Interim Session 28 July 2021
Wednesday, 28 July 2021, 16:00–18:00 (UTC+2)
Chairs: Bijal Sanghani, Kurt Erik Lindqvist, Rob Evans
Scribe: Karla Liddle-White
Status: Final
RIPE NCC and the Cloud Requirements and Principles
Felipe Victolla Silveira, Chief Operations Officer, RIPE NCC
Summary: Kurtis Lindqvist, RIPE NCC Services WG Co-Chair, opened the session and introduced Felipe Victolla Silveira, RIPE NCC Chief Operations Officer. Felipe started with a presentation that covered some principles and outlined a draft cloud strategy. Kurtis then opened the floor for questions and comments from the community.
Max Stucchi referred to slide 14 and suggested the RPKI and the RIPE Database could be switched in terms of criticality. He suggested making the RIPE Database ‘High’ and RPKI as ‘Medium’, but this was also dependent on what part of RPKI was being considered. He suggested separating publication from the RPKI dashboard in the LIR Portal, which would be considered ‘Low’, because the worst-case scenario would be that someone was not able to create ROAs and their announcements would be considered as unknown.
Felipe replied that it was the RPKI Repositories being considered here. He saw Max’s point that if it was unavailable for half an hour it would just pick up on the cache and then it would not have a huge operational impact. This was something they had been debating internally as well.
Daniel Karrenberg commented that he had witnessed a very strong reaction just before, and during, RIPE 82 and that he would like to gauge what people thought and whether the strategy met their expectations in terms of what the RIPE NCC should do. He asked if this was a surprise or if what the RIPE NCC was doing and putting energy into here was useful.
Randy Bush commented that the change in how the RIPE NCC was approaching this since RIPE 82 was a significant and positive development. He thanked those who had worked on the strategy and said he thought they were moving forward in a very constructive fashion.
Will van Gulik agreed with Randy. He said the way this had been handled was really good since they were receiving information on what was going on and how RIPE NCC would be dealing with the strategy. This was a good way to continue. He added that he supported them all and thanked the team for the work that had been done and hoped to see more information in the future.
Anna Wilson said she thought it was really good to see the principles and requirements. Her only concern was that there would need to be a sanity check to make sure they were not backing themselves into a very niche corner.
She added that if they went through a process and came up with a solution that wasn’t ideal but was the only one that aligned with the principles, they should not be afraid to go back to the community and say they would rethink this to make sure they got something appropriate and sustainable. She added that otherwise they might end up with a really nasty lowest common denominator solution. In particular, she thought they would need to go where the expertise was, which implied big, and that might go against some of the principles.
Felipe replied that he appreciated Anna’s comments and added that this related to the tension he had noted between the first and second principles. The first was that they would ask the community for guidance, and the second was that the RIPE NCC was ultimately responsible for its services. He added that they wouldn’t be afraid to speak up if this was preventing them from hiring the best talent or pushed themselves into a niche where they could only access a few providers for example. He said this could mean that the quality of their services, which was the ultimate goal, would suffer. That’s why they aimed to incorporate this in the principles; to not separate the requirements from the community or the RIPE NCC, it was one basket altogether on this.
Kurtis said that the presentation was very interesting and this framework could serve as a blueprint for other organisations who might not have the time or effort to look into it themselves, so it would be great to make it available.
Daniel noted that the end of this session didn’t mean the end of the discussion. This could continue on the mailing list and the team would use it to update the community over the summer until the next interim meeting.
Felipe added that they were finalising the RIPE Labs article which would cover the contents of what he had presented in more detail and this would be published over the next few days. He said that this would then be a trigger point for more discussion and that they would continue to monitor the mailing list.
Kurt closed the session and thanked attendees for their feedback. He reminded participants that the next interim meeting was on 6 September and that the slides and recording would be made available.