Meeting Minutes

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AP* Retreat meeting

22-23 February 2003

Location: Hyatt Grand Hotel, Taipei, Taiwan

Participants: Paul Wilson (APNIC), Philip Smith (APOPS), Shigeki Goto (Waseda University), Xing Li (APNG), Hirofumi HOTTA (JPRS), Jeonghye Choi (IAK), Gihan Dias (SANOG), BK Kim (KAIST), Kilnam Chon (KAIST), Kyoko Day (APIA), Pensri A. (APJS), Kanchana Kanchanasut (AIT), Suguru Yamaguchi (WIDE/JPCERT/AI3), Connie Chan (APNIC), Ching Chiao (TWNIC), Ian Chiang (APTLD), Nian-Shing Chen (NSYSU/TW), Joe Abley (ISC), George Chou (TWCERT), Mark Kosters (Verisign), Izumi AIZU (ANR), Toru Takahashi (RIIS), Tommy Matsumoto (JPNIC), WS Chen (TWNIC), Anthony Lee (TWNIC), James Seng (IDA)

Meeting started at 9:00am (local time)

1. Opening and Agenda Bashing

The meeting was chaired by WS Chen (TWNIC) and Tommy Matsumoto (JPNIC).
The chair asked the participants to review the agenda. The minutes follow the sequence of the revised meeting agenda.

2. Report on AP* organizations' activities

APAN report by Kilnam Chon

• APAN has been working on expanding the connection from last 10 Yrs. Connections to Europe and Russia has been added.
• Now APAN is clustering; North Cluster, South East Cluster and Oceania Cluster, in order to provide better broadband service (Gigabit)
• Before the end of the year there will be 10Gbps from EU and US to Japan, Korea and Singapore and the rest will be connected by the Gigabit.
• Infrastructure for academics and now try to accommodate non-commercial organizations
• Expand the area to the South Asia countries.
• Future will look at the Central Asia, West Asia and then Pacific.
• IEEAF donates 10Gbps links to APAN for non-commercial use.
• Next APAN meeting will be held in Busan, Korea during 2003.8.25-29.
• Kyoko Day and BK Kim join in APAN secretariat

APNG report by Xing Li

• The root of APNG (Asia Pacific Networking Group) is APCCIRN in 1991.
• WGs and BOFs under APNG become AP organizations, i.e., APNIC, APIA, etc.
• While daughter organizations became so active, APNG itself keep very low profile.
• During AP* retreat Bangkok meeting in July, 2001, there was a decision to give a new meaning, Asia Pacific Next Generation, to APNG

· APNG Camp is the major activity under APNG umbrella

1st APNG Camp on AP Perspective of the Internet, 2002.03 with APRICOT

2nd APNG Camp on AP Network of the Next Generation, 2002.08 with APAN

3rd APNG Camp on New Relationship with the Net, 2003.02 with APRICOT Topics in the 3rd Camp are:

· Cyber Sex

· On-line game

· Internet Governance

· International Domain Name

· Internet Policy

· Young Feminist Network Trend: more and more people in social science get involve

• 2003.08 the next APNG Camp will be held in Korea with APAN
• APNG is still open membership
• APNG Structure:

Chairman: Xing Li

Vice Chairman: Tommy Matsumoto

Executive Committee: Xing Li, Tommy Matsumoto and Anthony S. Lee

Secretary: Jie An

Advisor Board: Former Chairs,

• Major sponsor for APNG is APNIC. For 3rd APNG Camp, APNIC, JPNIC, KRNIC and APIA contributed 1000USD each.
• APNG Camp is the major activity under the name of APNG. New structure will be formed and more stable funding model for APNG Camp is needed.

APNIC status report by Paul Wilson

• APNIC membership has been growing over the last year and there is a good sign for the next year
• APNIC membership break down by sub-regional (sub regions by UN); 206 members from East Asia (known as North Asia), 168 from South-Central Asia, 162 South-East Asia, 216 from Oceania region, 2 members from Africa and 30 members from multi-nationals organizations (recognized as region wide).
• IPv4 allocation: linear growth; some parts of Asia Pacific slow down while others have rapid growth particularly in mainland China and Japan
• IPv4 distribution: Japan is in front of mainland China then Korea, Taiwan, Australia, Hong Kong. The distribution in terms of sub-regional: East Asia has got the big share.
• IPv6 distribution: Japan is the leader.
• APNIC compares with other RIRs: in 2002, it is the first year that APNIC allocated more IPv4 addresses than ARIN and the others. IPv6 global distribution, in 2002, RIPE NCC allocated more IPv6 addresses than APNIC and the others.

• Different sorts of development happening over APNIC services:
• Member Services: - Member Service Helpdesk: established in April 2002, telephone helpdesk with long working hours and staff has been assigned to the helpdesk according to the language (10 languages are available). Account Management: established in May 2002, APNIC's hostmaster has been assigned to a group of members according to the members' language.
• Training: more than 2 training every month, 28 courses held this year, continue cooperation with other AP organizations and will outsource the administration of training to APJS, Thailand. New courses to cover RPSL, IRR and DNS.
• Communications: - online support material: FAQs for IRR and whois v3. APster: Hard copy of APster newsletter is available as well as the online version.
• Services developments: - Database upgraded last year to provide Routing Registry. Continue working on distribute APNIC POPs around the region. Internet Software Consortium (ISC) approach APNIC about Root Server Mirroring with Anycast in 2002. APNIC sent out the Call for Proposal for the F-root mirroring with anycast in Dec 2002.

Q: which countries are subscribing?

A: APNIC's POPs in Hong Kong and Japan. Korea, Singapore, Myanmar, China

are mostly interested along with few others.

Q: Any interest in other regions?

A: Yes, Latin America, Africa and South Africa

Prof Kilnam Chon suggested that the major countries in Asia Pacific should set up

the root server mirroring for the stability of the Internet in the region.

• MyAPNIC: Launch of new version of APNIC secure web site for staff and APNIC members, showing all information about APNIC services including resource management, staff administration and account administration.
• Policy Developments: APNIC EC has decided to re-open prospects for international registries. NIR criteria, NIR will need to have sanction of government (official endorsement from the government)

Q: How would APNIC know which government agency can endorse? If the government change the agency will be changed.

A: This is an issue which might create the problem in small number cases. APNIC cannot solve every problem. Special allocations approved for development purposes at APNIC open policy meeting in Japan.

• APNIC Meetings:

APNIC 14: Kitakyushu, Japan on September 2002. There were, the first time, simultaneous (Japanese) interpretation and multicast trail.

APNIC 15: Taipei, Taiwan on February 2003 next week in parallel with APRICOT2003. The (Mandarin) interpretation and multicast will also be provided. APNIC is acquiring the interpretation equipment. AP* organization can contact APNIC to rent the equipment if there is a need.

• Other Activities: -
• Developing a funding application for the World Bank to support some distributed training workshops that intend to carry on from the work that Philip Smith was doing on travelling routing workshop around the region. The external funding has been seeking because APNIC cannot use its central fund to support the activity which is unnecessary for the APNIC members.
• To outsource the training's administration to AIT within this year.
• ICT Research and Development: APNIC contributed some small grant programs.
• WSIS meeting, January in Japan: achievement is within the document of that meeting we had specify clearly the need for HRD in the Asia Pacific, in particularly HRD in networking infrastructure, management and operation
• APNIC has been involved in the APRICOT Fellowship committee.

There are still quite a lot of IPv4 address spaces available. We will not run out of IPv4 address within these few years.

AI3 updates by Suguru Yamaguchi

• Established in 1995, AI3 project has been developing the infrastructure for Internet research and development among the Asian countries.
• Members from all around the region and we are still looking for the way to expand this infrastructure to more countries like Sri Lanka.
• The Internet links are based on the satellite links. KU-band JCSAT1B and C-band JCSAT3 satellites have been using. All major cities in South East Asia are under coverage. New satellite will be needed in the future to focus on the Central Asia and other places.
• The project started with Point-to-Point (P2P) link and now we are using UDL. P2P + UDL will be the future standard configuration for each site member.
• Operations: -
• IPv6 network: all partners have IPv6 network in operation including UDL sites. UDLv6 infrastructure has been running.
• Bandwidth starvation: small bandwidth is better than no bandwidth but under 10Mbps means less today. (One university in Myanmar has been provided with UDL link and they can use Internet through AI3 activities.) UDL has limitation. Single transponder can serve up to 30Mbps. Multiple transponders will need multiple antennas. Future potential direction is to use terrestrial links, which is under the seeking period. The other possibility is to use a new satellite, which can provide more bandwidth in a single transponder.
• Meeting: 2 meetings/Year to discuss on research and operation. Next meeting will be in Danang, Vietnam during 23-25 April 2003. AI3 organized one workshop at SAINT2003 on January 2003 at Orlando. Many papers from AI3 partners appeared at the main conference. IEEE computer society press provided the channel to distribute the papers.
• New satellite/New initiative: WINDS, KA-Band which will be available in 2005. Asia Broadband Backbone (ABB) project is the Japanese government's activity which has big influences on AI3 because AI3 has got funding support from Japanese government.
• Front line moves: From the past AI3 put the satellite link from Japan to partners and partners developed its own environment and researches. For Future, AI3 will get some big bandwidth (fibreoptics) to current existing partners then we can shift the front line to that area. This idea came from the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) project in which AIT is a center for this activity. If AI3 has a big bandwidth to AIT, more activities can be developed with the GMS.
• Relationship with other projects: AI3 is an infrastructure for other projects. SOI-Asia is a customer. Other projects from WIDE or relatives are under taking.

Q: Do you have any plan to outreach south Asia like Pakistan, India and beyond, central Asia and west Asia?

A: Links to area around India like Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal are under AI3 focus. Sri Lanka will be the first country. India, Bangladesh, Nepal are under contacted. UDL via C-band might be used. For Pacific, AI3 can make some progress. For Central Asia, it is quite hard because of the satellite coverage.

APIA by Kyoko Day

· New Board of Directors:

Abhisak Chulya (Chairman), Philip Smith (Vice-chairman), Toru Takahashi (Treasurer), Kyoko Day (Secretary), Ole Jacobsen, Yong Wan Ju, James Seng

• Focus and strategies in year 2002:
• Activities focused on organizing forums of trendy issues, such as Internet Security, IPv6 and IXs.

o Strategies still focused on alliance/partnership

- Partnership with APRICOT – lead to a merger

- Sought partnership/collaborations with national Internet associations, national NICs, as well as international organizations such as ITU-T and APT

- APIA already singed a MoU with EuroISPA and eCom-Lac in 2001
- Joint activities with APOPS & IX experts

• Sought advice from the various stakeholders, especially from APRICOT stakeholders
• Membership updates: there are 4 corporates, 1 NPO and 12 individual members at the end of 2002. 9 new individual members were gained. Due to the negative economic trend still continued, it is difficult to obtain corporate members.
• Activities in 2002:

- Supported APRICOT 2002 as a gold sponsor and endorsed CommunicAsia-SG held in Jun 2002

- Published newsletter#8

- Held AGM at APRICOT2002 on 2 March 2002

- Held APIA Forum at APRICOT2002

- Organized IX Operators Forum on 16 July 2002 and APIA-APRICOT Joint meeting on 17 July 2002 during IETF in Yokohama

- Held APIA One-Day Track and APIA-APRICOT Joint meeting on 2 September 2003 before the APNIC Open Policy Meeting in Kokura. The first new board members meeting was held at APIA Board Meeting on 3 September 2003 to elect the new officers.

• About APRICOT: Decision was made;
• To merge the two organizations. APIA to provide the legal umbrella for APRICOT.
• To adopt a new organization structure
• APIA Secretariat to administer APRICOT event starting for 2004
• To fill APIA Board with stakeholders from APRICOT and to add 3 more board members to have more wider representations
• APIA to focus on APRICOT activity

Outcomes:

• Appointment of new board members and stake holders
• Focus on APRICOT to ensure its stability and future
• To build human resource infrastructure for sustainable development of Internet in Asia Pacific region
• Plans for 2003 and 2004:

- Focus shift to APRICOT. New secretary general needs to be appointed and to hire an administration staff to handle APRICOT's activity.

- Co-operation with other organizations, especially with AP* organizations.

- Appoint 3 more Board Directors and hold an election at the next AGM during APRICOT 2004.

- More details of APIA-APRICOT will be discussed on 24 February 2003.

• Requested to fill up a questioner for Internet users and its stability survey which is a co-operation work with Internet Association of Japan

APOPS by Philip Smith

• Asia Pacific OPerationS forum (APOPS):
  - Open forum for discussing operational issues of regional significance
  - Open forum for sharing operational information from each country in Asia
  - Participants include ISP network engineers and network operators
• History:

- Intended as Asia Pacific equivalent of North American NANOG, European EOF, and African AfNOG

- Existed for many years as a mailing list

- Now also occupies a slot in the 6 monthly APNIC meeting

• Previous Meetings – 2002:

- APNIC 14 – Kitakyushu: Joint two-day forum with APIA and Internet Security, IPv6, Wireless, IXPs

- APRICOT 2002 – Bangkok: ISP Experiences in Nepal, IS-IS in Qwest’s backbone, Internet Routing Table Update

• Previous Meetings – 2001:

- APNIC 12 – Taipei: JANOG, Australian Peering and SOX, JPNAP & IXP discussion (resulted in creation of APNIC IX SIG)

- APRICOT 2001 – Kuala Lumpur: BOF Session discussed whether more than just a mailing list was required for APOPS

• Details:
• Chairs: Philip Smith – Cisco Systems and Hideo Ishii – Asia Global Crossing
• Website: http://www.apops.net
• Mailing List:
• Subscribe: http://mailman.apnic.net/mailman/listinfo/apops or Send mail to apops-request@apops.net with the word SUBSCRIBE in the subject line
• Future Plans:
• Open to suggestions…

- Carry on with operations group reports at future APNIC meeting & APRICOT conferences?

- Forum for country or regional ISP operators to meet, report, discuss?
- Inputs about future direction for an operation forum are welcome.

Q: Any expansion plans?

A: No. The purpose of APOPS is to keep it as a forum, not a conference, only to discuss on operational matters. Just thinking on what need to be done to get involvement from AP region.

Q: Number of people on the mailing list

A: 200-300. A lot of members are from America and Europe.

Questions were asked on the role of APOPS among similar organization in AP. Suggestions were made on APRICOT to transform itself to join APOPS and other AP organizations, i.e., APNIC, APCAUCE/APNetabuse, APSIRC, IPv6 forums, etc., to have much more wider scale than NANOG. Conference should be dropped and focus on forums with various critical issues plus workshops and tutorials. This issue will be discussed at APIA-APRICOT joint meeting.

APRICOT by Philip Smith

• History started in 1996 in Singapore with very successful conferences in the years following that.
• The first APRICOT had 280 participants from 18 countries. In 2002, there were 645 participants from 30 countries. The best APRICOT was in 2001 with 808 participants.
• Motivation:
  To be the regional Internet operations conference for the AP region.
  - A place where operators can meet, share and discuss

- Helping reducing the “digital divide”

- Educational forum through tutorials and, more recently, workshops

- Technology forum through conference track and demonstration area

• Operation:

- Executive Committee oversees the function of the conference. Voluntary participations by the stakeholders in the Internet industry in the Asia Pacific region.

- Subset of Executive Committee makes the conference happen, provide all supports to the local organiser.

• Current Activities:
• APRICOT conference has merged with APIA. APIA provides the underlying legal structure while APRICOT continues being the conference.
• The aim is stability and continuity: requires legal entity. Continuity – a subset of the Executive Committee participants currently keep “the knowledge” on year-to-year basis. New structure is needed.
• Future:
• APRICOT is a SUCCESS! (From number of attendees)
• Highly sought after event: each year sees several bidders for the next conference event.
• Aim is to have a high quality conference with workshops and tutorials.
  - Not more than 1000 attendees - Developing and developed economy focus - Education - Fairness, equality and open to all.
• Future developments:
• Executive Committee separates into two functions:

Steering/Advisory/Executive Committee and Organisational Committee

• Secretariat: Merging with APIA, APRICOT now has a secretariat to perform previous APIA functions and to provide continuity, liaison and support of annual conference.
• Open invitation to the APstar participants to join the Advisory Committee for APRICOT
• Open invitation to the APstar participants to join the organising Committee
• Both roles entirely voluntary
• Open questions:

- What else should APRICOT be doing?

- Is the current model sufficient?

- What else should the existing supporters of APRICOT do to encourage greater participation amongst the Internet leaders in the AP region?

These questions will be tried to answer at the APIA-APRICOT joint meeting next week.

APRICOT2003 updates by W.S. Chen

• The registration will start tomorrow, 23 February 2003.
• Translation will be available in Chinese language.
• There are two languages for the registration. 230 local participants have registered in Chinese language. The total numbers of participants are around 800-1000.
• 42 demonstration booths.
• Web cast will be provided for the plenary session.
• All participants from AP* retreat meeting are welcome to attend the APRICOT2003

APCAUCE/APNetabuse by Jeonghye Choi

• The speaker gave the history of Net Abuse meeting and an overview of the meetings and their conclusion held earlier. 2 meetings in January this year which were a big success.
• The speaker then gave the information of the workshops which would take place the following day, 23 February 2003.
• APCAUCE - proposal:

The main objectives of APCAUCE are proposed:

- to support national CAUCE development and its coordination in AP region

- to share the information about anti-net-abuse (laws, policies, technologies, etc.)

The speaker proposed to have two categories of memberships:

- Orgnization member, CAUCEs in AP and other related organizations

- Individual member, Individual members interested in anti-net-abuse activities

The speaker also proposed the following activities

- Promotion of anti-net-abuse organizations including national CAUCE in AP region

- Events: two one-day workshop per year

- Website (www.apcauce.org) and mailing list are needed

The speaker then explained the schedule of coming events

- 2003.8    APAN meeting in Busan

- 2004.2    APRICOT 2004

- 2004.8    APAN meeting

The following major issues were raised by the speaker:

- Who are key players? (they will be committee chair/members)

- Funding for the APCAUCE

Q 1: What is the scope of APCAUCE? Should only SPAM be focused or expand to Net Abuse

Q 2: Is it viable for countries like Japan who do not have such particular problem to help other countries having this problem?

Comment on the raised questions was requested to give in the next day during the workshop due to the shortage of time

APTLD by Ian Chiang

• Year 2002 was for actions taken and decisions making
• Year 2003 is to continue the actions
• 2002 review:
• Meetings: 4 APTLD meetings
• Activities: On-line Board election, Incorporation election and Secretariat election. APTLD decided to incorporate in Malaysia. TWNIC has been appointed to be the secretariat for another 2 years.
• 2003 Objectives:
• APTLD legal status: Incorporate and constitution.
• APTLD Networking:

- Meeting Plan on meeting process and start having NetMeeting

- Database Management, APTLD web site redesigning and launch of APTLD newsletter

• Trying to invite more ccTLDs from Asia-Pacific region and try to develop the system to link with other TLDs and international org such as ICANN.
• Board of Directors 2003: Chris Disspain / .au, Hualin Qian / .cn, Yumi Ohashi / .jp, Chan-ki Park / .kr, Ramesh Kumar Nadarajah / .my, Peter Dengate Thrush / .nz and Vincent WS Chen / .tw
• Currently APTLD has 17 members. They are .au, .cc, .cn, .cx ,.hk, .jp, .kr, .my, .nu, .nz, .ph, .sg, .th, .tj, .tv, .tw and .vn
• APTLD secretariat:- Executive director is Dr. Chen, Wen-Sung, administrative coordinators are Joanna Tso and Ian Chiang, policy analyst is Ching Chiao and technical/accounting supports from TWNIC.
• Next APTLD AGM meeting: 24 February 2003, Taiwan

3. APJS, APNG Camp, APNG Future and South Asia Networking

APJS report by Pensri A.

The speaker presented the APJS board meeting report, which was held on 22 February 2003 at Lunchtime.

• Activities of APJS:

The board members decided that the ccTLD Sec activity is out of APJS activities and APJS should come up with the new activities and plan for AP outreach

• Funding:
  The meeting agreed to get support from major AP organizations for AP* retreat activity. Currently APNIC, APNG, APAN and APIA have agreed to contribute USD 1,000 per year while APTLD needs to consult its board. The supporting organization will get 1 seat of APJS board and Toru Takahashi will be the chair of the board.

APNG Camp report by Anthony

The speaker gave report on the 3rd APNG Camp which was held during 20-21 February 2003.

• The theme of the 3rd APNG Camp is "New Relationship with the Net".
• Topics of discussion: 3 main topics were Cyber Sex, On-line Game and On-line Community.
• Special Events: Music on the Internet, Images on the Internet, Campus Life and the Internet, Virtual Class Room and Movement for voting right of youth on the Net.
• Tutorials: 2 tutorials, one on Internationalized Domain Name and the other one on Internet Governance.
• Working Groups: 4 working groups under APNG Camp are Asia Youth Culture, Internet Policy, Young Feminist Network and Digital Divide working group.
• Participants: Taiwan-27, Japan-13, China-12 (11 video conference), Australia-1, Korea-17 (5 video conference), Singapore-2 and Germany-1 (video conference). Total number is 73 participants.
• Sponsors: APNIC, APNG, JPNIC, KRNIC, ASCC and TWNIC.
• The 4th APNG Camp has been decided to be held in Busan, Korea together with APAN in August 2003. The Chair for the next camp is PYO from Korea (one vice chair from China and another vice chair from Japan). Each country coordinator has been selected.

· Concerns:

- Invite more countries to participate, especially those AP developing countries

- Find more sponsorship to support developing countries to participate in the Camp

- Program planning will focus on both Internet technologies and humanities

APNG Future by Xing Li

The speaker presented the existing APNG history and activities and opened for comments from the participants for the future of APNG.

• Kilnam Chon: APNG should move into non-technical areas, i.e., the Internet Governance issue and issues in APNG Camp (gender, digital divide, etc.). APNG Camp should have interaction with APAN's young generation group.
• Paul Wilson: On behalf of APNIC, Paul gave his expression that APNG Camp agenda has only non-technical issue, the question whether APNIC should give contribution to support the activity that is quite outside the charters or normal goals of APNIC. APNG Camp should try to find support from other sectors as well if APNG Camp will continue on non-technical issue.
• Paul Wilson: Commented again on the combination of AP* and APNG.
• Kilnam Chon: APAN camp is making another camp (research camp). APNG Camp is for non-technical. Something in between may be needed. APAN feels comfortable with APNG Camp because APAN is ready to expand the scope from the research networking to non-commercial applications. Social scientists and artists could come up with very interesting applications which we cannot think about. The APNG Camp would be a good testing ground. The middle ground might be missing. APAN Camp is quite good in research but not ready to support the APNG Camp. AP* might come up with the camp in between non-technical and technical to link APAN Camp and APNG Camp.
• Kanchana Kanchanasut: AP*/AP* Retreat is the venue where AP* organizations can meet. APNG may start looking for new activities. Suggested activity is APNG should try to activate the governments or legal sectors of AP region to be aware of Internet technology.

Presentation on South Asia Networking (SANOG and APAN-South Asia) by Gihan Dias

• The speaker defined the countries under South Asia, which are Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, and adjacent countries.
• SANOG is a group of commercial network operators in South Asia. The first meeting was held in Katmandu, Nepal in January 2003 and the next one in Colombo, Sri Lanka in July 2003.
• APAN-South Asia:

To promote co-operation between Academic and Research Networks in South Asia, currently almost no networking interaction among these countries. There was an organisational meeting during APAN in Fukuoka January 2003 with representatives from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Next meeting has been decided to be held in Colombo, Sri Lanka in July 2003. The meeting would be held along with APAN. The speaker then explained the agenda of the meeting to be held in Colombo, which includes workshops, presentations and tutorials.

• The speaker then requested the participants for their assistance for tutorial presentations and funding for academic and government participants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal.

4. Session on Internet training and education

E-Learning project by N.S. Chen

• Live demonstration to enumerate the students through computer.
• Experiments were done by the speaker to provide live teaching to students through digital devices and by the cameras, so that students who cannot pay attention just by listening can also see the teacher and this makes teaching lively. Students were requested to ask question and answers were given through video mode.
• A specific time is announced for online lecture so that the students are ready.
• The teaching is a one to many approach and the students can ask question simultaneously. And the speaker then answers the questions one by one.
• Software used is MECAN live.
• Through this, the lecture material can be saved.
• Any annotations can be used for teaching and not limit it to HTML base.
• The speaker then explained the different method of this training by the power point slide presentation.
• Then speaker explained the difference between videoconference and online teaching. He said that here the teacher can use any annotation to the students where his focus should be on the body language of the teacher
  or the writings /presentation of the teacher. Whereas videoconference provide only white board screen.
• The speaker said that this was a demonstration to help in providing better E-learning.
• The speaker then gave information on the E-learning developments in Taiwan. Mentioning that E-learning was raised to national level with the government volunteering aid of 40 billion. Many universities provide online training
  courses. 14 online courses provided for teachers. Efforts are being made to set up digital school and conducted every year since the secondary students to teach English language online which has been very successful.

Q: What is the motivation behind E-learning and spending so much money?

A: The speaker said that they would be stepping into the information age and the government was spending so much money voluntary because it aimed to set up a digital economy. And what important is that the digital economy is a knowledge. Another reason is that funding to universities came from NSC which promotes E- learning.

School of Internet by Suguru Yamaguchi

• The speaker introduced School Asia as the extension of the Internet project aimed to establish higher engaging distance learning embodiment where the Internet structure is not yet built.
• Areas of focus:

1. Setting up the Internet environment

2. Distance learning environment through Internet

• The challenges:

1. Setting up Internet environment

2. Promoting distance learning

3. Design project as sustainable project

4. Providing Internet infrastructure for online classes

5. Providing options to UDL

• The speaker then explained the list of packages used by School Asia and also mentioned that local studios are set up where the lecturer cannot come to the video studios.
• The areas of coverage mentioned by speaker are Myanmar, and Laos having a single site each.
• Recent developments involve an IT Workshop, live screen courses etc, Provision of Internet training workshop in AIT.
• Need for more training for Internet Infrastructure was expended which was the reason for operator's workshop in AIT, said the speaker.

Dr. Kanchana explained the need for conducting the videoconference in Myanmar