Re: [ripe-167] Impressions brought from Moscow meeting
- Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 21:48:21 +0300 (MSK)
- Address: 1 Kurchatov square, 123182 Moscow, Russia
- Fax: +7 (095) 1964984
- Organization: Russian Institute for Public Networks (RosNIIROS)
- Phone: +7 (095) 1967278
Hi,
No comments on this literary work.
Sorry, only one: RosNIIROS has been established by the State Committee
for Higher Education and Russian Research Center "Kurchatov Institute".
Phantom of Relcom Company is still needed ?
Regards,
Alexei Platonov
According to Andrew Stesin:
>
> Dear Mirjam, dear Daniel, Robert, Mr. Postel, and others,
>
> as ripe-167 story goes on, I'd like to inform you about
> some new impressions and information we got with regard
> to it.
>
> Abstract: Ukrainian LIRs in their vaste majority
> would not agree with the Russian approach there
> and vote against the project of a new RIR in Moscow.
>
> As you already know, a conference of LIR' represantatives
> from Russia took place in Moscow, January 22. Ukrainian
> representatives were also present (4 delegations from
> major Ukrainian LIRs, me among them). During the direct
> conversations with "new RIR in Moscow" project initiators
> many aspects became much more clear. Here my opinions are.
>
> 1. During the meeting, *nothing* from the argumentation
> provided in ripe-167 was
> recognized by community as a sugnificant argument which clarifies
> the "new RIR" approach. Document authors didn't even
> bother defending their former argumentation. I got an opinion
> that argumentation given in ripe-167 was written with the only goal
> to convince RIPE and IANA, it's pretty much irrelevant to
> the current state of affairs here.
>
> 2. It seems that the idea of "new RIR in Moscow" has a plain
> political background, with a scope limited to a single
> (though big) country -- Russia, or even to a single city -- Moscow.
>
> Our Russian collegues are now facing the trend of their goverment
> trying to establish a certain degree of control over
> Internet business in Russia.
>
> They also recognize that IP address space distribution is one
> of the most important things to ISP business. So they decided
> to extend the scope and sugnificance of RosNIIROS registry as much
> as possible, probably in order to prevent "some others" (whos?)
> attempt to monopolise IP space redistribution *in Russia*.
>
> 3. The very idea of defining a "region" for the projected RIR in terms of
> politics, not geography (as opposed to the existing practice) -- is not
> occasional, this is semi-intentional.
>
> The abbreviation "CIS" should really be understood as "a sphere of
> Russian business and political interests".
>
> Some details. Ukraine is a large East European country
> with population of about 50 million
> comparatively educated and skilled people (as opposed to about
> 150+ million population of Russia). The whole territory of
> Ukraine is in European continent. The estimated size of
> Internet (and similar) services market here is comparative to Russian.
> From the other hand, Ukraine got about 3 year delay in social,
> technological et al. development compared to Russia (partially
> due to the fact that Russia monopolized many achievements
> and infrastructure of ex-USSR). So Russia has it's business
> and communication structures being developed faster now and
> the market is more tight so far.
>
> Naturally, Russian companies are interested in joining
> Ukrainian market, where they might become a stronger players.
> Consider also the fact that Ukrainian ISPs all were the
> customers of their Russian collegues (note the ex-USSR
> infrastructure above) some 2-3 years ago, and were
> getting sugnificant amounts of funds from Ukraine.
>
> Being a RIR (esp. in case RIPE will delegate them monopolistic
> rights at the territory mentioned) will let certain people
> and organisations to continue getting their "traditional" funds
> from other countries, as they used to do before.
>
> 4. Also note that RIRs tend to have a sugnificant influence
> on the technical policies and "technical fashion" among their
> customers; also this means access to technical information
> about them and ability to monitor the development
> of their networks. With RIPE (RNA) this is not an issue for us,
> as RIPE doesn't represent any single (or group) entity
> who has strong business interests in Ukraine or anyone
> who is interested in monitoring our development.
>
> And with RosNIIROS this *is* an issue potentially.
> RosNIIROS doesn't represent a voluntary association of
> any kind, there isn't one even in a single Russia so far.
> RosNIIROS is a semi-govermental organization, established as a
> daughter structure of Moscow "Relcom" company; and
> Relcom venture is wellknown for it's numerous and
> continued attempts to become a monopolist on Russian
> Internet services market; and recently lost a sugnificant
> share in Ukrainian market due to rapid development of Ukrainian
> communication infrastructure, which allowed us to get
> a choice of whom to pay for services.
>
> A RIR in Russia, which will tend to fall under the influence of
> Russian goverment and several big semi-monopolistic companies,
> will be probably able to cope with intra-Russia issues,
> but will also serve the interests of Russian business
> and politics; it won't be able to serve the interests of
> international community. Baltic countries (Latvia, Lithuania,
> Estonia) tend to avoid just *any* contact with Russia due
> to the reasons above; we in Ukraine aren't so radical, but
> our reaction continues to be strictly negative.
>
> Being an official representative of LIR UA.GU, I'd like to get
> a confirmation that our registry will be served by RIPE directly
> in the forseeable future. We'd also like to see an
> official confirmation from RIPE, of the fact that
> any new LIR at Ukrainian territory will *always* be either
> served by RIPE directly or will have a choice between
> direct service contract from RIPE or indirect -- from other
> RIPE office wherever it might be established in future (Moscow,
> Berlin, Istambul, Kiev... who cares?)
>
> Thanks a lot for your attention.
>
> Best regards,
> Andrew Stesin
>
> nic-hdl: ST73-RIPE
>
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