RIPE NCC Launches New Initiatives at EuroDIG 2013

The RIPE NCC, continuing its support for this important regional Internet governance event, launched two new initiatives as part of this year's event.

The first initiative, recognising the importance of Internet governance dialogue across the RIPE NCC service region, was to fund two youth delegates from last year's inaugural Arab IGF to attend EuroDIG 2013. Ralph Aoun and David Munir Nabti, both active participants at last year's Kuwait event, were given the opportunity to contribute to a variety of sessions at EuroDIG 2013 on topics including Internet security, intellectual property issues and online freedom of expression.

The RIPE NCC plans to continue this programme by funding the participation of several European youth delegates at the second Arab IGF in Algiers this October. By working with youth, we aim to help build the knowledge and experience that will be vital to addressing future Internet governance challenges.

The second initiative was an educational session, conceived and delivered by the RIPE NCC for EuroDIG participants seeking a better understanding of the fundamental architecture of the Internet, including IP addressing, the domain name system and inter-domain routing. While this trial session occupied an early morning timeslot, it nonetheless attracted an audience eager to engage with the issues and ask questions of the presenters. Based on the enthusiastic response of participants and organisers, the RIPE NCC will look at building on this session at next year's EuroDIG and consider similar sessions around other Internet governance events.

In addition to these initiatives, RIPE NCC staff contributed to various plenary and workshop sessions during the event, including:

• A workshop on technical Internet governance challenges, looking at issues surrounding the deployment of IPv6 and DNSSEC and their broader social and economic implications. A panel including Marco Hogewoning (RIPE NCC), Wim DeGezelle (CENTR), Jan Malinowski (Council of Europe) and Olivier Crépin-Leblond (ISOC UK England and ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee), along with many speakers from the floor, stressed the importance of cooperative efforts as opposed to straightforward regulatory solutions.
• Workshop and plenary sessions on multi-stakeholder approaches to security and law enforcement on the Internet. RIPE NCC staff stressed the importance of public-private cooperation in this area and the need for the public sector to participate in existing industry bodies and work with the technical community to address the security challenges faced by law enforcement.

EuroDIG 2014 will take place in Berlin, Germany on 13-14 June 2014.

More information on EuroDIG is available at:
http://www.eurodig.org/