RIPE 83

24 November, 14:30-15:15 (UTC+1)

Chairs: Kurtis Lindqvist, Rob Evans, Bijal Sanghani
Scribe: Suzanne Taylor/Rosanna Sentito
Status: Final

A. Administrative Matters

Kurtis Lindqvist, Working Group Co-Chair

This presentation is available at:
https://ripe83.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/71-ncc-services-agenda83.pdf

Kurtis Lindqvist, Working Group Co-Chair, opened the session and welcomed everyone. He encouraged everyone to attend a RIPE NCC Services Working Group session in person when possible. He identified and thanked the session scribe and chat monitor and asked whether there were any comments on the RIPE 82 RIPE NCC Services Working Group minutes; as there were none, the minutes were approved.

There were no questions or comments.

B. RIPE NCC Update

Hans Petter Holen, RIPE NCC

This presentation is available at:
https://ripe83.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/66-RIPE-NCC-Update-RIPE-83_HPH-Final.pdf

RIPE NCC Managing Director Hans Petter Holen gave an update on the RIPE NCC’s major activities and projects, including the strategy and action plan and budget, and a preview of 2022 priorities. He highlighted a few projects in particular, including the RIPE Registry, AuthDNS, RIPE Atlas, the RIPE NCC Community Projects Fund, e-learning services, the latest RIPE NCC Internet Country Report, language support and sanctions.

There was a question about whether the RIPE NCC could apply for an exemption to the EU sanctions. Hans Petter replied that there is no existing mechanism within the EU sanctions framework that accommodates exemption requests.

There was a question about an issue raised during RIPE 82 about the possibility of another entity, such as the RIPE NCC’s Dubai office, being able to receive payments instead of the RIPE NCC’s Dutch bank. Hans Petter responded that this will likely be implemented but that it’s been impossible for him to travel to Dubai to sign the necessary documents during the pandemic.

Daniel Neculai, representing himself, asked who at RIPE is responsible for not applying the regulations, as he believed they should have been respected. Hans Petter clarified that it’s not RIPE but the RIPE NCC that is the membership organisation. He said the regulations on the EU website are divided into different levels: those pertaining to countries and those pertaining to individuals. He said that the RIPE NCC’s understanding is that the former does not apply to RIPE NCC services and that, until recently, that was also the understanding with the latter category. However, he said that the RIPE NCC got clarification from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs that in fact there is no legal basis for the RIPE NCC to exclude Internet number resources and services from those services that should be withheld from sanctioned individuals. He said that the RIPE NCC strongly believes that Internet number resources should be kept separate from political disputes and that it’s investigating the possibility of obtaining an exemption from EU sanctions, but that this is difficult and takes time.

Ivan Pietukhov, President of Adamant Group, expressed his concern on behalf of the Ukrainian technical community about RIPE NCC consultant Oleksiy (Alex) Semenyaka, who he said was the best technical representative that he had worked with, but with whom he had not been able to have any contact. He asked whether it would be possible to have Alex continue to work in Ukraine. Hans Petter responded that he was sympathetic to Ivan’s concern and was not pleased with the situation. He said there was not yet a clear answer but that it was being dealt with internally and he hoped to have more information to share soon after the RIPE Meeting.

Sergii Kolesnychenko, DTEL-IX, expressed thanks to all those keeping the Internet running during the pandemic and complimented Hans Petter on his presentation. He also asked about when the RIPE NCC would have more information about Alex Semenyaka, who he said had left a large gap in the local community and that no one else was able to provide the expertise, passion and patience to answer technical questions about IPv4, IPv6, LIRs, RIPE vs. the RIPE NCC, etc. Hans Petter said his answer was the same as previously: that he was looking into it and hoped to have a resolution soon.

Alexander Isavnin, speaking as an “Eastern European Citizen”, also asked when the RIPE NCC planned to restore its activity in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Hans Petter again said that he understood the concern and hoped to have more information to share soon.

In regards to sanctions, Elvis Velea, V4Escrow, suggested that the RIPE NCC should do whatever is necessary to provide services to all of its members, given its monopoly status for a large part of the world. He questioned the change in the RIPE NCC’s strategy with regards to sanctions. Hans Petter Holen responded that the article about sanctions that was recently published on RIPE Labs goes into more detail, but that while sanctions have been in place for some time, the wording around “making economic resources available” is what is open for interpretation. He said that there has been a change in the RIPE NCC’s understanding of whether IP resources were considered economic resources because the Dutch authorities have been more active in sanctions lately, which changed the RIPE NCC’s risk assessment of the situation. He added that the banks have become more aware of the issue recently and that the RIPE NCC had to re-evaluate its position, and that the world is changing. He added that the RIPE NCC can provide all services to sanctioned members, except for allowing Internet number resource transfers. He said he is confident that the issue around payments from sanctioned countries can be solved in the near future, but that the issue of providing services to sanctioned individuals is more complex. He said that he was, however, fully committed to finding a solution and was spending significant time and resources to ensure the RIPE NCC’s continuity of services to all members.

Elvis said he had another question about the RIPE NCC’s ticketing system, but that he would wait until after the next presentation to ask it.

Arash Naderpour, Nikan, asked whether Hans Petter was aware that some RIPE NCC members from sanctioned countries also had issues accessing webinars or online courses that the RIPE NCC offers because they’re hosted on platforms that are not available in those countries. Hans Petter said he was not personally aware of such issues and encouraged Arash to get in touch with him with more details.

Kurt Kayser, speaking as an “Internet citizen”, asked whether the RIPE community could appeal to the EU, rather than the RIPE NCC dealing with the Dutch authorities, for a sanctions exemption. Hans Petter said that was one of many avenues that was available and that community members could contact their regulators and ministries of foreign affairs.

Kurtis closed the queue to any further questions in the interest of time.

C. RIPE NCC Cloud Strategy

Felipe Victolla Silveira, RIPE NCC

This presentation is available at:
https://ripe83.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/64-RIPE-NCC-and-the-Cloud-RIPE-83_FINAL.pdf

Felipe gave an update on the re-evaluation of the RIPE NCC’s cloud strategy after receiving a lot of feedback on the initial proposal, including during two RIPE NCC Services interim sessions. He gave an overview of the new strategy, which was approved by the RIPE NCC Executive Board in September and published on RIPE Labs, but which is still missing a complete framework on criticality. He presented a draft criticality framework and asked for community feedback before publishing a final version.

Ivan Pietukhov, President of Adamant Group, asked whether Felipe was considering distributing cloud services by country, such as placing some resources in Ukraine, for example. Felipe responded that this was indeed one of the things they were looking at with different cloud and CDN providers, as the community expressed a lot of resistance to using American providers.

Elvis Velea, V4Escrow, said he was hoping to see some of the statistics that Felipe had promised on the RIPE NCC’s ticketing system and SLA. Kurtis interrupted to tell Elvis that his question was more appropriate for the operational update that Felipe would be giving in the second half of the session and that the current presentation focussed on the RIPE NCC’s cloud strategy. Elvis asked Felipe whether he would present statistics on that topic during his next presentation, and Felipe said he would.

Brian Nisbet, HEAnet, asked Felipe to further explain one of the slides in his presentation that included a matrix on determining criticality levels, as it was confusing to him. Felipe thanked him for his feedback and said there was another diagram that would have perhaps been better and that he would look at updating the RIPE Labs article on the topic.

Randy Bush, IIJ/Arrcus, said that RPKI should be much more resilient and able to keep going using the current data that it’s fetched for more than 24 hours. He said “the house is not on fire” but that it was warm. Felipe thanked Randy for his comment.

Cynthia Revström, representing herself, asked whether her assumption was correct that it would be difficult to place anything outside the EU. Felipe said that was not necessarily the case and would depend on the cloud provider. He said that the RIPE NCC had been exploring options to either place boxes outside the EU or to use a provider outside of the EU.

Kurtis thanked Felipe and closed the first half of the session before a short coffee break, as the first half had gone overtime.

D. RIPE Database Requirements Task Force Update 

Bijal Sanghani

The presentation is available at:
https://ripe83.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/56-RIPE-DBTF-Update-RIPE-83.pdf

Bijal Sanghani gave an update on the work that the task force has been doing. She thanked the RIPE NCC for their support. The work of the task force resulted in a document, ripe-767, published recently. She said that the RIPE Chair team would coordinate with the relevant working groups to discuss the task force’s recommendations.

There were no questions.

E. RIPE NCC Operational Update

Felipe Victolla Silveira, RIPE NCC

The presentation is available at:
https://ripe83.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/65-Operational-Update-RIPE-83_FINAL.pdf

Felipe presented updates on the RIPE NCC’s workload, services, compliance and infrastructure. He said that the main reasons for the recent workload increase included transfer tickets (2,5 times more than two years ago), new LIR applications (due to an expensive IPv4 market) and lack of staff. On this last point, Felipe mentioned that the RIPE NCC already took measures by hiring extra staff and looking at longer-term solutions that will involve automation and the decentralisation of the Registry. Felipe also reported on the new controls that were implemented a few months back to facilitate ID verification and sanction check processes by using third parties. He said these new measures contributed to improve the registry’s information quality and accuracy. Finally, Felipe talked about the recent efforts to improve the RPKI infrastructure and processes.

Ruediger Volk, my UNorganized self, asked if there was a rough cost estimation for sanctions compliance.

Hans Petter Holen replied that there weren’t any numbers yet; however, it might be provided later in the annual report.

Ivan Pietukhov, ADAMANT, Ltd, asked what to do if one knows about non-existent organisations. Felipe asked Ivan to report this to the RIPE NCC, so that they can start an investigation.

Elvis Daniel Velea, V4escrow, questioned the delay in ticket response caused by due diligence checks. Felipe responded that the investigations for sanctions checks might have triggered other checks and other investigations. However, he added that in most case the requests for transfer were carried out within a couple of days.

Elvis pointed out that ARIN enabled services such as urgent evaluation for members and asked whether RIPE would have considered a paid VIP service for members. Hans Petter replied that he knew that ARIN enabled a Premier program based on membership costs, however he said that the RIPE NCC model is based on equality. He added that RIPE NCC members could discuss this topic but he said that it was unlikely that they will choose to have a Premier programme.

Elvis asked if real-time statistics and response time would be provided along with the other metrics. Hans Petter replied that there was not yet a timeline to provide these figures.

Elvis asked if there was ever a RIPE NCC Service Level Agreement (SLA) in place. Hans Petter said that there was never any formal SLA in place but that Elvis probably referred to an internal target that was shared some years ago. He said that the RIPE NCC was working on refining metrics and objectives and will continue to work on that to improve performance.

James Kennedy, AWS, invited to work on reporting closed organisations as this would optimise related policies. Marco Schmidt, RIPE NCC, said that this can be done using the RIPE NCC contact form.  

Erik Bais, A2B Internet, asked if there were stats available for the suspended RPKI validator since there had been new CDEs published last months. Felipe replied that stats were still available and that there were still people using the RIPE NCC validator.

Dmitry Kohmanyuk, Hostmaster Ltd, asked how many resources were spent in terms of answering requests rather than performing verification and monitoring. Felipe replied that these figures were available in the RIPE NCC Activity Plan and Budget.

F. NCC Services Chair Selection

The presentation is available at:
https://ripe83.ripe.net/archives/video/680/

Rob Evans said that there were no volunteers for the new chair rotation and that little feedback was provided. Bijal was welcomed back as chair of the working group. He also said that decisions for the next co-chair rotation will take place in May.

G. Open Microphone Session

There were no comments.

Z. Any Other Business 

There were no comments.