Centre for Internet and Society

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praskrishna — 2012-02-15T08:44:20Z

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BK Gairola

praskrishna — 2012-11-16T15:47:17Z

BK Gairolace

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Biz moving to IPv6 but lower costs, support needed

praskrishna — 2012-06-14T05:01:34Z

Organisations such as Cisco Systems, Equinix and Singapore Internet Exchange are all gearing up for migration to IPv6 in time for the World IPv6 Launch day slated on Jun. 6,which involved everything from redesigning their backend infrastructure to assessing their systems’ readiness.

Published in intellasia.net on June 8, 2012

However, one industry player noted that the costs and effort in doing so is one key reason why more companies are not making the transition.

Cisco, for one, told ZDNet Asia that is had been preparing for the migration on Wednesday since the test run was conducted last year. Joshua Soh, managing director for Cisco Singapore and Brunei, pointed out that switching IPv6 on permanently demanded a certain level of production quality and this required a lengthy preparation time.

The first step was to work on its backend IT architecture and design, Soh revealed, adding that their primary goals were to leverage network infrastructure already in place to avoid spending on parallel networks, as well as to ensure production quality and ability to maintain overall service levels.

To meet these goals, the networking giant redesigned their data centre based on the reverse proxy model, in which the proxy server retrieves resources from the server to deliver to a client before returning these resources to the original server.

It also used its Application Control Engine (ACE) load-balancing platform to configure incoming IPv6 sessions to be proxied to the IPv4 tier so that the network will be dual-stacked to include existing ISP (Internet service provider) connections, the managing director explained.

The Singapore Internet Exchange did likewise. According to Yeo See Kiat, its sales and marketing director, the organisation enabled dual-stack networks on their servers for public-facing services, which would enable it to obtain IPv6 streams and turn on the service permanently.

“Meet in the middle” saves cost

Another company making a similar transition to the new Web protocol is Equinix. Its director of network engineering & operations for the Asia-Pacific office, Raphael Ho, told ZDNet Asia that the migration would require existing networks to be upgraded and expanded to support the additional bandwidth and power.

This is especially so for facilities such as the company’s International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers where the volume of interconnection is consistently high, he added.

In order to facilitate the switch, the company used its IPv6 Exchange to simplify the process for its networks to enhance traffic within an IPv6 environment, Ho stated. The central switching capability also helped create a “unicast” peering virtual local area network (LAN).

This “meet in the middle” approach helped reduce costs as it enabled its servers to more efficiently establish IPv6 peering, he explained.

Assess systems’ readiness

Cisco’s Soh noted that after the redesigning of the data centre is complete, the company performed an assessment to determine if existing devices in its demilitarised zone (DMZ) and datacenter networks were capable of supporting the new protocol. It also enhanced its network management systems to support network, devices and application monitoring over IPv6, he added.

At this late stage, the company is conducting system-level testing and quality assurance engineers are going about the functional and performance checks, the executive pointed out. Its last test will be a practice run in which it will switch on the IPv6 service for a few hours to make sure everything works fine, including the content delivery network and ISP services, he said.

Beyond the technical preparations, it also put together a training programme to ensure employees, from the frontline to the network engineers, were equipped with knowledge of the new protocol and skills appropriate for their roles, the executive stated.

No impetus for change

The amount of time and costs reflected in these companies’ migration efforts were cited as one of the main reasons why there are not more companies considering making the switch.

According to a statement issued by Tata Communications and India-based centre for Internet and Society on Wednesday, costs and infrastructure as well as having a minimum number of service providers and users utilising the network were identified as the two main impediments for IPv6 adoption.

One the first obstacle, they said: “IPv6 platforms do not communicate easily with IPv4 networks. This idea of abandoning IPv4 and moving to a new protocol is not only redundant, it is also futile because IPv4 is already running the largest network in human history quite efficiently.”

To make the transition more palatable, they believed “translators”, or technologies able to “speak” in both protocols, are needed. However, these translators are still expensive and there is a need to divert more resources to make these technologies more affordable, the statement noted.

As for the second reason, both Tata and the centre for Internet and Society stated that as long as the deployment of IPv6 remains nascent, there will be no concentrated energy to bridge both protocol versions.

“We are going to need a systemic change among all stakeholders to make IPv6 a reality, toward a faster, safer and more robust Internet,” they said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/biz-moving-to-ip-v-6

Bitter Pill

praskrishna — 2018-08-13T15:06:31Z

Bitter Pill

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Bitcoin & Open Source with Aaron Koenig

praskrishna — 2014-02-06T01:40:24Z

Aaron Koenig, director of bitfilm.org and a global Bitcoin entrepreneur will give a talk at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore on February 7 at 6.00 p.m.

Learn more about Bitcoin and its global path as we explore concepts and ideaologies behind the technology behemoth.


Above is an image of a Bitcoin Expert giving a presentation. Image source: http://bit.ly/1keLpwi

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/bitcoin-and-open-source-aaron-koenig

BIS on Smart Cities Indicators

praskrishna — 2016-11-30T15:56:58Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/bis-on-smart-cities-indicators.pdf

BIS LITD 17 Privacy Panel meeting

praskrishna — 2017-07-07T01:31:35Z

Udbhav Tiwari represented CIS at this meeting organized by National Law School of India University in Bangalore on June 21, 2017.

The bare-bones structure for what as discussed at the meeting can be found in the trailing email below. The standard itself is still in the drafting stage, which makes it confidential. I will share it on this thread once it hits the public draft stage, which should happen by September 2017. (approx)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bis-litd-17-privacy-panel-meeting

Birds of Feather 6

praskrishna — 2010-09-09T08:59:34Z

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Birds of Feather 5

praskrishna — 2010-09-09T08:58:05Z

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Birds of Feather 4

praskrishna — 2010-09-09T07:30:40Z

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Birds of Feather 3

praskrishna — 2010-09-09T07:28:10Z

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Birds of Feather 2

praskrishna — 2010-09-09T07:24:06Z

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Birds of Feather 1

praskrishna — 2010-09-09T07:19:54Z

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Bios and Photos of Speakers for Big Data in the Global South International Workshop

praskrishna — 2015-11-06T02:01:15Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/big-data-global-south-international-workshop-bios-and-photos.pdf

Biometry Is Watching

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T12:08:26Z

In its first steps, the UID drive encounters practical problems, raises ethical questions, reports Sugata Srinivasaraju in Outlook.

Three women are fighting to take one chair in a classroom of a government school in Chelur village, in Gubbi taluka of Tumkur district. One sits on the lap of another and the third tries to push them both off the chair. What all three want is to be the first to be profiled under the Centre’s ambitious Aadhaar or unique identity number (UID) project. Their squabbling holds up the documentation by nearly 20 minutes, and the crowd outside, standing in line in the afternoon sun, grows restless. To calm them, the village revenue secretary orders the distribution of another round of buttermilk.

Chelur is one of four villages in the district picked for field trials before the 12-digit UIDs are assigned to people later in the year. Besides Tumkur, the pilot project is simultaneously running in seven villages of Mysore district. Each village has been given a target of 2,400-2,500 profiles to be completed in 20 days. This involves photographing the face, imaging the iris and scanning all ten digits of each person profiled and assigned a UID.

Villagers are enthusiastic about this rigorous profiling process even though there’s little awareness about the true purpose of the exercise. This is because of some falsehoods that have somehow spread in these areas. Nagamma, an elderly woman coming out after being profiled, thinks her eyes had been tested and found to be in perfect condition. Another middle-aged woman thought the exercise would bring her a new ration card—one that would entitle her family to an extra four kilos of rice. Some others were in a tizzy that if they didn’t undergo this “photography” their BPL cards would be taken away. Most, however, had queued up because they didn’t want to be left out of a sarkari exercise their neighbours were submitting to. Of the dozen people Outlook spoke to, only Muniswamy could tell us that this process would ensure that no one had more than one voter ID card or ration card—the way it should be, unlike some in his village who had illegally acquired two of each.

The village authorities have been doing little to counter the misinformation because their attention is focused on other compelling matters, like meeting the assigned target. This is an important issue because gram panchayat elections have been declared in Karnataka and lots of youngsters set off for campaigning early in the morning and would be difficult to locate for profiling.

According to official figures, Chelur has a population of 5,000, with 3,640 people above the age of 18. A random selection of 2,400 has been made from this to meet the UID target. The number seems small, but handling it at the village level can be demanding for the local authorities—there’s no police for crowd control, refreshments have to be distributed and the computerised work has to be done despite the power outages. Using generators has become inevitable, for the villages get hardly four or five hours’ power supply.

Another problem lies in obtaining the fingerprints of rural folk: most of them are engaged in manual labour or farm work and arrive with dirty palms that defeat the biometric reading machines. Pails of water, detergent and towels are provided for cleaning up. Much time is lost in such rescanning and it goes against the official estimate of five minutes for the young, nine for the elderly.

Prasanna Kumar, the village secretary, admits to the problems. “We did not make an open announcement for the UID pilot because we didn’t want to attract large crowds. We quietly prepared a random list of 2,400 people from the ration card database and went door-to-door to invite them,” he says. “We have left out people above the age of 80 and under 18. We told people this identity number will help them access various government schemes. Fingerprinting is the toughest problem. Initially people were reluctant, but suddenly they have become curious.”

H. Gnanesh, the tehsildar, says the ongoing step is only “concept testing”; the next will be rechecking, in which those already profiled will verify their identity details against what has been stored. Only after that will the UID be issued. In Chelur village, the concept testing ended on May 4; rechecking began the very next day.

Some NGOs observing the process have noted the lack of awareness in villagers. “They are clueless about what they are taking part in,” say Mahadev Prasad and Murthy, of the Basava Seva Trust. Murthy says fingerprinting is a big problem. He speaks of Hommaragalli, in Mysore district, where some foreign experts had to be called in to take a look at the scanning machines.

Then there are larger issues. Away from the surging crowds in Chelur, civil society organisations like the Centre for Internet & Society, the Alternative Law Forum and PUCL have been demanding greater dialogue. In fact, they have even suggested a review of the scheme. They argue there is no clarity on how the government proposes to store and secure personal and biometric data, given the fact that various agencies such as banks, telecom companies and government departments would potentially access it. Security is a huge concern also because the software, hardware and expertise of foreign companies is being used. These NGOs say the UID data, the National Population Registry and the NATGRID, when connected, could prove a grave threat to civil liberties.

“First, a centralised database, like the UID will create, has never been safe,” says Sunil Abraham of CIS. “It needs to be decentralised like our various mail servers. Second, we feel the collection of biometric data is happening at the wrong end of the pyramid. Instead of putting the poor through the process first, why not start with those with financial dealings of Rs 1 crore and above. Third, one study says 48 per cent of our people cannot remember a 12-digit ID. Fourth, we need privacy laws in place before the UID regime sets in.”

Those problems apart, even raising the level of the current exercise—from small samples of a few thousand each to profiling the billion-plus population of India—could place severe demands on our shaky administration. There’s a mountain to be moved.

Read the original article in the Outlook

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/biometry-is-watching