The University of Oregon's Network Startup Resource Center is featured in a Jan. 7 post on the ICANN Blog, an online publication of one of the world's most influential organizations for Internet governance.

ICANN – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – is a private, nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the global Internet's systems of unique identifiers and ensuring stable, secure operation.

The recent blog post cites an upcoming collaboration between ICANN and the NSRC to offer workshops in support of regional engagement strategies in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Oceania.

"The NSRC technical training has a real and substantial impact in the Internet community," the blog post says. "This training helps raise the level of technical understanding and awareness for network and TLD operators, builds trust and fosters a more resilient Internet ecosystem for everyone. ICANN strongly supports this collaboration and encourages others in the Internet community to do so."

Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet and a vice president at Google, commented on the blog that Google is a longtime supporter of the NSRC. "The Internet community, especially in regions where Internet penetration is still evolving, has benefited greatly from its educational, collaborative and capacity-building efforts," he wrote.

The NSRC, which is housed in the UO's Knight Library, is a non-profit group that has worked since the late 1980s to help develop and deploy networking technology for many Internet access projects in the Asia/Pacific region, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East. The NSRC works with network engineers and operators in local regions around the world to develop and maintain Internet infrastructure in their countries.

The UO center's goal is to make it easier for local scientists, engineers, educators and students to collaborate via the Internet with their international colleagues.