RIPE 87 RIPE Community Plenary Minutes
Thursday, 30 November 2023, 16:00 (UTC+1)
Chairs: Mirjam Kühne, Niall O’Reilly
Scribe: Alena Muravska
Status: Final
View the stenography transcripts
Mirjam opened the session and shared an overview of the agenda for the session.
A. The RIPE Chair Team Report
Mirjam Kühne, RIPE Chair
The presentation is available at:
https://ripe87.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/114-RIPE-87-Community-Plenary.pdf
Mirjam provided an update on the latest activities from the RIPE Chair Team and presented the new RIPE logo. The new logo received a big round of applause from the audience.
There were no questions.
B. ASO AC Update and 2024 Perspective
Hervé Clement, ASO AC Chair
The presentation is available at:
https://ripe87.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/101-ASO-AC-Report-RIPE-87-2.pdf
Hervé gave an update from the Address Supporting Organisation Address Council
Shane Kerr (NS1 an IBM Company) expressed his concerns that the AFRINIC community has no representation at the ASO AC.
Hervé said that ASO AC does their best to make voices from the African community heard, but due to the issues faced by AFRINIC there is currently no representative from AFRINIC on the ASO AC.
Hans Petter Holen (RIPE NCC) added that each RIR has its own appointment process to the ASO AC. In the RIPE NCC region, the RIPE community can elect two representatives to the ASO AC independently of the RIPE NCC. In the other regions the Executive Board of the RIR is the last step in the appointment, preventing the community from electing their representatives. In theory the community can come together and change this process.
There were no other questions.
C. Mastodon or Mastodon't?
Ulka Athale, RIPE NCC
The presentation is available at:
https://ripe87.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/109-Mastodon.pdf
Ulka presented a proposal for the RIPE NCC to set up a server on Mastodon, a self-hosted decentralised micro blogging platform, as a platform for the RIPE community to communicate, and asked the community members for their feedback.
Brian Nisbet (HEAnet) said that this is a move in the right direction.
Michael Richardson (Sanderman) asked about the costs of running a server but just one for staff and other approved people like Working Group Chairs.
Ulka replied that she couldn’t speak about the costs as they are still figuring out the details.
Peter Hessler (Globalways GmbH) said that he supports the initiative and advised against using the Mastodon software.
Harry Cross (Harry Cross) warned that the Digital Service Act will have huge implications on Mastodon and pointed out that this will need to be considered.
Jim Reid (rtfm llp) said that trying to move into other communications media is fine but that RIPE NCC should not be saying that they are trying to diminish the significance of e‑mail, as this is the main communication media in the RIPE Working Groups. Jim also said that there have to be clear criteria on how the RIPE NCC will measure the success of launching Mastodon for the community.
Will van Gulik (Saitis/ RomandIX) commented on the accounts and said that everyone who has a ripe.net account could get an account on the Mastodon server of the RIPE NCC.
Ondrej Caletka (RIPE NCC) said that it would be great to create Mastodon walls instead of Twitter walls during RIPE Meetings to make networking easier for people and to read short messages from other attendees.
Daniel Karrenberg (RIPE NCC) said that it would be nice if the RIPE NCC could find ways to just try Mastodon with the community as pilot.
Hermann Lienstromberg (GRMML Networks) expressed his support for the RIPE NCC and community efforts and proposed starting off with official accounts that have ripe.net e‑mail addresses only, that would potentially extend to RIPE members in the future.
Ulka thanked everyone for feedback and asked those interested to continue to share inputs after the talk.
There were no other questions.
Mirjam closed the queue saying that the discussion would be continued on the mailing list
D. Lightning Talk
So You Think You Understand IP Fragmentation
Valerie Aurora, Frame Shift Consulting
The presentation is available at:
https://ripe87.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/93-2023-11-30-So-you-think-you-understand-IP-fragmentation-2.pdf
Valerie presented a game to test the audience’s IP fragmentation knowledge.
Ondrej Caletka (RIPE NCC) said that he was not very happy to see legacy networks being promoted. He asked if Valerie had carried out testing on the main meeting network that day around 12:08.
Valerie replied that she was testing on her phone's IPv4 network and then whenever she had to test it with the real Internet, she would come and sit in the back hall there.
Blake Wills (Zayo) asked if Valerie had a specific use case for needing a larger MTU.
Valerie replied that she does.
There were no other questions.
Open Mic
Rüdiger Volk (UNorganized) shared his experience with participation at the IETF meetings and asked whether the use of their Meetecho queue contributed to the active participation of online attendees. He said that collecting experience from IETF meetings and making more use of the Meetecho technology would help to be more inclusive towards the remote participants at the RIPE meetings.
Mirjam said that they are definitely going to look into how to continue to make RIPE meetings more inclusive and that she is curious to see what the local hubs think about their experience participating in this meeting.
Niall O’Reilly (RIPE Vice-Chair) said that from his experience as a remote attendee it’s easy to be overlooked by onsite participants.
Rüdiger confirmed that this is a learning curve for onsite participants and that it should be used.
Ondrej Caletka (RIPE NCC) pointed to some differences between the IETF and RIPE meetings (RIPE Meeting attendees are not obliged to have a RIPE NCC access account) and said that the RIPE NCC can replicate the IETF setting, the question is whether the RIPE Meeting participants actually want this.
Peter Hessler (Globalways GmbH) said that he is a remote participant and that he finds the RIPE system much easier to use and much more accessible than the IETF system.
Harry Cross (no affiliation) responded to Ondrej’s points and said that not all attendees of RIPE meetings have RIPE NCC Access accounts.
Rüdiger said that as far as he understands it, to join the RIPE Meeting remotely participants only need the URLs for the Meetecho.
Edward Lewis (ICANN) added that using Meetecho for onsite attendees at the IETF meetings is easier as it can be accessed from a phone.
Ondrej responded to it by saying that at the previous RIPE meetings all attendees had a personalised QR code at their badges that opened the mobile app, but the RIPE NCC stopped providing it as attendees were not using it and it was very labour intensive.
Hans Petter Holen, RIPE NCC Managing Director and CEO, said that changing rules so people in the room don’t get to speak at the mic unless they have registered themselves in the Meetecho queue requires behavioural changes above technical ones.
Jen Linkova (Google) said that in her RIPE Working Group chair capacity she prefers if people join the virtual queue.
Mirjam said that the RIPE Chair Team and Working Group Chairs will encourage people to join queues in Meetecho at the next RIPE Meeting.
The session was concluded.