RIPE 89 ‑‑ Prague
Newcomers session
28 October 2024
11:30 a.m.
MIRJAM KUHNE: We are on time. Welcome to RIPE 89. I think most of you are newcomers, not everyone, I mean everybody is welcome of course in the session, it's a refresher. I'll give you a quick introduction to the RIPE community and the RIPE meeting. My name is Mirjam Kuhne, I am the RIPE Chair and then we'll also have a presentation by perpetual hole the Managing Director of the RIPE NCC, and a short introduction by Angela Dall'Ara who is the Policy Officer at the RIPE NCC, and then we'll have a quiz at the end. So don't leave too early. There won't be any prices this time but it's always fun to do. Take your seats.
.
This is a welcome to your first RIPE meeting, RIPE ‑‑ RIPE 1, this is some time ago and this is me, Mirjam Kuhne, I am originally from Berlin, I studied computer science in Berlin and I worked for the RIPE NCC, I worked for the society and then for the NCC and then I was appointed RIPE Chair in 2020, together with Niall O'Reilly, who is the Vice‑Chair, and he is not here right now, all is well, he is actually following us online, and can wave at you on Meetecho if you are on the Meetecho link. He he will be joining us later during the week, so you'll get to meet him as well.
He has been attending the meetings longer than I have. He is working at the University College in Dublin.
He can tell you more about himself when you meet him.
A blast from the past. I am not going into a lot of detail, especially on the equipment on the left‑hand side. But I do want to point out the right‑hand side, I think it's fascinating because that was in, I don't know, in 1990, something, 1990, 31 January 1990, the map of the Internet in Europe basically, and so the RIPE community at the time had a connectivity Working Group I believe it was called, not to confuse with the Connect Working Group that we have now, connectivity Working Group where the community kept track of the growth and the development of evolvement of the Internet in Europe. As you can see on the slides, most of the components of the network were academic and so they were the first promoters of IP and the Internet at the time. So it's some kind of drawing this came too big and didn't scale so we stopped that. But you can still find these maps in the RIPE documents store, so these early maps of the Internet evolution are still available there. I think that's wonderful.
There is a poll, I already mentioned TTL RIPE and the RIPE NCC, there is a Chair and Managing Director, how does this all fit together? Do you know the difference between the RIPE and the RIPE NCC? You should see the poll now in your Meetecho link if you are already on there. Otherwise, I don't know, you can also just raise your hands. Do you know the difference? Yes? Okay, no?
.
They are still answering.
..
We have some results from the online poll. The majority seem to know the difference but some who don't.
MIRJAM KUHNE: You can continue with the plan we had explaining what the RIPE and the RIPE NCC is. There is always some aspects of it and some people that are not known.
The RIPE community, it's the Reseaux IP Europeens Network Coordination Centre and they started in 1989 basically. Mostly academic scientists, researchers at the time, to connect and to form and to try and coordinate certain aspects of the then relatively new Internet protocol, and they so came together, coordinated, who has what IP address, what routing protocol do we use? How can we find and connect to each other. If something goes wrong on the network. So there was the first rape database it was created at the time. It was all volunteers doing all the work at this time open to anybody who wants to participate and has an interest in an IP.
Now, this is still the case today. I mean it's still an open community, anybody can participate. The scope is a little wider but it's very much focused on IP networking and of course the social networking which is related to that. It's all about information exchange, technical knowledge exchange and also some policy development, best current practices, agreement on how we as a community want to maintain this network and make it better over time.
So that's the RIPE community.
And then the RIPE community in 1992 created the RIPE network coordination centre as its secretariat because they felt like they were ‑‑ it's good to have some paid staff who can maintain the database, organise the meetings, monitor the mailing lists that were set‑up, and just provide some administrative and secretariat services to the RIPE community.
It was established in 1992, and Hans Petter is going to tell you a bit more about the structure there. It's a membership association under Dutch law, has staff, a lot of them are here this week so you'll have an opportunity to RIPE a lot of RIPE NCC staff who are providing all these great services to you here, and they are actually taking the guidance and the input and also the policies from the RIPE community and implement them towards the membership. So that's a really close link and great relationship between those two entities, and we are currently discussing this on the RIPE mailing list to document that relationship a bit more. So if you are interested in that, that's where this is taking place.
So, the RIPE community today, basically yes, all of you are also a part of that. This is aist will of current Working Groups. As I said there is a Connect Working Group, not to confuse with the Connectivity Working Group from earlier on. There is a new Working Group labelled here security Working Group which is not new, new. It's been there is an evolvement from the, there was an anti‑spam Working Group which became the Anti‑Abuse Working Group and it's now the Security Working Group, and they have reviewed the Charter. It's a bit broader, the scope has slightly changed, and they will have their first meeting as a Security Working Group here this week.
And you'll see other topics there that you might expect, you know, from this community. There are some maybe a little bit not outliers, but not so technical, like for instance the Cooperation Working Group fulfils a really important role to bring together the technical community with not so technical stakeholders like governments, law enforcement, regulators and provide a platform for discussion and coordination there.
.
And all of these Working Groups will meet this week and you'll see the agenda online and you can find out more about this. There is a link to all the Working Groups and the Working Group Chairs as well.
.
All our communication pretty much is, at least the official communication is taking place on mailing lists. It sounds a bit eighties to you, but that's what it is. It's easy to find, open to anybody, very lower, interoperable, you can find the archives, you can go back in history, so we are very much still relying on communicationings on mailing lists. You can recommend you to go and look at the mailing lists of the Working Groups. Look at the archives, see what's going on, what you are interested in, and then subscribe and follow that.
And maybe, as a good starting point, maybe look at the RIPE list that's kind of the overarching list for the whole community where we are discussing topics that are relevant for the entire community, not specific to one topic.
.
Right. Now let's dive a bit more into this meeting and RIPE 89, and see what you can get, how you can get the most out of it.
On the website there is a meeting plan. You can see the schedule for the the whole week, and you click on the sessions, you will go and find the agendas, and sometimes also the, well sometimes, eventually all of the presentations will also be accessible through that. They are going to be filled up throughout the week as they come in.
.
You'll see here today actually, there is a session after the ‑‑ at the last slot, the best current operational practices task force. It's a bit of an anomaly, it's not actually a task force, it's not a temporary task force, but it's kind of evolved over time, and they are always taking on new work, so that's why we kept that agility and the ad hoc kind of corrector in there and so they are having some interesting discussions going on this time. One is an ongoing activity to document operational practices in cases of wars or national disasters and working with operators to document that, and that information, and then there is a new initiative that maybe start and there will be a discussion about this on possibly documenting how we build consensus in the RIPE community. Which might be a good way for you to learn how this works.
I'm just going to highlight a few things. You can find more information on the meeting plan, but there is also a diversity session, diversity and inclusion and equity in tech session on Tuesday afternoon. It's a tradition now. It's also flexible, every time there are new presentations, it's not specifically on one target audience, it's really we how can we as a RIPE community be open, inclusive, attractive, to get new people in, because that's necessary for a community that's over 30 years old.
So there is a session on Tuesday, tomorrow afternoon, that you might find interesting and participate there.
Then there is another slot on Thursday afternoon or early evening before the dinner, where there will be two birds of a feather session, that's also kind of a one‑off, it's not a working group, it's a one‑off kind of meeting about one specific topic. This time there will be two. One is related to network operators groups and the relationship between RIPE and the local and regional groups and how we can help each other out. And the other one is a follow‑up from a task force, there was the DNS, there was a task force that looked at recommendations for open resolvers in DNS and so they are looking at how to implement that. That's also going to be interesting one more technical. Up to you what you a want to participate in.
There are various ways that you can participate and speak up and really actively participate in the meeting. There is always a Meetecho you can find, if there is a chat, there is a Q&A, there is also, you know, microphones in the room, you can use that, and also kind of talk to each other in the chat.
Just to note that all ‑‑ the chat is also, will also be archived. It's part of the RIPE meeting minutes and archives, so be careful what you say.
.
And then we'll have, for those of you who aren't here, I don't know if they are already on, some people have taken initiative to form a kind of local hub, so they basically get together in their local country or city, if they cannot come here, rather than sitting at home on their own behind a screen, they come together, maybe not the whole week but a couple of days to then participate in the meeting together. So, these are the cities, there is more information on the website if you are interested in contacting them or setting something up for next time.
.
Now, you are already here so you probably have a good motivation or good idea why you are participating in this. I just wanted to put this in here just to kind of hammer it down maybe. This is a really good community to learn and to also think about possible career changes or directions. But also on the other hand, we need your input. We want you to participate and thereby kind of shape our future and shape the future of the Internet, and make it, make the Internet the way we want it to continue.
There is a RIPE Programme Committee which is responsible for the talks that you will hear during the Plenary Sessions, mostly today and tomorrow and then on Friday morning, there are Plenary sessions, there is nothing else in parallel, it's in this room. And there are a set of very varied presentations that the Programme Committee has picked for you. Here is a slide with all the current Programme Committee members. There are also elections to ‑‑ they have terms, like a number of terms and after those terms, they have to step down and so there are elections going on this week to elect new people on the Programme Committee and if you have any feedback or any or any suggestions, go find the people and talk to them, and you will see them also chairing the sessions in the Plenary.
They ask you to rate the presentations so they get some feedback from from you, and we can improve the quality of the programme later on.
Obviously we have a RIPE Code of Conduct. There is a link to it, you can find the full text there. There is also pictures outside, these are the Code of Conduct team members that you can find during the meeting. Not all of them will be here but they are following online and there is also room outside that there is a big label Code of Conduct, so if you want to go and report something or, you know, just meet them, you can find them there as well.
.
Some more ways to network with each other. There is an attendee list that has some information on it, you can find some people have added their AS numbers and their e‑mail addresses so you can find them there, and as I said earlier, on Meetecho there is also a way to find each other.
.
And of course we have social events. So there is of course the best way to get to know each other and also during the coffee breaks. I always remember the versus first RIPE Chair that we had he said it's very important that the RIPE community has long coffee breaks because that's where the main business and the main conversations will happen. So, that's very important. Of course we have interesting programme, but the coffee breaks are maybe just as essential.
.
And the socials:
We have one today, a welcome reception, and then on Tuesday, the networking social, and then on Thursday, our traditional RIPE dinner in the museum this time. Unfortunately, it's sold out. It's very popular but there is a waiting list so maybe if people drop out you'll still have a chance.
.
Tomorrow, unfortunately parallel with the diversity session there is a session for students, academics, enrens that are here at the meeting and maybe they want to get together and meet each other, but of course the main point really is that you all meet each other and not isolate in different kind of pockets, but this could be an interesting way for you to meet others that are from a similar background.
Again, some ways to share feedback with us. We'd really like to hear what you think, especially newcomers, I'm really interested to hear what you think about the meeting, and you can use that feedback from I think during the weekend also, the other links are accessible during the week.
.
And I have a few more things, in case you need support. There are varies ways to get support, either technical support, if your laptop doesn't work, network connection, something is broken, or if you have ‑‑ you need to find something in the venue or have a question about the meeting or organisation, there are kind of various people who can help you with this. And there is also e‑mail addresses here that you can use.
And of course we have the people here with the red T‑shirts, the red hoodies on, I don't know if anybody here from the Meet and Greet team right now ‑‑ Alistair and Salwin both. You will see outside there is a desk that has Meet and Greet. It's all red and easy to find, and those people have been around for a few meetings, a longer time and a number of meetings so they know their way around so please don't hesitate to approach them.
.
And I don't know if Phil is in the room? Not yet. But there is also one I'm asked to tell you is that the RIPE NCC is working and constantly improving the RIPE meeting websites and so this is the time, because you have just registered for it, maybe for the first time, to provide us feedback, maybe something is fresh on your mind thinking this really wasn't very clear, or I expected something else. So during the week, please approach the RIPE NCC staff or specifically Phil, the web services team manager.
.
And then, after this, I am going to hand over to Hans Petter Holen, to talk to you a bit more about the RIPE NCC, that other part of the two pillars I showed you earlier, so make that a bit clearer.
HANS PETTER HOLEN: Thank you Mirjam. Welcome everybody. My name is Hans Petter Holen, and I am the Managing Director or CEO if you want of the RIPE NCC.
Mirjam already gave you a breakdown of the RIPE NCC being set‑up as the secretariat for the RIPE community. And this happened as far back as in 1992. When we were set up as a legal unit, legal entity, and membership organisation. Some years later with the Board and General Meeting and all that, but after a few years, it was clear for the community that it needed staff to get things like lunch and the venues and so on in order to get the community together.
.
So we're a membership organisation under Dutch law. We have staff, 190, soon. And we provide services, and as I said, secretariat for the community. And you guys, the community, you actually set the policies that we implement and come to address policy. So whenever somebody said that the RIPE NCC is doing that or the RIPE NCC is doing this, it's probably because the community sets the policy we can do that. That's where you can contribute and participate in the policy‑making process that will shape how we operate as a registry.
Our strategy for the five‑year period that we're in now puts the community first. We're here to support you, the community, and then the community decided it was good to have a regional Internet registry in this part of the world, Europe, Middle East, central Asia, and we are then tasked to operate a trusted, accurate and resilient registry.
.
But we do more than that. It was put in the Articles of Association when the organisation was formed that the RIPE NCC also should do other activities, and we do that to enable our members and community to operate one secure stable and resilient global Internet. We don't run the Internet. Our members, our community does, and we provide training, measurement services, community activities from the small hackathons to these big meetings with 6, 7, 800 people, we never know how many will come, so that's exciting to see. And this is how we enable you to get together and run the Internet.
.
Now, to do this we need an organisation with robust governance system. We don't want to be taken over by anyone, Goldmans or special interest groups or anyone, so we have a membership of 20,000 members that elects a Board. And all the members pay. The current charging scheme is that everybody pays the same, almost, but there is a charging scheme task force going on now, discussing whether those with a lot of resources should pay more than those with not so many resources. That's also something that you can watch how then the members have put together a task force and then give input to them and eventually this will be a vote on a new charging scheme next year or the year after.
And none of this is possible without having engaged staff to actually do all of these services. So, every now and then we have job openings that you can see on our website, and if you are really interested, then have a look there and maybe there is something for you at the RIPE NCC.
.
So, what does the registry do?
.
Well you may think of it that we manage the RIPE database, well we actually maintain half of the RIPE database there, we maintain the registry, the allocation that a we do to the members, while the members maintain the assignments that they make within the allocation that is we make to them.
.
We also then make sure that policies are followed. So we investigate hijacks and policy violation that a you report to us or that we detect by other means and we support and facilitate the policy development process in the community and Angela will talk a bit about that later on.
It says we also contribute to securing with RPKI and the accurate registry is a key element there, and I'll come back to that.
I mentioned information services. So we have developed and maintained Internet measurement services. We have RIPEstat that selects BGP routes from many points around the Internet so you can see how your routes are visible in all parts of the world. We have a measurement system called Atlas with more than 11 or 12,000 probes that are distributed, where you can run your own measurements in the network. We have created various services on top of this, like RIPEstat or RIPE IP Map that you can use to look into this dataset. We operate one the root name servers, traditionally we just do numbers and not names but we operate one the 13 root name serves in the Internet that providers the information of where you can find the TLDs when you look up domain names and we do that for our members, so on behalf of the 20,000 members we operate one of these infrastructures. And we delegate reverse DNS zones for the address that is we delegate.
.
The RIPE database provide, as I said, accurate information about Internet number registries. So we keep track on the members and the contact information there. But the members then keep track on what they are using the addresses for and register that in the database according to the policies. They can also publish their routing policies there so that other operators can see I would like to accept these addresses from these ASNs and so on.
.
So, this database was really created to facilitate coordination between network operators but the purpose of the database is broader than that, so it's also used for things like if addresses are misused or other things. So you can read the terms and conditions for the database for that.
.
We also have some rather unusually objects in there, the ENUM system which was a standard that was developed to map from traditional phone numbers to voice‑over IP gateways so we operate the registry there on behalf of the ITU actually, and the database also enables research into operations and topology.
.
The LIR portal is the tool where the members can log in and actually keep their data up to date, and they can make requests for IPv6 and AS numbers, and well you can actually get on the waiting list to maybe get IPv4 sometime in the future, so that's still a functionality, or still a service we offer, but the future really, as you can see from the here, it's IPv6. So, be mindful of that. If you haven't implemented IPv6 yet, you will not get to the future.
.
.
In the portal you can also view your billing and membership information, and please keep that up to date. You can come to the Services Working Group on Wednesday, and I will talk a bit about all the work that we are doing in order to provide member services and collect members. The more you can do to keep your data updated, the better. And again, you can configure the secure routing with RPKI.
.
Now, I mentioned RPKI twice. So, how many knows what RPKI is? Okay, that's a good half of the room.
So, in BGP the protocol is really based on trust. Anybody can tell anybody else send traffic to these IP addresses to my AS number, to my network. Now, in RPKI, we have the opportunity, we provide a service where you can sign the statement saying that you should only send traffic for these IP addresses to this AS number, so whenever you receive a route, a BGP announcement in your network, you can verify that this is actually accurate. So there are two elements to RPKI: It's signing your ROAs, your routing statements, and it's doing ROA validations. So, what we are urging everybody to do is to sign your ROAs that should have very few, if any, side effects. And then, you should be reasonably sure that nobody can hijack your address space.
Now if you are a provider, then you should also seriously consider not accepting invalid announcements, so you should also do validation, but if you don't do that right it can have side effects so then you may not do a bit more study of, you know, checking first and then enforcing later. But this is also a very important thing to do. Especially if you have critical government functions or banks or any other important customer in your network, you don't want anybody else to announce those addresses and disrupt their service.
.
I mentioned that we are the secretariat for the community. We argue RIPE meetings. We have two meetings like this a year. We spread that around the, mostly around Europe because that's the areas that is easiest to travel to to find the biggest venues. But we also see that we have members outside our service region, so we also have regional meetings in southeast Europe, in Middle East and in central Asia where it's much easier for people outside the EU to get visas and come and we have between 150 and 300 participants in those meetings. We have a MENOG meeting coming up in a month's time in Oman, so that's an excellent way to interact with the parts of the community in this region.
.
We offer training courses. Before Covid, it was a lot of focus on travelling to the members and doing training courses in the countries. During Covid, we moved all of that online. Now we have shifted some of it back again. But we do have E learnings online, we do interactive courses online, and what we are seeing in doing research in the usage is that people are interested in very specific learning, so we are now also exploring splitting up the courses into micro‑learning, so if, you know, if you don't want to take the full database course, you can take the specific course on exactly what you want to do now. So we're putting a lot of effort into making these courses available and relevant for you.
.
Now if you have the time to sit down and take a full course in IPv6 security or using the LIR portal, or even in Internet governance, you can also do a certification on some of these courses so so you get a certificate that you can put on your LinkedIn profile or use it for your employer to negotiate a higher salary the next time around, right.
.
We also have a publication. Well it's not a magazine like in the last century, but it's a website, RIPE Labs, where not only RIPE staff but community members can publish interesting things. So if you have an interesting experience from operating your network or research element to operators, you can publish that there.
And we have a fellowship programme and a RACI programme to bring in young blood. So RACI is directed towards master students, Ph.D. students doing research and coming and presenting it. A fellowship is slightly different but bringing in people that our wise couldn't come to the meetings.
.
So the lead to RIPE NCC I have with me Felipe who is the chief knowledge officer who takes care of everything related to the technology behind the services, and so on. Hisham, the chief community officer, that's a specialised title because in a commercial organisation it would be chief commercial officer but since we don't sell anything we take care of our customers, but it's the community that we focus on, therefore chief community officer.
We of course have a chief information security customer, that's become increasingly important over the last couple of years. Eleonora is taking care of that. Simon is taking care of our finances, he wants to be called the chief frugal officer because you guys want us to save money. Carolien is the chief HR officer looking after all our staff and policies, and Athina our Chief Legal Officer because the amount of regulations that applies to us directly in EU and in all the other states, the countries, is increasing, and it really takes a lot of effort to keep on track on this. And to organise us all, I have Daniella, my executive assistant that really organises all of us and makes sure that we do our job.
.
So, to make sure that I do my job, I have an Executive Board elected by the members. Ondrej Filip is the Chair. He is also the CEO of cz.nic, the ccTLD here in the Czech Republic and is the local host so you can see him at the opening speaking as the local host as well as in the GM. Piotr is the secretary of the Board and then Raymond Jetten is the Treasurer, Remco, Sander, Maria and Harald are Board members and we meet four to six times a year in order to approve the budget at the end of the year, approve the annual report and financial report before it's presented to the GM and so on. And the Board also approves some of the procedures that goes into how you can become a member and how we can terminate MIPs, and those are all public. So you know that that's not only something that's decided by staff but it actually over seen and decided by the Board.
If you need support, we have a support desk here. There is staff there that's available to help you. And this is your one‑stop shop for anything related to the RIPE NCC, and they tell me that they mean it. So, please go and talk to them.
We have a General Meeting for members only on Wednesday. You need to register separately for that and you get the sticker to get into the room. And you can then vote there. The vote this time is on redistribution of the surplus, because we're a membership organisation and not‑for‑profit, the members can decide whether we will put the surplus in our reserves, then we need to pay taxes on it first or whether we want to refund the surplus to the members, then we deduct it for the next year's invoice and then the members pay taxes on it. So we will always be taxed by some country or another.
.
.
And then, I will pass on to Angela, who will talk about the policy process.
ANGELA DALL'ARA: Thank you Hans Petter. Good morning everybody. I am Angela Dall'ara, I joined the RIPE NCC ten years ago as an Internet analyst and for the last four years I am the Policy Officer. You heard from Mirjam a lot about the RIPE community and from Hans Petter about the RIPE NCC, and let's say I like to be the link between the two parts for what is concerning the policy development.
Actually, you are coming in a very fortunate moment because we have a couple of policy proposals under discussion, they are both about IPv6. IPv6 is, how can I say, not a new protocol for sure, but for some people it's still a mystery, unfortunately, and I hope you want to dig a bit into the changes that are proposed for our policy.
The last modification to the IPv6 policy was done already five years ago almost, so, it was a good initiative of the Address Policy Working Group to start discussing about what is needed to keep the policy up to date and see what can be done.
Luckily, somebody picked up the call and started working on it. They made a lot of work, so I invite you to read the policy proposals that you can find on our website under the current policy proposals and to participate in the Address Policy Working Group on Wednesday morning, especially in the second session, because your contribution is very important. There is, how can I say, no way other than participation to arrive to a technically sound policy, to a policy that is fair for everybody, and your contribution is important. It is not needed to be a member of the RIPE NCC, it is not needed to be a technician, it's not needed to have a network to run, it's just important that you say and you share your opinion about what is proposed, and that if you can, you help to shape a policy that can be useful for everybody. So I hope to see you all on Wednesday in the Address Policy Working Group.
There is a standardised policy development process for the RIPE policies. If you have questions about it, if you are not familiar with that, I am very happy to explain to you how it works, in which phase we are, how you can contribute on the mailing list. Don't be shy, just grab me wherever I am and ask for information, I am very happy to answer your questions.
And with this, I leave the stage to Mirjam for questions and for closing.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you very much. Thank you both. Are there any questions? There is one online. Ulka.
SPEAKER: We have an online question from Sebastian Jurges, he is asking: When and where can people get the GM entrance stickers? And I have the answer from my lovely colleagues at the NCC.
If you would like to attend the RIPE NCC General Meeting, you can pick up your entrance sticker from tomorrow onwards at the registry desk. There will be a designated GM registration area.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Are there any other questions in the room or online maybe? Otherwise, I guess we'll have some questions for you. There'll be a quiz, see if you have actually paid attention or maybe in a ‑‑ putting it differently, if we have explained it well enough to you.
Gerardo, are you there?
.
Kahoot quiz!
.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks. I hope you enjoyed it and you learned something. We still have a few minutes in case there are some questions that popped up during the quiz you are like, I didn't get that, why is ICANN not an RIR or something in I don't know what else you might want to ask.
.
If there are no questions at this point, then the lunch break are start in a few minutes downstairs where the breakfast was served and there are some tables that are marked with the newcomers signs, so if you'd like to get to know each other a bit more, you can use those tables and sit together with the newcomers, or if you'd like to mingle with others, of course you are welcome to sit anywhere you want. So enjoy your lunch and after the lunch break, we will have the Opening Plenary and everyone else will join us in this room. So enjoy your lunch.
(Lunch break)
.
.
.
.
