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Meeting Location Selection Criteria - Appendix B

Last Updated:

ICANN Meeting Technology Requirements

last updated: 22 March 2014

Internet Provider:

1. BANDWIDTH: External bandwidth (Internet Transit) must be in the form of dedicated circuits with at least 400Mb of throughput delivered over redundant 1Gb Ethernet links.  Preference may be given to proposals that contain higher capacity and more detailed redundancy planning. The same carrier may provide redundant lines, though multiple carriers are preferred.  The IP transit carrier must be able to provide inbound QoS in the form of at least one IP destination based priority traffic queue.

2. ROUTING: With single carrier situations, static routing is acceptable as long as the service provider’s BGP ASN will advertise our IP network block. Under multiple carrier situations, BGP4 is required. ICANN will supply it’s own ASN and IP address space.  It is expected that Internet services carriers have no packet filtering in place.

3. NO FILTERING or TRAFFIC CAPTURE: Any Internet access service including any intermediary network connections must NOT include any form of traffic filtering or traffic capture. This would include but is not limited to the following:

  • No stateless or stateful network filtering which would include any form of proxy service
  • No Network Address Translation (NAT) or Network Address Translation-Protocol Translation (NAT-PT) or related technology
  • No Domain Name System filtering

4. SERVICE LEVEL: Access to high-level support by the transit provider must be available 24 hours a day for the duration of the conference by the local host support staff. Troubleshooting transit and bandwidth issues often takes place at odd times so as not to impact the conference. Direct contact information to English-speaking support staff must be provided to the ICANN Technical Staff.
Required Network SLA:

  • <= 40 ms average latency with no greater than 10ms standard deviation (jitter) to service provider network edge
  • No greater then 0.1% packet loss per 60 minute sample to service provider network edge

Venue Infrastructure Requirements:

5. INFRASTRUCTURE: The venue must have proper infrastructure installed in all spaces used by ICANN. All meeting rooms and public spaces must have at least one functional RJ-45 jack. All jacks must be wired to central wiring locations with CAT5e or better cabling. CAT5e, CAT6, or fiber optic cabling must properly interconnect wiring locations. All cabling must be tested and functional.

6. DIAGRAM: The venue must provide a diagram (DWG, JPG or PDF) to the ICANN technical staff detailing the local network infrastructure for the meeting.  This would include any relevant network cross connect locations and local loop service provider(s) Minimum Point of Entry (MPOE).  This should include a best effort description of available local loop service provider copper or fiber optic cables are available for new service.

7. POWER: The venue must provide adequate reliable power for all network systems. All core infrastructure devices must have UPS and generator backup power supplied to cover potential power outages. Power must be provided by dedicated circuits that are only used for infrastructure purposes and the load properly distributed. Two separate (redundant) circuits of at least 20A must be available in the MDF and one circuit of at least 15A in each IDF location.  The host or venue must also provide 1KVA+ UPS units for use in the meeting rooms, IDF and MDF locations where ICANN determines they are needed.

ICANN Provided Services:

The ICANN Meeting Technical Services staff are those people consisting of ICANN staff and their contractors assigned to manage, design and deploy technical services at the ICANN meetings.  ICANN Technical staff does not include local hosts, service providers or those entities contracted by ICANN for a single meeting.

ICANN employs staff and contractors that are responsible for deployment, operation of the meeting network, telephony and audio/video broadcast services at the meeting. Services provided by ICANN contractors are not to be supplied by the host and are listed here as a notice of the potential support needs that the host will be called upon for. The expectation is that the host will provide assistance to ICANN Technical Staff to facilitate the delivery of these services.

  1. DHCP: All addressing of the attendees hosts must be accomplished through DHCP. DHCP servers will reside within the local infrastructure.

  2. DNS: At least two recursive (caching) DNS servers will be available. At least one of these servers will reside WITHIN the local infrastructure. The other may reside at the transit provider(s) but must be topologically close to the conference network. Reverse delegation (in-addr.arpa) will be used on the network block(s) being used at the meeting.

  3. WIRELESS: 802.11(a, b, g and n) will be available throughout the meeting venue. This includes the main meeting room, board and staff workrooms, smaller meeting rooms, Internet Café, common areas, hotel lobby and bar, etc. Where possible, wireless or high-speed wired access will be offered in guest rooms.

    4. The SSID of the conference will be determined at the beginning of each meeting. All 802.11a channels allowed for a specific country will be utilized. 802.11b/g channels 1, 6 and 11 will be used. All other broadcast SSIDs that have coverage in the meeting space used by ICANN must be disabled so as to minimize interference.

  4. MONITORING: Monitoring of traffic will be restricted to only that necessary for network maintenance and diagnostics. Any monitoring tools MUST be made available upon request.

  5. TELEPHONY: ICANN utilizes VoIP telephone capable of domestic and international dialing. The phone lines have the highest audio quality and 100 percent availability (uptime) as they are used for remote participation and conference calls. Most of the calls are used in a broadcast situation.

  6. STREAMING AUDIO: All meeting rooms will have streaming audio except for those where it is explicitly designated as not needed. Audio feeds will be taken from the main audio mixer board in each room. Rooms where there are translation services will use the highest quality feed available, either from the translation equipment or from the main audio for the room.

  7. HARDWARE: Replaceable backups of critical services hardware will be standing by (DHCP, DNS, etc). The ability to replace critical equipment within one hour of the problem being detected is required.