The TLDCON 2020 conference has opened
Telecommunications market participants have noted that businesses are seamlessly moving their operations online and all areas of the internet industry are demonstrating slight growth.
The 13th TLDCON international conference opened on September 7 in the online format. Plenary session participants concluded that the industry had withstood the test of the pandemic. The event was organized by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, supported by MSK-IX and the Technical Center of Internet.
The two-day conference consists of six sections with prominent Russian and foreign experts in the domain industry, internet law, cybersecurity and internet infrastructure development as speakers. The speakers’ list includes Mikhail Anisimov (ICANN), Maxim Burtikov (RIPE NCC), Andrei Kuzmichyov (RU-CENTER), Alexei Lukatsky (Cisco), Alexander Khristoforov (Gowling WLG), Alexander Venedyukhin (Technical Center of Internet), Marina Rozhkova (IP CLUB), Giovanni Seppia (EURid) and many others.
Andrei Vorobyev (Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ) opened the plenary session and presented statistics on the .RU and .РФ domain space growth, stressing that the pandemic had not hurt the Russian domain industry. On the contrary, the industry has shown slight growth.
Yelena Voronina (MSK-IX) reported that the MSK-IX services had successfully handled the load during the pandemic although the company’s specialists had noted significant changes due to the fact that the majority of businesses had switched to telework. “This is how it looked from the side of the network: the traffic grew exponentially, putting certain stress on internet providers. We had to urgently deal with peering issues as some users whose ISPs rely on a remote DNS were having problems. Let’s say an access point is located in Russia while the DNS server is based in Hong Kong. Even in such cases, we managed to resolve problems promptly, helping users to remain unaffected,” Yelena Voronina said. She also stressed that the DNS source must be located as close to customers as possible and the more we use the internet, the more funding its infrastructure requires.
ICANN representative in Russia Mikhail Anisimov covered changes in the community. Apparently, since the move online, communications between participants have substantially deteriorated. However, he noted, it is not the time to stop, but to adapt to the new reality. A report on the launch of a new round of new gTLDs was issued in August outlining three major rounds. They will serve as guidelines for the subsequent move forward.
Maxim Burtikov reported that all the 2020 RIPE NCC events had moved online. The RIPE Meeting last spring was held online, with a record number of registered participants. He announced that ENOG on November 9‒13 would also be held online. The event will be divided into sections, each lasting 90 minutes per day, so that participants do not get overwhelmed.
Burtikov noted that LIR registration with RIPE NCC had not changed during the pandemic and the network had successfully managed the workload. He thanked regulators from the countries of the respective region for helping the industry and not interfering in traffic regulation.
Alexei Rogdev from the Technical Center of Internet spoke about the expedited switch to remote work and the company’s promptly developed internal regulations, which helped to maintain the high speed of operations and decision-making. He noted that the pandemic had been a challenging period for tech companies and mentioned the peak loads Zoom had experienced over the spring and summer. Rogdev pointed out that many partners and contractors had not survived the pandemic and only those who had adapted to the changes and moved their operations online were still standing.
Other plenary session speakers included Leonid Todorov (APTLD), Katrina Sataki (ccNSO), Svetlana Tkachenko (Hostmaster), Pavel Gusev (Kazakhstan’s registry), Andrei Kuzmichyov (RU-CENTER), Alexei Korolyuk (Reg.ru), Andrei Savelyev, (.рф registry) and Sergei Povalishev (Host.by).
On September 7‒8, the participants will continue to discuss domain industry trends, internet security, domain disputes and new technologies. The most pressing issues of today will not be left out as more conference participants will report on the changes in the industry that came with remote operations and talk more about the domain world getting through the COVID-19 pandemic. Audience members will be the first to hear the latest news on the changes in the domain markets in different countries.
