The 57th conference of the Asia Pacific Network Operators Group will be held in Dhaka in February 2024. Conventionally, this conference is called the APRICOT Conference. The announcement was made on Thursday on the last day of the 54th Asia Pacific Network Information Center – APNIC conference held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Singapore. At the time, it was informed that next year’s APNIC conference will be held in Manila in February and in Japan in July.
APNIC Chairman Gaurav Raj Upadhyay made this announcement after a two-day workshop and policy conference. Bangladeshi technicians Suman Ahmed Sabir; Yoshinobu Matsuzaki, Feng Leng, Paul Wilson and Cam Ji Yang were present at the time.
The conference, which started on the 8th, was presided over by the African Secretary General Vincent Aceh Atienza. Treasurer Kenny Hung accompanied him.
And more than a hundred internet businessmen and stakeholders involved in the management of expansion and registration of internet numbers in Asia and its neighboring countries joined the conference from Bangladesh. The four-day conference was divided into three parts- Asia Pacific Region Meeting on Internet Governance (APIGF), School of Governance (APSIG) and Network Security Engineering Workshop (NOG) – APINOG. The conference went on simultaneously.
Participants were trained on IPv6, Network Security, DNS Security and APNIC Policy in 4 halls of the conference center. In this, Internet, network experts and policy makers of the Asia Pacific region discussed and decided the future of the Internet in the region. The majority of voters voted in favor of continuing to lease IPv4 nodes that are still unused in addition to deploying IPv6 in the discussion. However, Bangladesh refrained from voting in a neutral position.
One-fifth of the total participants attended in the conference were from Bangladesh. Sumon Ahmed Sabir, a member of the Executive Committee of APINIG, told DigiBangla, that the participants were introduced to several new tools at APINOG. Meanwhile, participants learned about some great updated tools like early warnings that have come across to protect them from router hijackers. He expressed hope that these will give relief to the Internet service providers and the users in the protection of the network.
He said, “We could not do it for the first time for Holy Artisan. Second-time the Covid-19 pandemic. This opportunity for the third time is a big achievement. Now, we are waiting for the right time to implement it.
95 percent of the Bangladeshi delegation attending the conference were ordinary members of ISPAB. Among them, President of the organization Imdadul Haque, Secretary General Nazmul Karim Bhuiyan, Joint Editor Mohammad Abdul Qayyum Rashed, Treasurer Md Asaduzzaman Sujan and Directors Sakif Ahmed and Mahbubur Rahman Raju spoke in various sessions of the conference.
Earlier in 2020, Bangladesh was the host country for the 50th Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) conference. This conference was held virtually on September 8-10 that year due to Covid-19 pandemic.
It is to be noted that, APNIC is one of the 5 organizations associated with the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) around the world. It is a non-profit membership-based organization, whose members include Internet service providers, telecommunications providers, data centers, universities, banks, national Internet registries and similar organizations that have their own networks. These network engineers meet every 6 months. One of these is known as APNIC and the other APRICOT.