Nigeria set to manage .NG TLD

By Sonny Aragba-Akpore, Deputy Communications Editor

NEW hands, preferably Nigerians, will now manage and host the nation's country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD).

This followed last weekend's concession of the facility's management to Nigerians by its former manager, Mr. Randy Bush, an American citizen who had been managing it since 1992.

Also a change may be effected in most Internet addresses which have been ending in dot.com. It may now end with dot.ng.

Bush, who is in the country in company of his wife, Zita Wenzel, in a presentation to the Nigerian Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) at the weekend said it was time to let the hosting and management be done locally.

His reasons? Nigeria now has a body corporate, Nigerian Internet Registration Association (NIRA) and this will work side-by-side with the just set up Nigerian Internet Exchange by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

Although NIRA, headed by Mr. Ndukwe Kalu held its inaugural meeting last Tuesday, it is yet to take over the administration of the ccTLD.

"NITDA still hosts and facilitates the registration of domain names until such a time that NIRA would be ready to take full control," spokesman for NITDA, Mr. Inye Kemabonta, confirmed at the weekend.

A combination of NIRA, which has members of the Nigerian Internet Community and stakeholders as managers, and the Internet Exchange headed by Chima Onyekwere of Linkserve Internet administration may now be less cumbersome than what it had been.

Nigeria's first Internet Exchange Point (IXP), which is located in Lagos is now ready for operation and would be commissioned in two weeks time. This IXP is the result of the collaboration of the NCC and the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to set up robust and reliable system in Nigeria.

The Internet is a network of interconnected computer networks and IXPs are the points at which multiple networks are interconnect. In the absence of any domestic IXP in Nigeria, an ISP must send all outbound traffic through its international links, most commonly satellite. The aim of building a Nigerian IXP is to keep and interchange local Internet traffic such as e-mail, download of local website content within Nigeria and allow only international traffic to be exchanged at points outside Nigeria.

At the conclusion of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis in 2005, the need for an IXP for Nigeria became vital. Accordingly, President Olusegun Obasanjo wanted earnestly an IXP for Nigeria. He then directed the Minister of Communications to ensure the urgent setting up of a Nigerian IXP.

The national exchange is now ready for commissioning and is to be managed by private sector stakeholders on a not-for-profit basis.

The interim board of the Nigerian IXP was inaugurated on March 13, 2007 at the new corporate headquarters of the NCC, during which the Executive Vice Chairman of the Commission, Ernest Ndukwe, charged the m embers to regard the assignment as a national service.

The history of Nigeria's Internet is indeed checkered. It has been fraught with controversies, bickering and internecine battles among interest groups. The effect has been the slow pace in the development of that national resource. Successive efforts to resolve the conflicts were botched until the intervention of the Presidency.

The change in the administration of the ccTLD.ng was formally effected on June 9, 2004 by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). This administrative change was a prerequisite for NITDA to formally proceed with the implementation of the President's directives.

Requests for stakeholders' contributions yielded fruits as several individuals, corporate, educational, government and professional groups responded.

NITDA constituted a small team that evaluated the submissions from which an agenda for a national stakeholder forum was drafted. This forum was scheduled and series of national advertisements preceded the event.

On August 9, 2004, the first national stakeholders' conference was held in Lagos. The conference, attracted all segments of the Internet community in Nigeria.

To ensure that actual experiences from other countries were shared amongst Nigerian stakeholders, two international resource persons from Kenya and South Africa - Michuki Mwangi and Mike Lawrie - were invited to share their experience on the domain name management of their countries.

This was followed by an interactive session involving the participants. Stakeholders who had sent position papers to NITDA on the ccTLD management were also given the opportunity to make expositions on their proposals.

At the end of the forum, a statement which was endorsed by the principal stakeholders and the incumbent administrative contact of the ccTLD.ng was issued. The key recommendation of the forum was the creation of a working group by the stakeholders whose responsibility was to establish the modalities for setting up the non-governmental, not-for-profit organisation to manage the ccTLD.ng.

The members of the working group include: National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA); NCC; Nigerian Computer Society (NCS); Internet Services Providers' Association of Nigeria (ISPAN); Nigeria Internet Group (NIG); Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria (CPN); Council for Registration of Engineers in Nigeria (COREN); Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC); Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) among others.