

The country updates were also made; China, Pacific Islands, Thailand and Vietnam as well as UNESCO.

APCCIRN/APNG Meetings

The second APCCIRN meeting was held in San Francisco in the following August during INET, and this meeting pattern became common practice; twice a year with summer meeting during INET and winter meeting collocated with a local meeting, especially APRICOT when it started its meeting in 1996. The APCCIRN meeting typically runs for two to four days with

- Conference

- WG/BoF Meetings

- Plenary Meeting

See Table 1.1 on the APCCIRN/APNG Meetings in 1990s and early 2000s.

Travelling in Asia Pacific requires much resource; money and time, and we tend to meet for a longer period with less frequency. For many countries, APCCIRN/APNG meeting was the first Internet event in these countries such as Beijing meeting in late 1994. Thus, the conference, seminar, and tutorials are also very important elements of the meeting.

APCCIRN was renamed to Asia Pacific Networking Group (APNG) in 1994 to reflect its coverage, which is very broad as it is the only regional Internet organizations in early 1990s. The organization name was changed once again to Asia Pacific Next Generation in early 2000s to reflect nature of its activity.

APNG Chairs settled to with two year term, and rotate among various countries in Asia; Korea, Japan, Singapore and China. See Table 1.2 on the complete list of APCCIRN/APNG Chairs.

APCCIRN WGs and BoFs

APCCIRN started as a member of CCIRN, but its activity covers almost every aspect of the Internet from the first meeting as you see in the work items above. In the first meeting in 1993, we defined the work items, and many of them became working groups (WG) or birds of a feather (BoF). See Table 1.3 on the nearly complete list of WGs and BoFs.

Many of the WGs and BoFs became independent regional Internet organizations later in 1990s and 2000s. Others were technical, management and other activities of APCCIRN/APNG. The notable examples include

- Internationalization WG with Chinese Character SubWG

Addressing technical issues on handling Asian character in the Internet which was designed to handle only English, i.e., ASCII Code originally. The effort at the WG resulted in series of IETF RFCs to cover Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese among others. Later, internationalized domain name (IDN) was created by Tan Tin Wee through the WG. Please refer Chapter 9 for detail.

- Internet Exposition BoF

Carl Malamud proposed the virtual exposition based on the Internet in 1995, and many countries in the world participated including many countries from Asia, too. Please refer Chapter 5 for detail.

APNG Spinoffs

APNG span off many regional and global Internet organizations including

1995 APNIC, APIA, AI3

1997 APAN

1998 APTLD

2000 AP* Retreat

2002 APNG Camp, APCERT

See Chapters 3, 7 and 8 on some of the above spinoff Internet organizations.

Some of these spinoff organizations span off more Internet organizations including

1996 APRICOT

1998 APBioNet

2000 APOPS, TEIN, SOI Asia

2003 SANOG

2005 PacNOG

2006 DotAsia

2007 MENOG

APNG had attitude to encourage new regional Internet organizations to be span off, rather than retaining these new activities within APNG. So are the other Internet organizations which were span off from APNG. We had the first peak of the spinoffs in 1995, and this narrowed the scope of APNG activities to non-commercial and non-operational. The next major spinoff, APAN changed APNG substantially as the original research networking community, APCCIRN moved to APAN.

All spinoff organizations customarily reported to APNG on their activities, and this reporting effort took substantial time as we have over ten spinoffs by the end of 1990s. Thus, we made the new organization, AP* Retreat for the organization reporting and coordination among the organizations. See Section 3.3 for the detail.

By early 2000s with so many spinoffs from APNG, APNG did not have much to cover. It was decided for APNG to concentrate on development of the next generation leaders. Thus, we changed the name on APNG from Asia Pacific Networking Group to Asia Pacific Next Generation, and started APNG Camp in 2002 after spending 2001 on planning of APNG Camp. See Section 3.4 for detail.

APNG started to join CCIRN on research networking in 1991, and changed to APNG with much broader coverage of the Internet activities when it launched its first meeting in 1993. APNG had the last spinoff, APNG Camp in 2002, and was closed down with the name changed to Asia Pacific Next Generation (Camp) in 2003.

Table 1.1 APCCIRN /APNG Meeting List

Table 1.2 APCCIRN/APNG Chair List

Table 1.3 APCCIRN/APNG WG/BoF List

Table 1.4 APCCIRN/APNG Document List