Arbiter Appointments
The following individuals have been appointed by the RIPE NCC Executive Board to the RIPE NCC Arbiters Panel:
Before they can take their place on the Arbiters Panel, these candidates must have their appointments approved by the RIPE NCC membership at the RIPE NCC General Meeting, 16-18 May 2018.
More information on the Arbitration Process
Biographies
Timothy Mahoney
Timothy Mahoney (1976) began his career in Networking and Telecommunications in 2001, starting out as a Satellite Technician with a background in Systems Administration. In 2003 he joined satellite Internet startup Constellation Networks as a Satellite Technician and was soon promoted to Teleport Operations Manager.
Timothy became involved with RIPE in 2005 when Constellation’s Swedish entity Oxieparabolen AB became an LIR. Timothy spent 16 years at Constellation connecting NGOs, hospitals, disaster relief projects and small ISPs around the world to the Internet via satellite. Currently, Timothy is working with IT Security at Cyberdyne.is.
Thomas Okalla
Born in Douala on December 18, 1959 in Cameroon, in a family of eleven children, Thomas Okalla studied at the Mvolyé Catholic School near Yaoundé, Cameroon. He went on to secondary school successively, at STOLL school in Akono near Yaounde, at Mbalmayo High School and at Douala Technical High School, where he graduated in 1978. After a year spent in Douala where he successively held the positions of professor of Mathematics at the College of Ndokotti near Douala, then technician at the Geophysics Department of an oil company. He passed a UNDP competition in 1979 to follow Aeronautical Mechanic training at IFR Les AILES school in Geneva, Switzerland.
After the training course in Aeronautical Mechanic he moved to France where he began a degree course in Mathematics in 1981. In 1986, he validated the degree of Master of Mathematics from the University of Paris VII - JUSSIEU, then DEA of Theoretical Mechanics in 1987. In 1987, he was admitted to the ENSAE - SUPAERO Toulouse where he validated a Master in aeronautical and space techniques. In February 1989, he was hired by BUREAU VERITAS as Engineer to control public passenger aircrafts and issue certificates of airworthiness. He stayed there until August 1989.
In November 1989, he was hired in the CEA group as Project Manager for the design and construction of non-destructive testing robots for nuclear reactors. He stayed there until August 1995. In October 1995, he finalized his project to create an Internet service company after operating a Minitel service for a few months. AFRICANCES was born. It provided Internet access services, messaging services, web hosting services, etc. It was also involved in the provision of universal Internet access service based on roaming operators such as IPASS and GRIC communications. Thomas Okalla was the CTO of AFRICANCES until July 2003.
During his activity, AFRICANCES also realized for his customers, operators and large companies the design and build of Internet POPs, VSAT networks. Finally, AFRICANCES exploited it’s own POPs such as: Aix-en-Provence, Paris-TH2, Pointe-Noire.
In September 2003, a break was made to start a three-year training course at IEP Aix-en-Provence. This course was validated by the Diploma of the IEP of Aix-en-Provence in 2006. In January 2007, Thomas Okalla was hired by an IT services company to work for the Airbus aircraft manufacturer's Network Operation Center in Saint-Martin-du-Touch near Toulouse. In this position, he was responsible for maintaining the Airbus global network under operational conditions until December 2010.
In January 2011, Thomas Okalla was solicited by a hosting services operator in the context of a merger with a telecom operator to lead telecom services delivered to its customers. The company has several POPs in France with the presence on several IXPs. It also provides MPLS services and Internet services to its customers from all over Europe. In this position until today, Thomas Okalla has restructured the telecom backbone of the company, he has ensured its operational independence by becoming an LIR and migrating all the addressing plan to its own IPv4 addresses. Finally, he guaranteed the high availability of telecom infrastructure up to 99.99%.The next projects will be the activation in our Backbone of IPv6 connectivity, the deployment of DNSSEC, the deployment of SDN and SDWAN, and the improvement of Anti-DDOS features.
In this position and as administrator of the LIR, he participates in the life of the RIPE community through participation in Webinars, trainings and some events.
Miquel Illa Oliveras
Born in Girona, 14 August 1973. He was trained as Engineer. Started programming in university and became a software developer and IT expert in the late 90's. IT Manager for several multinationals for more than 20 years, founded a startup in 2007.
Started doing basic hosting, growing slowly to general hosting, virtualization and nowadays has grown up to be hosting and providing IT services to local SME companies in the area of Barcelona, Spain. He now manages Winfor, which provides service to more than 500 customers in spain in the area of IT and software development.
Internet enthusiast, always looks for better ways to operate and improve communications. Right now doing the first insights into IoT and 5G.
Payam Poursaied
Graduated from the most reputable university in Iran, dual major in Industrial Engineering (BSc and MSc) and Computer Engineering(BSc) with more than 15 years experience in one of the largest ISP in Iran.
I have been working as a Field expert with WHO in 2006 and 2007, part of a team working on developing a template for cross-border advertising of Tabaco. In Iran, I’m also holding the license for Network and Software consulting. Furthermore, I’m accepted as an ICT expert in the field of ICT to technically analyse the ICT cases referred by courts. I have also been involving in RIPE-related activities in Shatel for many years.
Sander Steffann
I have been working in the Internet community since 1995, when I helped starting a small ISP in Apeldoorn in the Netherlands. My involvement in the RIPE community started in September 2004 with attending the RIPE 49 meeting in Manchester.
I became co-chair of the RIPE Address Policy Working Group (APWG) in May 2007 at the RIPE 54 meeting in Tallinn, and I resigned from that position in May 2018 at the RIPE 76 meeting in Marseille. I provide consultancy and training to enterprises and ISPs in Europe, the Middle East and the US, mostly related to IPv6. As an ex-WG Chair, my experience with and knowledge of our consensus based bottom up Policy Development Process is quite extensive.