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Meeting Report

The RIPE NCC worked with local host IRNIC, the Iranian ccTLD registry, to provide the event. The day's agenda attracted key players from the local and regional Internet community, many of whom were members of the RIPE NCC. Among the topics explored were RIPE NCC services and tools, IPv6 deployment strategies, Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) and Domain Name System (DNS) issues.

The meeting was opened by Dr. Larijani, director of Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics (IPM), who praised the bottom-up processes that govern the activities of the RIPE NCC. He noted that the meeting provided a valuable opportunity for cooperation and coordination between network operators in the region.

Mr Nasrollah Jahangard, Deputy Minister of ICT and Head of IT, then outlined the state of the Internet in Iran, and the Iranian Government's broadband strategy that aims to connect all businesses in the country by 2015. He emphasised the importance of cooperating with the RIPE NCC in the domain of IP addressing, migration to IPv6, training and security.

Dr. Mahdi Karimi from the Telecommunication Infrastructure Company (Ministry of ICT) gave a presentation on the Iranian telecommunications infrastructure, the status of international gateways and IP network plans. He stressed the importance of the migration from IPv4 to IPv6, noting that Iran's network backbone is almost ready for IPv6 deployment, with the service expected to go live in early 2015.

The Iranian Information Technical Organisation (ITO) presented some countries' experiences with IPv6 deployment and announced a pilot project on the national network for next year. The ITO mentioned that only 2.5% of Iranian networks had migrated to IPv6 and stressed the important role that the RIPE NCC was playing by providing IPv6 training courses in the region.

Shahab Vahabzadeh from Asiatech explained the different IXP models and the benefits that came with them, and suggested they have an IXP close to Tehran. Alireza Saleh from .ir talked about DNS and DNSsec, international and national domain names, and announced that the Internationalised Domain Name (IDN) for Iran would launch in one month's time.

There were a number of presentation from RIPE NCC staff:

  • Kaveh Ranjbar, Chief Information Officer, gave an overview of the RIPE NCC's history and its services
  • Paul Rendek, Director of External Relations, gave an update on the IANA stewardship transition and explained the establishment of a regional presence in the Middle East through the RIPE NCC's new Dubai office
  • Saloumeh Ghasemi, IP Resource Analyst, talked about the management of Internet number resources, summarised the current IPv4 transfer policies, and encouraged everyone to get involved with the policy development process
  • Marco Hogewoning, External Relations Officer, tackled the IPv6 deployment issue from a commercial perspective
  • Christian Teuschel, Senior Software Engineer, went into more details about RIPE Atlas, the RIPE NCC's global Internet measurement network
  • Hisham Ibrahim, External Relations Officer, presented on the RIPE NCC's regional activities such as MENOG, the IPv6 Roadshow, the Train the Trainer programme, and the RIPE Academic Cooperation Initiative (RACI)


Comments from the audience included requests for more support and training in the areas of IPv6 and IXPs (in Farsi if possible), and to have the RIPE NCC act as a facilitator to encourage cooperation between network operators in Iran.

Presentations at the meeting were in English and Farsi. Translation facilities were provided to attendees. All presentations from the meeting are available online.