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Meeting Report

The RIPE 41 Meeting was held in the heart of Amsterdam at the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky, from 14-18 January. The meeting rated high in content and was, once again, well attended by the RIPE NCC membership and the RIPE community. A total of 326 RIPE NCC members and others representing governments, associations and commercial organisations convened at the Krasnapolsky.

It was a pleasure to have colleagues from the other Regional Internet Registries, APNIC and ARIN, in attendance to join in the discussions and give thoughtful input. Their presence helped to broaden the understanding of global policy development and enhanced our knowledge of the issues concerning the APNIC and ARIN regions.

We also welcomed staff members from ICANN who presented a status report and future plans to participants of the Plenary session.

We want to thank Nominum Inc., and EUROPOC, who were the sponsors for the RIPE 41 meeting social events, and express our gratitude to Philip Smith of Cisco Systems who provided our WaveLAN base station and cards for wireless connectivity.

A summary of RIPE 41 highlights and actions follows:

REGIONAL INTERNET REGISTRY(RIR) STATISTICS:

Regional Internet Registry statistics displayed at RIPE 41 showed interesting changes in allocation trends. There was a slight slowdown in both IPv4 and ASN allocation. However, IPv6 allocations continue to increase. Currently, 124 IPv6 allocations have been made globally. The presentation on global RIR statistics can be found at: http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-41/

INTERNET ADDRESS POLICY ISSUES:

  • Sabrina Waschke of the RIPE NCC reported that the Registration Services area is now fully staffed and RS services are stable.

IPv4 Policy Document:

  • A new timeline has been proposed for the policy document draft. The RIPE community is encouraged to send comments to the <RIPE-185bis@ripe.net> mailing list. A new IPv4 policy document is to be publshed at the end of February. The planned schedule is as follows:
    • 11-25 Jan: First revision period (2 weeks)
    • 25 Jan-7 Feb: Editing by the RIPE NCC (2 weeks) with comments to be incorporated
    • 7 Feb: Second draft published
    • 7 Feb-21 Feb: Second revision period (2 weeks)
    • 21-28 Feb: Final editing by the RIPE NCC (1 week)
    • 28 Feb: *** Publish final draft ***

IPv6 Policy Document:

  • The current draft of the interim policy presented at RIPE 41 is moving in the right direction, although more work is needed. Once consensus is reached, then a "final" policy document will be prepared. The issue of greatest concern seems to be the criteria to be used to determine eligibility for an initial IPv6 allocation.
  • An interim first allocation criteria proposal was almost unanimously approved by the RIPE 41 Working Group attendees and suggests the allocation of a /32 block to any LIR requesting an IPv6 allocation (subject to documentation of the first IPv6 assignment). The Working Group Chair will provide a follow-up report on this session and request continued input from the community.
  • Further work towards consensus on a global policy will continue via discussions on the global IPv6 mailing list: <global-v6@lists.apnic.net>. The community hopes to achieve consensus before the RIPE 42 Meeting.

RIPE DATABASE ISSUES:

  • The RIPE community is very keen on further improving the quality of data in the RIPE Database. The proposal of the automatic Database clean-up routine is fully supported.
  • The security level of the Database is among other areas where we may see further improvements. Proposals aimed at this goal were positively accepted by the audience: deprecation of the MAIL-FROM authentication scheme, and using MD5 as a replacement ofcrypted password authentication scheme (like
    auth: MD5-PW 4aabd3dbc0746c8a4b5467f99a4f8524).
  • The IRT object is a good addition to the above scheme. We still need to resolve some open policy issues with the CERT and similar communities.
  • The RPSL object parsing library was presented in the Database Working Group. The presentation received a positive response. This is a good addition to the members' toolset, making handling of the Whois output easier and more consistent.

ROUTING ISSUES:

  • A new manual and FAQ were released just before the RIPE 41 Meeting. The manual shows several examples of analysing routing problems using the RIS.
  • A query to the Database was added which shows the most active prefixes and is a first step towards a more detailed flapping analysis.
  • An IPv6 IRR task force has been initiated. The RPSLng discussion was fruitful and cooperative; it aimed at looking at possible solutions to the problem of extending RPSL to support IPv6 and multicast
  • A "multihoming document" for LIRs will be created.

TOOLS ISSUES:

  • During the Tools Working Group, a warning was issued about the deployment of Whois-CGI on web servers. Denial of service attacks may be an issue. It is recommended that LIRs or RIPE community members ask the RIPE NCC for assistance if plans include the deployment of Whois-CGI on their web servers.
  • Pilot PGP exercises started for Hostmasters with the anticipation that LIRs will get "clear-signed PGP emails" from the RIPE NCC. Testing is now in progress with plans to be "live" by RIPE 42.

DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM (DNS):

  • The IAB outsourced the operation of e164.arpa to the RIPE NCC together with instructions on how to handle requests received. It must be noted that the ITU is responsible for all decisions with respect to delegation of domains under e164.arpa. Further information regarding ENUM is made available on the RIPE NCC web site.
  • It was announced that an ISC BIND forum is being set up for funding BIND developments. The RIPE NCC is a charter member. More information on BIND can be found at: http://www.isc.org
  • NLnet Labs announced that it is working on an independent implementation of an authoritative name server daemon (NSD). Alpha is to be ready by the next IETF meeting in March 2002. The work is being done in collaboration with the RIPE NCC.

TEST TRAFFIC MEASUREMENTS (TTM):

  • The Test Traffic Measurements group provided a well-received public demonstration of test box performance and data analysis at RIPE 41.
  • A new interface showing measurement results in near real time has been released.
  • Several analysis of the data by the RIPE NCC were presented, including:
    • 2 case studies showing how to detect problems in upstream providers using TTM
    • Trend analysis
    • IPDV
    • Bandwidth measurements
  • The number of test-boxes sold in 2001 was lower than expected. Several factors contributed, most importantly the general state of the economy and a lack of knowledge on how to use these boxes by potential users. The RIPE NCC will address the latter in the next months.

ANTI-SPAM:

  • California legislation against Spam used as a case study for developing anti-Spam efforts elsewhere as it appears to be working, although there have been no convictions under the law as yet.
  • There is an action to find a way of supporting MAPS; possibly hosting a MAPS server in Europe. This will be discussed further at the RIPE 42 Meeting.

TUTORIALS AND PRESENTATIONS:

  • During the European Operators Forum (EOF), the following topical issues were presented:
    • "Deploying Tight-SLA services on an IP Backbone":
    • "DDoS: Undeniably a global Internet problem looking for a global solution":
  • The IP Request tutorial, a refined version of the LIR training course, was held following the RIPE 41 sessions. Highly interactive, the tutorial was a big success with a sizeable group attending. The RIPE NCC will continue to provide such tutorials at the RIPE Meetings. An IP Request tutorial is planned for RIPE 42.
  • M. Stuart Lynn, President and CEO of ICANN, provided an informative organisational report that covered what ICANN does, the functions of IANA, along with a broadened view of ICANN's structure.
  • Marc Blanchet of Viagenie, Canada, reported on the Internalisation of Domain Names and how the IDN group has been working with the IETF in attaining its goal.
  • David Ward of Cisco Systems, U.S.A., presented "Network and Node Availability Improvements Through Routing Protocol and Signalling Extensions", that discussed dynamic routing protocols and how to handle planned and/or unplanned software restartsor hardware changes.

THE HOSTMASTER CENTRE:

  • The Hostmaster Centre was open the whole week at the Hotel Krasnapolsky. As this facility continues to be used by participants of RIPE Meetings, the RIPE NCC will ensure that a Hostmaster Centre is provided at RIPE 42.

RIPE 42

  • Join us at the RIPE 42 Meeting in Amsterdam. The event will take place on 29 April - 3 May 2002, once again at the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky. It will be held during the Netherlands's Queen's Day, an extraordinary and popular occasion, promising large crowds everywhere. (We recommend not arriving on Tuesday, April 30, to avoid the traffic.) Hotel rooms throughout the city will book fast so don't delay. Make your travel plans and hotel arrangements soon! We'll see you at RIPE 42!