TORONTO – Canada needs an autonomous Internet infrastructure that keeps local web traffic routed within the country’s borders as much as possible, said Jacques Latour, chief technology officer for the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), during a presentation at the Canadian ISP Summit in Toronto on Monday afternoon.
Latour said too much of Canadian Internet traffic flows south of the border through major U.S. cities, such as New York, Chicago and Seattle.
“If for some reason there’s an attack against the U.S., like a cyber-attack, and they decide to shut down the borders, in Canada we’re screwed,” Latour said. “And with the (Edward) Snowden revelations and all that, the NSA (National Security Agency) probes and all the traffic snooping, I think we need to peer in Canada, bring the traffic up, keep it local, and be in charge of our own destiny.”
It was with such a vision in mind, back at the 2011 Canadian ISP Summit, CIRA (which manages the .CA top-level domain) proposed the creation of a coast-to-coast Internet Exchange Point (IXP) infrastructure in Canada, he said. Since then, during the last three years, that Canadian IXP infrastructure has taken shape, with local IXPs now established in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax.
“We have a healthy Internet infrastructure right now,” Latour said, and he called upon the incumbents in attendance at the 2014 ISP Summit to connect to these Canadian IXPs. “Bell, Rogers, Telus, Shaw, all of you, we have Canadian IXPs that are available to connect to… Canadian traffic should stay in Canada as much as possible…and the community says they want their local Internet traffic to stay local.”
In addition, he explained there is currently a movement to create a North American IXP Association, and he would like to talk to interested parties about creating a Canadian chapter of such an association.
As part of his talk on the state of the Canadian Internet, Latour outlined the current adoption levels of DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) and IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) by Canadian Internet service providers, which are low compared to ISPs in other countries.
DNSSEC is used to validate website signatures to guard against spoofing, Latour explained. Currently, about 21% of North American ISPs in general use DNSSEC validation, while only 10% of Canadian ISPs do so, according to data from Australia-based APNIC Labs, which he referenced during his presentation.
To put that into a global perspective, Canada’s adoption of DNSSEC validation ranks the country as 106th out of 230 countries. “Half of Africa is doing a better job than we are with DNSSEC validation,” he added.
“Canadian traffic should stay in Canada as much as possible…and the community says they want their local Internet traffic to stay local.” – Jacques Latour, CIRA
However, he pointed out that two Canadian ISPs — TekSavvy and Cogeco — have adopted DNSSEC validation in their organizations at much higher levels (84% and 85%, respectively, according to APNIC Labs data).
“(DNSSEC validation) works. So do it, turn it on,” he said. “It uses a little bit more CPU…it uses a little bit more bandwidth, but it creates a more secure environment for your end users.”
In terms of IPv6 adoption, only about 0.8% of Canadian ISPs have implemented IPv6, compared to 9% of North American ISPs in general, Latour added, again citing statistics from APNIC Labs. “But that’s actually pretty good, because it’s a measurable increase from zero to 0.8 percent.” He added that, despite the low IPv6 adoption level of Canadian ISPs, it actually garners Canada a global ranking of 25th out of 230 countries.
Again, two Canadian ISPs stood out for their adoption of IPv6 — but in this case it was Xplornet and Videotron. Xplornet has achieved 17% IPv6 capability within its organization, while Videotron’s company-wide IPv6 implementation level has reached 3%, according to APNIC Labs.
Latour said future Internet innovation in Canada will require the implementation of IPv6, and content providers such as Google and Facebook already support IPv6 now.
“Everybody is talking about the Internet of things as the future of the Internet. Well, all of that is based on IPv6,” he said. “There’s no way we can make IPv4 (IP version 4)… support the Internet of things in the future. It won’t work. We need to adopt IPv6. We need to make it happen.”
He has been in discussions with the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) to establish an official shutdown date for IPv4. The date he is pushing for is April 4, 2024. “IPv4 can’t go on forever,” Latour said. “We need a target date to achieve, to get rid of IPv4 and then be 100% IPv6. That’s almost 10 years. We should be able to do it by then.”
The Canadian ISP Summit continues Tuesday and Wednesday at the Toronto Marriott Downtown Eaton Centre Hotel. Cartt.ca is a media sponsor.
