35th RIPE Meeting

Plenary Session Minutes - Draft

RIPE 35
Amsterdam, 22-25th February 2000
Plenary Session



Chair: Rob Blokzijl
Scribe: Sylvana Wenderhold (RIPE NCC)


1. Opening

2. Agenda

3. Minutes RIPE 34

4. From the Chair

5. Report from the RIPE NCC

6. ICANN/ASO - Andrew McLaughlin

7. Millenial Mail - Dave Crocker
(Email Scaling, Unified Messsaging, Email Marketing & Spam)

8. Reports from the  Working Groups

9. Next Meetings

10. AOB

11. Close


-1. - Opening

RIPE Chair Rob Blokzijl welcomed the participants to the 35th RIPE Meeting.


-2. - Agenda

The RIPE meeting participants approved the agenda.


-3. - Minutes RIPE 34    

The RIPE 34 plenary session minutes were approved as a fair
report. Rob thanked Naomi.


-4. - From the Chair

Rob Blokzijl, Chairman of RIPE had nothing new to contribute.

Bettina Schroeder, RIPE NCC's Office Manager announced that RIPE 36
will be held in Budapest and RIPE 37 will be held in Amsterdam. For
Budapest 16-19 May 2000, Bettina advised booking early (option open
until March 20th) for the hotel rooms. Information about the hotel, in
which the meeting will be held, will be placed on the RIPE NCC
website. An additional three or four hotels will be given as
alternatives for attendees who do not wish to stay in the same hotel
where the meeting takes place.  For Amsterdam on 12-15 September 2000,
Bettina also advises early booking as there are several conferences
planned in Amsterdam at that time. It is therefore advisable to use
R&S, the RIPE NCC's booking agent, mentioning you will be attending
the RIPE meeting. The address and telephone number will also be placed
on the website.

Q. From the audience - Where will RIPE 37 take place?
A. Bettina - Hotel Krasnapolsky.


Gordon Lennox introduced himself and spoke about working at the
Directorate General of the European Commission. He explained that
Internet Related Services was a new unit created last year within the
Information Society of the European Commission. Gordon deals with
policy and regulation in Telecommunication Services. This includes
Internet Governance (ICANN, GAC, dot.eu), Telecoms Reg., e-commerce,
IPR, Data Protection and Computer Related Crime. There are ten staff
involved.

Gordon is currently involved in the move towards the dot.eu as a
TLD. He requests input from the RIPE community as to how this should
be done. He mentioned that there are many questions on how to do this
and requests that the community visits the European Commission's
website and contributes ideas. http://europe.eu.int/comm/index_en.htm

Gordon talked briefly about Computer Related Crime. He mentioned that
the Council of Europe, the G8 and others are preparing a Commission
Communication (planned for June), to be discussed and thereafter,
implemented. Some items will have a direct impact on the Internet
community, therefore, input is strongly requested from the community
as it is presently lacking. Gordon mentioned that the music industry
let the Commission know that piracy is a big issue at the moment. A
meeting is planned for mid-March, followed by another in April. Gordon
requested those who plan to attend the meeting to inform him.

For Gordon Lennox's presentation:
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/archive/ripe-35/presentations/index.html


-5. - Report from the RIPE NCC
 
Axel Pawlik gave a short introduction about himself. Axel started as
the new Managing Director in October 1999. He has been getting to know
the staff and the Board members as well as general things about RIPE
NCC. He thanked everyone for the warm welcome.  Job descriptions have
slightly changed for some staff members. He is open to questions at
any time. Concerns and complaints may also be addressed to him.

Mirjam Kuhne reported on the status of the RIPE NCC.


The following are the major staff changes;
Managing Director:		Axel Pawlik
Chief Scientist:			Daniel Karrenberg
Head External Services:		Joao Luis Silva Damas
External Relations:		Mirjam Kuhne

Mirjam's position has formed in response to a need to promote the RIPE
NCC and RIPE. Emphasis will be put on finding ways for people to
participate and include new players in the RIPE open forum.

* The host count was discussed. There seems to have been a big increase. 

* New Members were discussed. There has been a growth of one and a half
 to two new members per day.

* New LIRs per region were discussed. There are 551 new member LIRs:
  512 in Europe; 31 in the Middle East and 8 in Northern Africa.

* Database statistics: Queries have reached 7/sec. (last year
  5/sec.). There are 11 updates/min on average and it was reported
  that the database object exceed 3.5 million (compared to 2.5 million
  last year).

* Trends in distribution were discussed. 
* The number of new requests in Hostmaster mails was discussed. 
* AS numbers were discussed. 

See slides for statistics:
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/archive/ripe-35/presentations/index.html

Q. From the audience - How many LIRs are currently RIPE members?
A. Mirjam - approximately 1800

Services

The Activity Plan 2000 (ripe-197) and the RIPE budget were approved by
all members last September. RIPE NCC provides membership services such
as Test Traffic, in addition to its regular services. New projects
include routing information services and the routing registry
consistency project.

* The nicest slide was the empty one, showing the list of Y2K
  bugs. Nothing of any importance went wrong over the New Year period.

External Communications

The RIPE NCC has a new 'corporate' look, which includes a new logo,
website and house style.  These changes will be implemented from
1/3/00. There will be a total of 41 training courses given during the
year and the new, improved material will be utilised. The Annual
Report for 1999 is in preparation and will be ready before the next
RIPE Meeting.

Registration Services

Mention was made of the tremendously increased workload for
IPv4. Mirjam thanked the membership for their patience while RIPE NCC
improves this. The policy document for IPv6 is being rewritten and the
working group has been very helpful with comments.

RIPE Database 

Mirjam reported that the RIPE NCC is busy implementing the new
database. There have been some performance problems with the
database. These have been fixed with the help of more hardware and the
software has been treated. See: http:/www.ripe.net/db/ Mention was
made that the Database Consistency Report will be further discussed in
the Database working group. There are so far 135 maintainer objects
for PGP. People are clearly making use of it.

For information on the database reimplementation see: 
http:/www.ripe.net/ripencc/pub-services/bd/reimp/index.html

RIR Coordination

Mirjam reported an excellent cooperation between the RIRs and welcomed
Richard Jimmerson of the ARIN staff to the meeting. It has proved very
useful to exchange information between RIRs. Mirjam reported that RIPE
NCC has been working on database consistency. It is felt that data
should be stored in the region where the database is actually
kept. Mirjam will keep the RIPE community updated on this issue.

For Mirjam's presentation:
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/archive/ripe-35/presentations/index.html

New Projects - Henk Uijterwaal

Henk introduced himself as the manager of the New Projects Group. He
specified that this department is working on three projects, namely,
Routing Information Services (RIS), Routing Registration Consistency
Checking and Test Traffic Measurement (TTM).

* Routing Information Services (RIS) was first presented at RIPE 34. It
is available on the web as ripe-200. The proposal was finalised in
October 1999. Henk requested feedback from the audience on the
project.

* Routing Registration Consistency Checking is becoming a new
 project. It is available on the web as ripe-201.

*Test Traffic Management (TTM) has been a project for almost three
years and is becoming a new service. Forty-three measurement boxes are
already in the field and that number will double during the course of
this year. TTM will become a regular service as of this year. There
will be no fee for this service in the year 2000. However, next year
the costs will be approximately EUR 3000 and it will cease to be paid
from the general RIPE NCC budget. This fee will include the operation
of the test box, as well as maintenance and support.

Q. Rob Blokzijl - Are the Test Traffic Measurement services available
for members only?

A1. Henk - Yes. But if you are not currently a member, you can become one.

A2. Daniel Karrenberg - Most requests for boxes are expected to come
from ISPs but there could also be requests from others. The fee will
mean they automatically become a member of RIPE NCC. This will allow
them to have the same input as other members and use the same open
structures. Other services will follow suit, for instance RIS. Daniel
praised RIS as being a useful service.

Remark from the audience - Who will have access to the Test Traffic
data? A couple of parties would be interested in the data without
wanting to host the equipment.

Henk - There has been a policy in effect for almost two years that
prevents this. Only in exceptional cases will we share the data.

Henk asked the audience if they were interested the concept as
presented, or if perhaps change was needed. He also inquired whether
they would be willing to pay for the service. A show of hands
indicated that approximately 10-15 members were interested in
TTM. Fewer showed interest in paying for the service. The same 10-15
members showed interest in the concept. No changes to the concept were
suggested.

For Henk's presentation: 
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/archive/ripe-35/presentations/index.html  


-6. - ICANN/ASO

Rob presented a short introduction about ICANN. Andrew McLaughlin
pointed out that Rob is a member of the ICANN board. Andrew had two
agenda points, first to give a brief history of ICANN and secondly to
preview the ICANN agenda for the next few months.

* Andrew explained that the basic idea behind ICANN is to
internationalise the set of policy functions relating to DNS and IP
addressing systems, while at the same time keeping it in the private
structure - meaning a non-governmental managing structure. Prior to
ICANN, this was done through the US government, specifically by Jon
Postel of IANA and his staff. The US government indicated a need for
change. There were six issues that needed addressing.

* the globalisation of the Internet  
* the commercialising of the Internet 
* the need for greater accountability in the policy making structure 
* the need for more formalised management structure 
* the dissatisfaction with the lack of competition in the market for
  domain name registration services
* the conflict between the trademark system and the domain name system
* The serious concern about the concequences if something happened to 
  Jon Postel. 

It was decided to initiate a movement to replace IANA as a policy
making structure. The US government created a White Paper set out to
fulfil four goals:

* stability 
* competition 
* private bottom-up co-ordination  
* global and functional representation This organisation had to be
non-profit. On the 9 February 2000, IANA's functions were transferred
to the ICANN in a contract with the US government.

During this transition several important items have presented
themselves, of which, three main issues remain to be completed. These
are:

* achieve registry agreements with 243 country code top level domains
* achieve agreements with the three Regional Internet Registries
* establish relations with ICANN and root server operators. 
30 September 2000, is the target date for ICANN to settle these issues.

Andrew explained the ICANN structure to the audience, DNSO, ASO, PSO
and At Large (see slide). He urged the membership to visit the website
and register for voting purposes. Andrew then discussed the ICANN
staff and explained the ASO and the ad-hoc group. The annual budget is
set to be $4.3 million, but will be more like $3.3 million. Los
Angeles meeting results were given and Andrew referred to the agenda
for the Cairo meeting (7-10 March 2000). For more information contact
Andrew at ajm@ICANN.org

Q: From the audience - Is the financial situation of the ICANN not a
bit shaky?

A: Andrew - The situation is presently quite solid. Andrew advised the
audience to check the website for a list of donations from various
sources. For the past four or five months all has been well.

There were no more questions and Rob pronounced that "Europe is satisfied."

For Andrew's presentation:
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/archive/ripe-35/presentations/index.html


-7. - Millennial Mail (Email Scaling, Unified Messaging, Email
      Marketing & Spam)

David Crocker delivered a presentation of which the slides can be
found at: http:/www.brandenburg.com/presentations/millenial-mail.ppt
or
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/archive/ripe-35/presentations/index.html

David began his presentation by stating that Internet mail has been
around for 25 years, a long time for technology. Very often, when
technology has been around for a long time, it is common practice to
replace it altogether. However, the question is, is it suffering or
benefiting from being around for so long?

David explained that when using email for major communications for a
long period of time it becomes apparent that possibly protocol and
certainly the user agents have poor long-term tools. It should be
easier to store and retrieve things and to correlate treads of
discussion. The quality of service must be improved and long-term
tools are needed. The question is, is enhancement or replacement
necessary?

David mentioned scaling, which can mean both 'increasing the size' and
'overcoming a barrier.' Due to more complicated messages, email is no
longer simple and will be even more demanding in the future. There is
a real need to be able to handle more messages, especially where types
of messages begin to vary, in part due to the use of html.

Sending mail around the world today is as easy and inexpensive as it
is locally. It is as simple to send Internet mail to many people as it
is to one person. Yet, time zones continue to cause problems that
cannot be overcome. David's conclusion is that Internet mail is useful
for the exact purpose it was designed for. The problem is that it is
used for more than it is designed for. More usage is added, without it
being modified.

David explained User Agent - Mail Transfer Agent (UAMTA). He discussed
protocols and mentioned that security technology is a major failure in
the Internet services, as only a fraction of users intentionally
utilise authentication and privacy mode in their private mail.

Internet mail needs control of timing of delivery, fax and instant
messaging. Instant messaging has popped up with great success and a
completely independent technology. The idea is to make email go
quicker. We need to use the second protocol that already exists and
makes messaging instant. Why utilise a completely different
technology? Confirmation in the fax world needs to be seen as
safe. Marketing studies indicate that people demand
confirmation. David expressed that he personally desires to get a
confirmation only in particular transactions, in the case of hotel
reservations and purchase transaction. Commercial transactions should
be able to have receipts confirmed and printed.

The MX record in the domain name system is referred to as the email
routing protocol. It is incredibly effective. Real Routing protocols
are needed. Attachments should be definitely legible at the other
(receiving) end.

Legitimate volume mail is the opposite of spam. Spam is unsolicited
and there is no relationship between the receiver and the sender. Spam
gives many problems. Although not all volume mail is so terrible, like
opt-out, it is often really 'spam in sheep's clothing.' Another
option, 'opt-out' also has many limitations; they don't solve the
problem. 'Opt-in' lists, on the other hand, work much better. In this
case the receiver asks to be on the mailing list. The response rate in
much higher and almost no one gets angry. It is important to
distinguish between spam and legitimate opt-in lists.

E-mail based marketing is definitely here to stay. Companies like
Publisher's Clearing House send millions of mails at once and the
existing e-mail system cannot cope with these numbers, although they
are only the tip of the iceberg. A way to distinguish spam from
legitimate volume mail is needed. If you filter opt-in volume mail
customers will become unsatisfied. There is a need to filter spam from
legitimate opt-in mail. Dave went on to explain Unified
Messaging. Suggestion made either to 'throw Internet email out and
start over' or 'keep adding'. Both ideas must be reconciled.

There were no questions and Dave thanked the audience for their attention. 

* Naomi de Bruin of the RIPE NCC is leaving and was presented with a 
  'thank-you' bouquet of flowers for her many years of hard work.


8. - Reports from the Working Groups

Rob Blokzijl told the audience of a Working Group Chairs meeting on
how to improve the efficiency of Working Groups. Good ideas were
proposed at this meeting and there will be an effort to better define
the Working Groups. Bettina Schroder will make sure the suggestions
are on the website shortly.


TLD/CENTR WG
------------

Chair: Niall O'Reilly
Attendees: approx. 50
Scribe: Gert van Velzen (RIPE NCC) 
Report from: Sharon Bush

There were about 55 percent attendees from the TLD registry community,
40 percent from registry ISP community, and approximately five from
other registries. This working group is closed as of yesterday and
replaced by the new CENTR-WG and a DNR forum, which will take place at
the RIPE meetings indefinitely. The forum is open to all interested
parties. Fay Howard gave an update on CENTR activities. Kevin from
CENTR gave a short report on the technical workshop. (Please visit the
CENTR website at: http://www.centr.org) Niall O'Reilly will present
the minutes in the near future. A mailing list will be set up, and
will include all old TLDs.

Meeting Details

* CENTR DNR-Forum launched to replace RIPE TLD-WG
* First meeting attended by 50 people
* Participation from registries, ISPs/registrars and others

Objectives

* Succeeds RIPE TLD-WG (primarily non-technical issues at first)
* In response to calls from ISPs/Registrars
* Open to all with interest in Domain Name registration

CENTR Update

* Fay Howard, CENTR GM gave an update on CENTR activities
* Political and policy Forum (GA)
* Legal Forum (lawyers from member registries addressing legal issues
  of cc TLDs)
* Technical Forum (report from Technical Workshop 21/22 February)
* New Public Forum which is the DNR-Forum

Round up from last TLD-WG

* Niall O'Reilly gave a progress report on outstanding actions from 
  TLD-WG Minutes
* DN objects in the RIPE Database RIPE NCC proposal
* Those TLDs using RIPE Database to have action plan by 31/3/00 to
  remove their objects
* Anticipated date for removing objects is 30/6/00

Establishing the DNR-Forum

* Physical Meetings with RIPE Meetings
* CENTR to make public mailing list -DNR-Forum@centr.org- to include:
  Participants of the DNR-F, old TLD-WG list
* Fay Howard and Sharon Bush to chair next meeting - situation to be reviewed

Work Plan

* Registry contracts with registrants & registrars - to be revisited
  after CENTR collects data on current practices

* Registration Templates - small Task Force to work to document
  current practices, problems, requirements and make
  recommendations. Draft paper for next meeting

* Data Protection, Zone file access & users-Task Force to produce
  draft paper documenting potential uses of zone file information
  (statistic, host count, searches, etc)

* Data protection implications

* Changes in registry policy on registration and renewals CENTR
  Secretariat to make What's New Web page to announce changes to the
  policies of member registries (happy to announce other)

Consulting the local community on registry policies

* Presentations from AFNIC (.FR) and Denic (.DE) will be placed on website 

* Future agendas to include information from other registries

Creation of .eu TLD

* summary of CENTR press release

* community urged to comment on the European Commission's working

* document: 

http://www.ispo.cec.be/eif/InternetPoliciesSite/DotEU/WorkDocEN.html

There were no questions.


Routing WG
----------

Chair: Joachim Schmitz
Attendees: 92
Scribe: Emil Gorter (RIPE NCC)

Slot 1: 9:00

Report from the RIPE NCC (Joao LS Damas)

Transition to RPSL, status
Consistency checking of the IRR, status
Report on the IRR at RADB (Gerald Winters)
Running RPSL
Java interface IRRj
Scaling issues
Encouragement for distributed registries
Report on RIS (Henk Uijterwaal)
http:/www.ripe.net/ris
prototype for testing

Slot 2: 11:00 --- Focus on Multicast Routing

Reports from Backbones

TEN-155 (Jan Nowak)
Ebone (Peter Lothberg)

Reports from Public Exchange Points

Stockholm DGIX (Peter Lothberg)
Amsterdam AMS-IX (Niels den Otter)
London LINX (Steve Walker)

Reports from Networks

Renater (Bernard Tuy)
SURFnet (Niels den Otter)

Please record: Mulicast tutorial RIPE 36

Actions

31.R1 on RIPE NCC, D. Kessens, J. Schmitz
Basic design for an Ipv6 IRR - postponed - 

32.R1 on RIPE NCC, JLS. Damas:
Prepare draft document on issues of ripe-181 to RPSL transition 
-in progress -

34.R1 on C. Panigl: Provide update to ripe-178 - in progress


(Joao reported on the RIPE NCC. Gerald Winters reported on IRR at RADB. 
Henk Uiterwaal reported on RIS.
The RIPE NCC is reported as fully using RPSL.

Reports for Backbones - Jim Nowack and Peter Lothburg.
Reports for Public Exchange Points - Stockholm, Amsterdam and London.
Reports for Networks - Renate, SURFnet.

Please note the Multicast Tutorial at RIPE 36 (Tuesday) Please enlist!
Joachim noted this to be an interesting WG.

There were no questions.


DNS WG
------

Chair: Reudiger Volk
Attendees: 62
Scribe: Lee Wilmot (RIPE NCC)

This was a very short meeting. The documents that had been worked on
were checked and the final one (SOA) actually published. ripe-203 has
also been completed. A DNS SEC workshop was given. A number of
problems were mentioned at the ad-hoc meeting regarding scaling and
continuation of the host count statistics.

Reminder to the community - In DNS there is no way to protect against
attacks. Be aware of the issue!

There were no questions.


EIX WG
------

Chair: Keith Mitchell / Mike Hughes took his place in his absence
Attendees: 68
Scribe: Vanessa Evans and Eugenio Pierno (RIPE NCC)

IX Reports

* AMS-IX
81 members, peak 1.5 Gbps
New switch architecture
* CERN
20-25 members
* LINX
95 members, peak 1.4 Gbps
New sites coming onstream soon
* Slovakian IX
23 members
* SFINX
48 members
SFINX-2 in rollout
* VIX
52 members, peak 370 Mbps

Y2K Reports

* "Official" report, from LINX (Keith Mitchell)
Increased level of hacker activity during day of 3111/12
One member saw large DoS attack at their borders around midnight
* It was generally agreed went smoothly for European XPs

Ipv6

* No exchange has yet registered Ipv6 allocation
* AMS-IX did some successful tests with 6bone prefix
Difficulty registring Ipv6 allocation, as not LIR
* Still problems with buggy Cisco code
* Need for better understanding between IXPs and Ipv6 adopters

IXP Switching Wishlist

* Presentation, by Mike Hughes (LINX) followed by discussion about
  switch features desirable for exchange operators
* Policing and prevention of potentially disruptive traffic, plus
  scalability and resilience
* Action on Christian Panigl (VIX/ACOnet) and Mike Hughes (LINX) to
   work on requirements documents, which can be used to guide switch vendors
* Interest from non-IXP engineers
* Report back at RIPE 36

Thanks!

* Chair - Keith Mitchell in Fearghas' absense
* Scribe - Vanessa Evans
* Niels from SurfNET for the ad-hoc visit to the AMS-IX!
	

There were no questions.


IPv6 WG
-------

Chair: David Kessens
Attendees: 124
Scribe: Monica Cortes (RIPE NCC)

AGENDA
A. Administrative stuff
- appointment of scribe
- agenda bashing
(David Kessens)

B. Comments on the Provisional Assignment on Allocation of IPv6 addresses
Document (ipv6-wg & lir-wg)

- Why is a dial-up link treated differently - should such users get a
  /48 or a /64 
- Public or private addresses recommendation for point-to-point links.
- What constitutes 80% utilisation (David Kessens is looking for a
  volunteer from the RIPE NCC for an introduction on the issues -
  other speakers are also welcome to volunteer)

C. status of 6bone (David Kessens)
D. Issues with filtering of ÍPv6 in IPv4 packets (Thomas Trede)
E. IPv6 forum progress (David Kessens is looking for a volunteer)
F. European developments/initiatives regarding Ipv6 (input from the audience)
G. Reports on on-going projects, success & failure stories on Ipv6  
   (David Kessens looking for volunteers who are willing to share
   their experiences)
Z. AOB

The allocation of Ipv6 addresses document was reviewed. Statistics of
6bone were discussed, as were filtering of v6 and v4 packets. Ipv6
forms were discussed.

David summarised the EOF session. TLA assignments to Exchange Points
were also discussed at the WG meeting.

Q. Rob - If AIX needs Ipv6 blocks, what then?
A. Might be a problem.


LIR WG
-------
  
Chair: Hans Petter Holen
Attendees: 116 (75 from LIRs)
Scribe: Paul Tate

The open forum where policy is made. Not just for Local Internet
Registries but for all of you. http://www.ripe.net/wg/lir/index.html


	1. Administration	(scribe, participants list, charter, 
                                 mailing-lists)
	2. Agenda
	3. Meet the RIPE NCC hostmasters
	4. RIPE 34
		minutes 
		actions (mostly done)
	5. Reports from the registries
		RIPE NCC
		APNIC
		ARIN
		Status of the LACNIC and AfriNiC
	6. Report from the address council
	7. The policy making process
	8. Establish final selection procedure for the address council
	9. Domain objects in the database
10. AOB

The AC selection procedure must be formalised. ASO AC timetable was
shown. (Nominations, who may vote, how to vote) Nominations must be
made well in advance of an election. Nominees must be present
themselves at RIPE 36 in Budapest and RIPE 37 in Amsterdam and will be
on the mailing list. Use the mailing list to support your
nominee. Members of the RIPE community must be present to vote. A
secret ballot will be held at the plenaries. One seat, one
vote. Winner has most votes.

Q. From the audience - If you can't be present at the meeting, can you
still vote?
A. Hans Petter - We haven't figured that out yet.

Daniel Karrenberg mentioned the upcoming dilemma of the members who
cannot attend a particular meeting and therefore cannot vote. While
the voting system does work, this matter must be taken into
account. We must seek a better solution for voting procedures but
Budapest already needs a final solution which will stand up to
scrutiny.

Hans Petter mentioned that Electronic Voting gained no support when
suggested on the mailing list. Niall O'Reilly has a suggestion, but
will post it to the mailing list. It was concluded to decide things in
Budapest and hold the election at RIPE 37 in Amsterdam in September.

Hans Petter briefly discussed IP addresses to GPRS
infrastructure. Chair will set up a technical task force with the help
of Mirjam Kuhne.  Volunteers were requested for help on this.

The agenda for RIPE 36 is ready. He concluded his presentation by
showing the pictures of RIPE NCC hostmasters on the screen.


Database Working Group
----------------------

Chair: Wilfried Woeber
Attendees: 65
Scribe: Engin Gunduz (RIPE NCC)

Highlights:

* Database - Software re-implementation progressing, beta 2 available,
  some functionality still in the works TF being set up to support the
  implementation effect

Security Issues:

* Semantics of maintainer needs
* Advisory to be produced to go for  stronger authentication i.e. >
 crypt-pw, better: PGP

New Ideas:

* Start to think about a smarter whois client, e.g. look into DNS to
  find hints for -h host 
* Ways to register pointers to CERT/IR  Contacts brainstorming needed

Logistics:

* Input received to improve on relations to other registry entities
  (U.S. mostly) dburg@arin.net - implementation TF, stay tuned
* Help required to run the working group better than before - working
  on finding out how to make best use of the resources available
* Many thanks to Nigel Titley and Database group within the RIPE NCC
- Still looking for others to broaden the base
- Many thanks to all the folks who have contributed to get us to where we are!
* Security alert

- Buffer-overflow vulnerability in Database - Software Server
  code. Patch available, see CERT alert and/or mailing list
  (db-wg@ripe.net) archives!

Q. From the audience - Did anybody suggest deprecating the security issue?
A. Wilfried - We want an advisory precisely for that reason.

Wilfried passed on Joao's message that the members refer to the DB-WG
for information on security issues.


NetNews Working Group
---------------------

Chair: Felix Kugler in the absence of Brad Knowles
Attendees: 26
Scribe: Tricia Diamond (RIPE NCC)

1.   NHNS (Daniel Diaz/Juan Garcia)

* History
* Current status: 	7 NHNS servers
				10 TLHs covered
* Implementation ready, including installer
* Script for clients!
	Http://galore.satec.es

Things to work on:

* easier use for TLH maintainers
* integration into DNS tree
* mechanism to determine age of NHNS data sets
* wider deployment

2.   WG administrative (Rob Blokzijl and WG)

This WG shall continue to exist, but with more stable structures!
We have a new chairman: Dave Wilson (HEAnat)
Backup chair: Felix Kugler (switch)

There were no questions.


Anti-Spam Working Group
-----------------------
Chair: Rodney Tillotson
Attendees: 35
Scribe: Gerry Berthauer (RIPE NCC)

* Good practice guide for ISPs 

Blacklists

Recommend use of MAPS RBL - http://maps.vix.com/
Not able to endorse others

Filtering

Viruses
Products and services available
Legal problems
 - make it attractive

Opt-IN

Mailing lists
Direct marketing industry
Need BCP

Anti-spam BCP

LINX - RIPE Document
How not to be an originator of spam
Not all technical
Very small changes

Canonisation

WG, large majority wanted it; no objections
RIPE Meeting
Install 6 March 2000

Use It!

You're probably doing it already.

Proposed RIPE BCP on UBE (spam)
Draft

Daniel Karrenberg briefly reported on the WG. See website for
presentation. Test Traffic will be a regular service very soon.  A new
batch of test boxes are currently being built and will be available in
a month or two.


-9. - Next Meetings

RIPE 36  16-19 May 2000 Budapest
RIPE 37  12-15 September 2000 Amsterdam
RIPE 38  22-26 January 2001 Amsterdam
RIPE 39  May 2000 Bologna, Italy


-10. - AOB
There was no other business to discuss.


-11. - Close

Rob thanked everyone for attending and hoped to meet again at the next
RIPE Meeting in Budapest in May 2000.