Candidate Biographies

Biography

Ondřej has more than 20 years of experience in the telecommunications industry and the Internet. He studied Computer Science at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University and Executive MBA at University of Pittsburgh - Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business. During his studies at Charles University he founded an important open source project – routing daemon BIRD - and started working for the company IPEX, a nation-wide ISP in the Czech Republic. He later became Technical director and a member of the board at IPEX.

Since December 2004, Ondřej has been CEO of the CZ.NIC association. CZ.NIC currently covers many activities for the local and global community, e.g. developing open source software and hardware like BIRD, Knot DNS and Turris. It runs the national cyber security team of the Czech Republic (CSIRT.CZ). Over the course of Ondřej’s career, he has served on the boards of many Internet related bodies and additionally supported many activities. He is the Chair of the board of NIX.CZ, and a member of the boards of Euro-IX and IX-F. He is also a committee member of SSAC and on the programme committee for CSNOG. He has regularly attended RIPE meetings since 2003.

Ondřej's hobbies include basketball, travelling and programming open source software. He speaks Czech and Slovak, is fluent in English and partly understands German and Russian.

LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ondrejfilip/

Motivation

During my career, I have been involved in almost all aspects of the current Internet ecosystem, this includes working for ISP, IXP, domain name registry, government regulator, academic NREN, ICANN and also RIPE working groups. This helps me to understand various aspects of the community and members, their needs, strategies and also how they interact with each other. I am also used to working in a culturally diverse environment.

I have decided to volunteer again because I believe RIPE NCC requires a person with management and board experience, as well as a person with a detailed knowledge of our organisation, to ensure stability, business continuity and smooth leadership transition.

For the next three years, I would like to concentrate mainly on organisation stability, keeping the member fees low and to maintain the global and open Internet.

Biography

Kevin Meynell has been involved with RIPE and the wider RIR community for nearly 30 years. He worked for TERENA (now the GÉANT Association) which was the parent organisation of the RIPE NCC, and was the Training Manager at APNIC, so has wide experience of number resources and RIR operations and has contributed to RIPE documents.

He is currently a member of the RIPE and APRICOT Programme Committees, and was recently appointed as liaison to the RIPE Chair Nominations Committee. He was also co-founder of the Central Asian Peering and Interconnect Forum (CAPIF), co-chaired the CENTR Working Group, and was previously a member of the ENOG Programme Committee. He has attended most RIPE meetings over the past 10 years, and has attended and presented at several MENOG, SEE and previously ENOG meetings.

Kevin worked for the Internet Society from 2015 until 2023 which included leading the MANRS Routing Security initiative; working on IXP and Community Network development in the RIPE NCC region; and running its Deploy360 programme that promoted deployment of IPv6, DNSSEC and RPKI. He previously worked at TERENA (now GÉANT Association) and JANET (now Jisc) to develop research and education networks, to deploy new services such as 6NET (IPv6), Shibboleth and PKIs, and to develop TF-CSIRT as the European Forum of CSIRTs. He was also amongst the first three employees who established CENTR to represent ccTLDs on DNS technical and policy matters.

Having been a company director and having run several industry consortiums, he can also bring financial management and a good understanding of corporate responsibilities along with his experience of working with non-profit organisations within the Internet ecosystem. He is currently living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Motivation

• In a changing Internet and wider political landscape, I believe it's important to have RIPE NCC Board members without political influences or commercial interests who are motivated to act in an impartial manner in service of the RIPE Community. I also believe it's important to have had an ongoing presence throughout the RIPE region to understand the issues and concerns of RIPE NCC members and other stakeholders everywhere in the region.
  
• The RIPE NCC is facing financial challenges with the downturn in the Internet industry, consolidation of LIRs, difficulty in collecting fees, along with increasing costs. It's therefore important to consider funding models that are fair, equitable and sustainable, as well as considering whether there are any operational efficiencies that can be made.
  
• The RIR system is likely to face increasing political challenges in the coming years and it’s therefore imperative to look at how RIRs can address these as well as improve and strengthen their own global coordination.
  
• The RIPE NCC Board does not currently have term limits which has discouraged potential candidates from putting themselves forward and created a generational gap in leadership. This should be addressed along with ensuring the Board has sufficient skills to provide effective oversight of the RIPE NCC activities and to encourage the next generation of Internet stewards.

Experience and Motivation

I have been in the RIPE community since the early years, and am running for the NCC EB because I care deeply about it and feel a duty to community service and to helping with the delicate balance between the NCC being a business responsible to its members, and its role of service to the Internet community and to civil society.

I have been on the boards of a credit union, an ISP, a food coop, an RIR (ARIN's founding board), etc., a VP with far too many reporting under me (so stopped), but still configure routers and servers on a daily basis to keep my head in reality.

Like the rest of us, I have opinions, but try to keep my ears and mind open. While the NCC needs to run as a business, as it is a steward of public resources and data, it must serve a significant societal function for its members and for civil society. This is a continual balance. The EB is responsible for that balance, the policies which support it, but not the micro-management of the NCC. The EB is a board, not management; there is a very significant difference.

I do not have an agenda, per se. The EB has some serious hills to climb, from the charging scheme, to political fragmentation in the region, fiscal responsibility, diversity and equity, coordination with other RIRs, the NRO, and the ICANN, data sovereignty, climate, and the list goes on. Each is complex, has subtleties, and will require learning, listening, and study. The members and the RIPE community undoubtedly have even more issues, ideas, and needs. The EB, NCC, members, RIPE community, et al. are stewards of a rapidly expanding, critical, and vulnerable Internet. This is not an easy or simple time for any of us.

Biography

I am a Fellow at Arrcus, a routing software stack vendor, and am a Research Fellow at IIJ, the first commercial ISP in Japan, where we lived for ten years (given circumstances I may be emigrating again).

I have over 55 years in the computer industry. I have been a user and occasional implementer of networking from the ARPANET to the current day Internet. I architect and design protocols, obsess about security, measure and redesign routing, and try to promote rigor and simplicity in the Internet.

Thanks to the generosity of Cisco, Cogent, Equinix, Evocative, Google, HE, Juniper, NTT, etc., I am a lead maintainer and cat herder of an informal research laboratory of three PoPs with routers, servers, clusters, etc. to facilitate permissionless research.

Recent Past (last few decades)

Starting in 2000, I worked on routing security protocol design and implementation, notably drove the RPKI and Route Origin Validation design and protocols. I spent a few years as chief cat herder for the CrypTech Project, an open source, please steal this code, HSM design effort.

I have been involved since the end of the '80s with the deployment and integration of appropriate networking technology in the developing world, founding and an original principal for the Network Startup Resource Center, a US NSF sponsored pro bono effort. I rant often against technocolonialism.

I was the founding engineer at RAINet and Verio, later NTT, a global backbone provider from which I graduated in 2001.

In 2012, I was in the first tranche of Internet Hall of Fame inductees, received the Rob Blokzijl Award from the RIPE community in 2023, and have received a number of other Awards.

Community Service

Served on the RIPE Code of Conduct Team, the 2025 RIPE Chair Nominating Committee, and have vague memory of co-chairing at least one RIPE WG.

Helped found and organized a number of operators' fora and RIRs: NANOG, AfNOG, AfriNIC, ARIN, etc., and participated in the meetings and processes of all RIRs and many NOGs.

Served on many program committees and technical conference organizations.

Spent many years in the IETF in service roles and [co-]authored far too many Internet-Drafts and RFCs, was Ops Area Director, chaired the main DNS WG, etc.

Helped the ISOC organize the infrastructure for the ORG/NET work and helped with a number of projects in developing economies, and helped with the Hall of Fame selection.

Participated in a number of computer language standards efforts. E.g. for a decade led the US Modula-2 language standards efforts. Authored, but did not design, the basic FidoNet protocol standard.