 Kuowei. Hi. Thank you for joining us for for doing this. We're trying to build a history of ICANN and you're one of the people who's been involved in ICANN for a long time. I'm going to ask you two questions. One is an easy question and one will be a little more interesting. So the easy question is describe for us your basic involvement when you started how you got involved and what you've been doing and that'll set the stage for a more interesting discussion. Actually involving the ICANN is before ICANN's form. I was in the Boston Pre-Meetings in 1998 and the reason I was involved is because in 1995 the APNIC started and we are helping the APNIC to run the institution and also establish the institution in Australia and because APNIC is a one of very founding member of ICANN. So there's reason why I started involved in ICANN the pre-meeting in Boston in 1998. And the most interesting is the first meeting in Singapore in 1999 and I was involved in a couple of funny things. The first of all is the ICANN GAC organizations how they set it up and they are talking about the pilot and I was involved with a poll to me and another interesting in Singapore in 1999. I think Steve reminds me of the ICANN. The ICANN actually started in 1999 Singapore as a buff. It's an international to my names and that is just a very beginning. The people talking about it and for the last 56 I can meet and I believe I joined at least 40, 45, at least 45 of them. I miss some of them because in the early days I was working for ASI Inc. the PC company. The company do not allow me to go to the international meeting no related to the PC business. So for example I didn't go to the Worm, I didn't go to the Egypt the first I Cairo meetings. So I miss some of them but I participate most of the ICANN meetings. Fill in a couple of pieces for me. What was your role in APNIC and also I think it'd be good to hear something about your background. I know you spent some time in the U.S. and you have a very solid technical background and I'm sure that played a role in in how you got involved and what your position was and that led into dealing with ICANN matters. Okay well first of all I'm not as solid technical as you are you know because my background is in the supercomputer you know in the creative research. I'm doing the architecture architect also compiler. Well but not networking. I've never been a networking peoples and I was really involved in this internet related actually it's started in 19 I think 1990. I don't forget about the time. You might be remembering it's a mosaic. The first mosaic design. The reason is mosaics are coming out from the University of Illinois of Russia and the mosaic designer. He said professor is my friend. When I visited you know University in Illinois of Russia of Joseph and Joseph told me say I bring my my student to show you something excited and there's a Mark Anderson come up he show me the mosaic and then a lady when I back to Taiwan I told myself I'm not going to write a compiler anymore. I want to go into the internet and so when I back to the Taiwan I started to build the internet in Taiwan. I was one of the founder to build an academic networking connect more than 400 institutions in Taiwan. 400. 4,000 sorry 4,000. 4,000 from elementary school to graduate school. 4,000 institutions. Yes. On the island of Taiwan. Yes. I didn't know there were that many. Yeah and everyone is connected to the internet. Wow. And my institution is a national super company center in Taiwan. I see. We provide a backbone and the reason doing that I think you remember in the early day the NSF connected four super companies and to build the NSF net. Yes. So after they we build a Taiwan academic networking I participate in the very first academic meeting and so I you know in the early day we always show what you can tell the internet your local community you did. So what I did is I present the Taiwan Academy networking how we can connect all the you know institution from school up to the graduate school you know 4,000 institution together you know under the government budget and all the professor all the community center including the school teacher was involved and so let is I stop up for this kind of project so from there I connect to the internet from APNIC and then go to the ICANN. Wow. What year was this academic network in Taiwan? What period of time? Ladies are very early day I think is 1992. Really? Yeah. 1992. And what speed were these lines? At late time we're using you know T1 line. T1? T1 that's a big boom. Yeah. T1 in 1992 is quite advanced. Yes. And I remember in the 1993 no 1994 we upgrade T1 to T3. Wow. 40 megabits. Yes. You know remember that you know so ladies how we develop in that. And of these 4,000 you got me interested in this. Yeah. Because in 1992 I got my daughter's school attached to the internet and the speed was a lot less at the time. What speeds were the elementary schools and the high schools? And many schools actually are using it more than 56k. Yeah. You know because in that day is 56 quite good enough. Yeah. You know and so the school is 56 but for most major national university or greater school actually connect with big boom is also is T1. T1 in 1992 and in 1994-95 the big boom is a T3 but they connect in the T1 too. Right. So it's quite good. I remember in 1994-95 I was go to the APNIC meeting we presented and so we demonstrate you know from the networking structure topology and particularly how to operate it. Yes. Because you need to coordinate with a lot of people. Right. 4,000 institution. Yeah. So you need to coordinate including the school teachers and the school teacher most of them they don't experience about networking. So you have to write an operation guide for them with the graphic and they know how to connect. So they are exciting. So my experience with that sort of thing is that the teachers are busy with a lot of things and so but usually there's a student or a couple of students that spend all their time on this and rapidly become very expert at this. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's true. Actually you might be to remember during the 1990 or year early of 2000 actually students smarter than teachers. Yes. Particularly in the networking or internet and in that early day in 1994-95 more than they actually I even go to China to help the China you know academic and academic to establish C&NIC. So from 1994 C&NIC and TNNIC we are very good friends because we help them to establish how to run the C&NIC to operation now on the IP address also the CCTLD.CN. Yes. You know. And so for a long time they still have a connection and visit each other. So you mentioned excuse me the CCTLD in Taiwan that's dot TW in China it's dot CN. Yeah. When did each of those get started? TW is started about 1990, 1990 quite early because we got an assignment from Jumbo State House. Yes. You remember that. And the CN I think it's about one or two years later you know because of the they call the Internet founder of the China he's a professor Chen. He's not Chen Wahlin. He's a Chen Tianpai. He's a previous director of the Community Center in academic C&NIC and of course you know he died in the high attack and then Chen Wahlin take it over. And I know he's a Chen Tianpai he applied the Tassian from Jumbo State House. So that is about one or two years different between the TW and the Tassian. But the major difference is in the very early days during the 1991 to 1994 1995 before the people still using the dial-up mode China tried to set up separate Internet as a domestic and international. Usually they call it 168 and 162. You dialed 162 mean you are connected to the domestic. 168 you dialed up is connected to the international. But after 1996 the Internet you don't need to dial anymore. So the whole thing is changing dramatically. So that's another whole story about China. Yeah. But I wanted to explore this because this fills in how a bit about the background about how you got involved with APNIC and from APNIC you got involved with ICANN. Yes. And you mentioned the IDNs were a lively topic right from the beginning. Yes. So that's something that I think is another story that we want to explore over a period of time. I said I was going to ask you two questions. I spent a lot of time on the on the first question about background. I think what's most interesting is getting beyond who did what when is to dig into the why and the how of things. And so let me ask what are the important or interesting or even annoying things that come to mind when you think about the history of ICANN and pieces that you know well. What kinds of things come to mind? I think let me talk about IDN first. Okay. Okay. Because I was involved in IDN quite not in the technical but in the policies. Yeah. I told that IDN is initiate in the very first meeting of ICANN 1999 in Singapore. In the first three years actually there's a big fighting about IDN for from two different directions. The one direction is put IDN as a proprietary systems. It's not go to the ITF without a pattern. Okay. And the company called it IDNA whatever. I don't kind of like that. I don't agree. So I talked to several other people for example China, Taiwan, Japanese, Korean. We think about IDN should go to the public domain as a through the ITF. So as a public interest should not be driven by a single company as a parent. So at that time the Japanese Kornishi-san the professor Kornishi from KDD he asked me to coordinate the people. So I go to find the technical people in Taiwan. I talk to the people in China. I talk to the people in Korea and also Japanese. The first meeting called JET, John Engineer Task Force. Yes. It's in the ICANN Yokohama meeting. There is I think it's year 2002 or something like that or 2001 in Yokohama. And I make the you know the John Engineer Task Force to establish. This was in Yokohama. This was an ICANN meeting or this was an ITF meeting? Oh sorry you're right. ITF meeting. Yeah. ITF meeting. Yeah. And so we do that in there. After that they run the meeting every quarter very intensely. Yes. And then eventually you know they go to the ITF to bring the IDN as I've seen. Yes. And when we're talking about how to bring the IDN into the ICANN we have a policy issue happen. And Kornishi and the JET people asked me how to approach. And there's a coming back. It's interesting also related to ICANN. It's the ICANN meeting in Melbourne. I talked to the John Kansing is a Yokohama friend. I talked to the John Kansing said John how can we resolve it. And John said okay I set up a meeting with you and Vincent and three of us we sit together to talk about how to bring the IDN policy into the ICANN. Yeah. I still remember Vincent asked me first say why we need a non-ESCII. Really? Yes. In Melbourne meeting and John Kansing actually is then next to us you know. So and I explained to them and I also explained to him to say this is a public interest you know. And then of course always John Kansing help. Then to become Vince it is a good time to bring policy discussion in ICANN. So that is how they did happen. IDN of course spans many many scripts languages and so forth. And so this is the the northern northern Asia I guess or northeastern Asia. I know a little but I don't know everything about this. Underneath all of this was Unicode. Yeah. And we're talking about a portion of the Unicode table. Yes. Is that right? Yes. And the IDN is the mapping from Unicode into the normal ASCII because that's the way the DNS was built. That mapping I'm not sure I know the full history of it but I maybe I'm wrong. But I think it went through some multiple stages. Oh yeah. Actually one of most interesting during the developments is I don't want to name the person's name. One of the people in Europe he said we don't want the two-by-code. We just want the seven bits. Yes. You know and he even complained say if any two bytes send it to me I will treat as junk. But somehow even the European they accept now. So it's interesting. You are right actually in the very early day we are fighting from seven bits to the two bytes because the Unicode is cannot be triggered by seven bits and for the two bytes at the very beginning we have some questions about for example like email. Some of the people cannot recognize the two bytes of the email address. So they argue for a while really very long time several stages to go through. The way it is today there's a quite sophisticated encoding and I remember when I was introduced to that I was quite impressed that first of all with the quality because it was relatively short very efficient and I was also impressed because having spent a lot of time in the ITF processes and working with people I was I didn't think that something of that complexity even though it was absolutely right could be sold through the social processes in the ITF and I thought that was a big one. Yeah that's true actually when the idea in the ITF is going to be formal I still remember the idea of some people against that. Yeah. Because of the first version of our idea we put a table into the DNS and many engineers in the ITF don't like that they don't think you should put a table into the DNS. So the second version is being proved you don't need a table in there so you write this several stage but one thing unfortunately didn't happen actually after idea in the IFC John Cleansing he recommended go further to do the directory services. Unfortunately those are engineers after four years fighting they exhausted they don't want to continue to do that. If we keep following the John Cleansing suggestion from the IDN IFC go to the directory service I think the idea would be much easier than we are facing today but too bad because you need the resources you need an engineer commitment. So I want to just make a note that the IDN story and some more details is something that we may want to follow up on another time and the other is you mentioned John Cleansing who is another one of the old timers who's been around forever that we should definitely grab hold of and listen to him for a while. Yes. No question about that. Is there more you want to say about IDNs or should we go on to something? We can move to the IDN or APNIC or the IDN structure or something like that. Talk about that. Okay I can talk about one of the history interesting for all of us if you remember in the very beginning the IDN structure have a large before a large we tried to figure out how to get involved with our individual user. Yes. Participate in the IDN. You might be remember we go through the online voting. Yes. That is Andrew. Andrew put it up. Yes. And it's kind of interesting actually during that time when we are doing the voting I almost be a point from Asia Pacific region. Really? Because in the Asia Pacific region two person got a major vote. One is Kato-san. Remember Kato-san from Japan and another one is me. Our vote is about 45-55. So Kato-san fight to Taiwan and say go away do you allow me to be the board first and next time I can support you. And I say okay go ahead. So I almost be like I can board much earlier in 2003 or 2004. Talk more now about the beginnings of ICANN and how you got involved in the APNIC and what the formative issues were. Where were the big question marks and. Actually in my personal case I can talk about APNIC also talking about CCTOD stuff because I involved both. You know at the time I was kind of representing the TWNIC also participating in APNIC. So I think in the early day for example 1999 and to the ICANN Berlin meeting in Germany. We have a serious discussion about the charging model. You know how the IRR pay for ICANN, how the CCTOD pay money to ICANN, how to establish the relationship between the CCTOD and ICANN and also the APNIC. So I think that is for APNIC point of view I think you might know that at the very first time the IRR talking about how we can establish the relationship with ICANN. Should we sign a contract with ICANN one by one or altogether it's one institution. Yes. So you know eventually it's go to the NL. We set up the kind of paper company and now put all the fire together as a single window to talk to the ICANN. So that is I think we spent almost two or three years quite a long time talking about serious talking about this stuff. Another one is the CCTOD is another big issues. I remember in the I can probably meet him also in the Germany we the CCTOD person squeezing in the very tiny norm really tiny. I remember more than half of the people have no chair really you have to stand and some of people actually stand outside of the door and let the door open and they can shout it inside you know because a norm just too tiny and that is a talking about many models for example first how to build a legal relations second how to charge and some people will say based on the registration some people say no we don't want to do that way and some people say we want to sign a legal contracts but some people say no CCTOD is sovereignty we not belong to ICANN you know so in the Bering and after several meetings it's really a lot of debate and even until four or five years after it's no unique or consensus as you know. When was the Berlin meeting? Berlin meeting I think it's 2001 I think 2000 or 2001 very very early first time and I still remember the hotel is a luxury hotel but noom is so tiny you know. This business of the relationship with ICANN and charging and so forth persists even to this day yes now the other thing that is even more important than the charging is the authority yes and you mentioned sovereignty which is a big word and even today that's not yeah rfc 1591 was attempted to set some of this that predates all this right that goes back earlier yes I don't remember exactly but John Postel was part of that so it was before then sorry so it'd be very interesting to hear what the different points of view are of course ICANN was at that by that time running the IANA function and so every CCTOD is dependent upon and had to work with ICANN if it wanted to change to its entry into the root zone and so there was a certain amount of leverage to be honest that ICANN could try to exert and yet at the same time ICANN was a young organization and it wasn't clear what the rules were yeah actually in a very early day you you know that the CCTOD is a very diverse for example in the very beginning before the ICANN and the early four or five years before ICANN the CCTOD in the very early day actually running by academic including the TATJP including the TACIEN including the TATIDARU including even the TATAU yes you know and at that time many of the CCTOD manager we don't think we belong to government and even in Japan the same thing in Japan in the very beginning as you know the JUMBRAI or later on the JP but later on they find it or the CCTOD actually can generate the income by themselves so the Japan I think in the early of the 1990 maybe 2000 they decided to separate the JAPANIC and the JBIS yes the reason is that JUMBRAI say JBIS you can make money but JABANIC is not so they separated although the JABANIC is still a major shareholder of the JBIS in Taiwan we're talking about that but eventually we didn't happen and when we're talking about how to develop in the relationship with ICANN I think you remember in the very very first relationship if I remember correctly it's Australian Australian sign the three parties contracts the government Australian NIC and ICANN and JBIS and TWNIC follow it I see and as you know the CNIC didn't sign the contract the CNIC only agree is have some kind of memorandum yeah because they insist there's sovereignty yeah and particularly CNIC is a belong to academic cynical it's part of government are structures so even today as you mentioned the CCTOD is not the single entity right you know some of them still commercial some of them still NGO some of them his government party so he's quite diverse very very interesting what happened what's your recollection of what happened with the idea of the CCTOD's paying money to ICANN well I think there's a couple of things first of all I think these are difficulties if the people claim the CCTOD is solving the issue well of course the CCTOD manager for their personal interests they don't want to pay any money yeah you know why I want to pay them yeah and particularly the major argument is for example the DNS of the CCTOD running by CCTOD organization itself and but I think the most critical part for me most important government issue between the CCTOD also the ICANN we should talking about how we can have a consistent consistent policy between the GTLD and CCTOD regarding for the dominant operations for example if we say the red cloth should be reserved as IBR it's only apply on the G right or we should apply on the CC also but it seems like it's very difficult to push the CC to follow it two reasons I believe my personal point of view of course if you ask my personal opinion I really suggest should be consistent yes between the G and the CC right but it's difficult is first of all CC continue to claim their sovereignty the second problem the difficulty is not all the CCTOD participate in the ICANN meeting right because if you look at the CCTOD how many of them how many of them is joining the CCNSO yes so I think the difficult part for the CCTOD is they're claiming about the sovereignty the second of all I think the problem is the CCTOD is not all of them is in the CCNSO but for the consistent and reasonable the policy should be consistent yes no matter G or CC and if I remember I say that before I was a board member and also after the board member you might be remembering Nairobi I can no I think it's a IGF Nairobi meeting when we talk with NDI Larry I said the important thing for ICANN to be grow as mature we should invite as many as possible government into our gig yeah we also need to invite as many as possible of the CCTOD into the CCNSO yes without they participate into the ICANN structures we cannot claim we are global we are worldwide right and I'm very happy I'm very happy after Nairobi till now we are 169 government into the gig 169 yeah if you remember in the Nairobi we are less than 80 yeah lovely lovely but if we compare with the CCNSO in Nairobi until now honest not much and more how many how many CCNSO I believe it's still less than 100 I see so I think it's very important for the future progress of the ICANN is try our best to bring the CCTOD into the ICNSO in our operations so this reminds me of something that's been on my mind for a while ICANN was been pushing to get a lot of participation when I think about it from the from a CCTOD operator it's a big deal to go travel along just like so forth I fully agree and there are some very vibrant very robust regional groups center in Europe of course but all around the world the APTLD and other places what's your view about the relationship of those kinds of organizations versus ICANN in terms of serving the needs of the CCTOD community I think you're right APTLD and also like you know the you know the you know European I think the difference is in their organization like APTLD most of time they are sharing experience but they didn't really grow into the policy discussion at least as I know in APTLD in APTLD the meaning continue just sharing experience I actually talked to them many times usually you know improve from sharing experience go into the policy discussions if they are not going to the policy discussion then it's still very diverse yes or only independence yes and you still didn't see the past policy consistency particularly for the global internal governance yeah I don't think that is a right way you know of course that isn't my personal view that's what I want to hear I want to ask one more question related to the numbers which might be the beginning of a long discussion but we'll keep it very short you mentioned that there was a discussion about whether all of the RIRs would individually sign or whether they'd sign all together and out of that came the creation of the NRO now I heard one version of that story sitting where I was and I'm sure there's a different version of the story what was the nature of that decision from where you were sitting actually at the time I was at APTLD we're talking about live for several years how we develop in the relationship with ICANN and of course as you know I think for the RIR for a long time we are thinking about what is the relation we should develop with ICANN particularly as you know INA operations let me say at least once upon a time we're even talking about we can run a number by ourselves yes without INA but if you ask my personal opinion and what I suggest the APNIC what I suggest to the IR NRO my personal view is number and name should not separate my personal point my reason is this in the early day the number or name or internet we're still in the you know child childhood early days and we still have a lot big pressure from outside world if we don't unite if we don't work together corporation we are very easy to beat off yeah and I think I told them there will be tragedy for us for number for name and for the internet even for the end user yeah so even my voice is just one of them into the APNIC NRO so I suggest them we should try our best unless ICANN is not a good institution to work with yes and to be honest in some part of time we don't think ICANN is a good institution to work with you know you have a history you know some of the ICANN senior manager you know or some of the board member is very unfriendly but even in the case I still told them do our best to stay with if you remember I like to bring a short one minute to cover them yeah these ICANN meeting in Catagena if you remember in Catagena I bring the issue to the ICANN board that is my second board meeting in ICANN I told all ICANN board member I say if you are not going to the ASO meeting you are failed to be ICANN board yes then you bring a negative message to the number community although I do my best to ask all the number community all IRCO to come to the Catagena because before the Catagena in the Brussels meeting those IRCO say we don't want to that we don't want to come to ICANN meeting anymore I convince them to come so if you remember in Catagena how many I can board in ASO meeting 19 of them I'm happy that's good it's good yes thank you very much yep it's been a real pleasure and I'm sure there's more that we should talk about yeah all right lovely thank you very much thank you Chloe