RIPE NCC Response to ARKEP

Letter from the Chairman of ARKEP Concerning .XK in the RIPE Database

Response from the RIPE NCC Managing Director to the ARKEP Chairman

Dear Mr. Rahimi,

Thank you for your message. During the recent visit of our Chief Community Officer, Hisham Ibrahim, to Kosovo, he was very impressed with the work of ARKEP and your commitment to your mission. As we begin work on our five-year strategy planning, we will take into consideration what he learned. 

As to your request, I would like to make clear that the RIPE NCC is a neutral organisation. As such, we issue resources at the level of network operators, not of countries.

Within the RIPE Database, country codes must be an officially assigned ISO 3166 code, as this is the internationally accepted standard. .XK is not currently an official code under this standard. Implementing a country code that is not an official ISO 3166 code would put the RIPE NCC in the position of deciding which country codes to accept as legitimate, which is beyond our mandate as a neutral Internet registry. It would also have an impact on the consistency of registration data across organisations that use the ISO 3166 standard.

For this reason, we are unable to implement the .XK code in the database. Members in Kosovo can, however, choose to register under the neighbouring ISO 3166 country code of their choice.

While we are not able to grant your request, we look forward to collaborating with ARKEP in the future to support the networking community of Kosovo through training and other capacity-building efforts.

Sincerely,

Hans Petter Holen
Chief Executive Officer
RIPE NCC

1. https://www.iso.org/iso-3166-country-codes.html

2. https://labs.ripe.net/author/kjerstin-burdiek/country-codes-in-the-ripe-database/