Draft minutes of meeting at RIPE 20
Mike Norris mnorris at dalkey.hea.ie
Tue Feb 21 13:10:36 CET 1995
RIPE 20, Amsterdam
January 25-27th, 1995
Chairman : Mike Norris
2nd draft - Local IR working group minutes
1. Introduction
Mike Norris, the chairman welcomed the participants to the Local IR meeting.
Anne Lord volunteered as scribe to take the minutes. The group met twice,
for 1.5 hours each meeting. Proposed alterations to the agenda are below:
- start with items 1, 2 and 3 on the agenda
- follow item 3 with item 12. (will be reported as per scheduled agenda order)
2.1 RIPE 19 minutes
There were no changes to the minutes as previously circulated.
2.2 RIPE 19 actions
18.3 done : Geert Jan de Groot
Investigate monthly publication of error files on reverse zone files,
similar to the host count error files.
19.2 closed : Mike Norris
At the 20th meeting to raise the training of local IR's as a topic for
discussion.
19.3 open : Daniel Karrenberg
To make an inventory document of the problems associated with charging for
address space.
19.4 closed : Daniel Karrenberg
To recirculate draft proposal on use of private address space for VSE's not
connecting to the Internet. Circulate proposal to the WG mailing list.
19.5 closed : RIPE NCC
To organise a meeting between regional registries, with representatives from
the RIPE local - IR working group.
19.6 closed : Geert Jan
To document new attribute "status" proposed to describe whether a network
is delegated, reserved or assigned.
19.7 open : RIPE NCC
Circulate revised ripe-115 to the local-ir mailing list for comments.
19.8 open : Daniel Karrenberg
To prepare specification for the format of the list of service providers.
3. Reports from Regional Registries
There was an open invitation to all local registries to contribute under
this agenda item.
3.1 Kim Hubbard - InterNIC
Kim Hubbard reported on the IP registry activities of the InterNIC, giving
also some background information about how their operation is organised.
Overview statistics:
- 3 staff handle 3000 - 4000 requests per month.
- Each staff member handles approx 20-30 telephone calls per working day.
- They handle approximately 5000/month allocations and assignments to ISP's.
- 2000/month single and small block assignments.
- Class B assignments are running at 20/month. This has been quite stable
for some time.
Address Justifications requested:
class B's
- min 10% utilisation expected
- subnet mask plans
- network diagrams
class C's
- CIDR blocks to ISP's gradual increase in allocations "handholding"
procedure will be initiated in the future.
- subnetting plans
- host/subnet counts
The procedure of referring small ISP's to larger ones for address space will
change.
Additional Services by IP Numbers Group
- shared WHOIS project
approximately 2000 reassignments/month
- inverse address registration
approximately 500 delegations/month
- AS number allocation
approximately 60/month
currently not a lot of justification is required by requestors
Current Issues facing the InterNIC
- rfc1597/1627 policy on encourage its usage or not
- single low host requests
- "portable" addresses
- ISP allocation guidelines - ISP's want to see these in writing
- registry guidelines - the InterNIC is working with other Regional Registries
in this area to coordinate and streamline efforts
A copy of the presentation can be found in the presentations directory:
ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/presentations/xxxxxx kim nagged
3.2 RIPE NCC Report - Daniel Karrenberg
The slides of Daniels presentation were part of the RIPE NCC Report
which was presented in the plenary session, which are available from
ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/presentations/xxxxx nag dfk
Overall the statistics shown in the report reflect the expected linear
growth of the Internet with respect to DNS, the number of local IR's,
It is expected that there will be around 240 local IR's by the end of
1995. The current breakdown is as follows:
Enterprise Registry: 14
Last Resort Registry: 31
Provider Registry: 103
of which:
17 are large
29 are medium
57 are small
It is clear that the growth curve of the number of new local registries in
increasing. The new registries require more and more support and guidance
and are a significant load factor on the RIPE NCC. However, the up side is
that they should provide more income in the long term.
The number of incoming messages to hostmaster is increasing and is now
averaging around 37 messages a day. The workload and growth is such that
this now accounts for more than 50% of staff time, leaving very little time
for other needed activities. The staff situation is improving - now 4.5 FTE's,
but is not enough to cope with the pace of growth.
With reference to the invoicing for 1994, some erroneous bills have been
sent for which Daniel apologised.
In terms of activities over the last quarter, the RIPE NCC is just "keeping
up". A better billing mechanism has been implemented, new classless db
is running well, there has been internal reorganisation and new staff have
to be trained.
In the questions that followed, Daniel made it clear that the workload
of the registry work was such that it had become clear that there was
a need for a ticketing system that integrated with mail was needed. On
this there was a request to the participants for input - Mark Kosters of the
InterNIC has developed an in-house tool that might be useful although
it is still under development.
There was a question concerning the criteria for local registries:
whether they were still the same as those stated in ripe-104. In response,
Daniel noted that because of the very high number of new local registriess,
the procedures for management of the address space with respect to the
local registries has been tightened. Basically now, all new registries
follow a "handholding" procedure with an assignment window of 0 which
increments to larger amounts over time. Ripe-104 will be revised to reflect
this.
There was also a question regarding the newer "Enterprise Registries" and
who qualifies in this respect. Enterprise Registries are those which
coordinate the address space deployment for an organisation. One of the
criteria to determine "eligibility" is the existence of a large corportate
networking division within that Enterprise. It was felt that written
guidelines were needed in this respect and that these should go into
the next revision of ripe-104.
3.3 Local Registries Report
Wilfried Woeber, had previously circulated to the list some questions
concerning the policy on reallocation of address space in the light of an
ACOnet customer who reallocated addresses.
This is quite clearly undesirable. Wilfried said that he would put a
clear message in the ACOnet application form in an attempt to prevent
this, and urged other local registries to do likewise.
4. Charging in 1995
The charging model for 1995 is fixed. It was agreed at the RIPE
contributors meeting held on September 21st, 1994.
The workplan for 1995 and the expenditure budget of 407,000 ECU
were presented at the meeting and both were unanimously accepted.
The current status of the budget is that 30% of the planned expenditure
has not yet been raised for 1995. During 1995, paying registries will
receive a service level above non-paying registries. As from February 1st
registries that have committed in writing will get a priority service.
To speed up paperwork, the RIPE NCC will accept a committment to pay
from a registry as though it is a formal agreement. This is only
until February 28th, 1995.
There were a number of comments and questions from the audience regarding
the financial status of the RIPE NCC and the billing arrangements.
Funders were encouraged to use the <billing at ripe.net> if they had any
queries.
There was a question concerning unfair competition from service providers
who are not funding the RIPE NCC and therefore do not have the same
financial committments. Daniel commented that he cannot determine who
is and who is not a service provider, nor who is or who is not a registry.
He can only control the service level they receive.
5. Future charging models
Daniel Karrenberg reported on the current thinking for future changes to
the funding model. The NCC Contributors Committee have discussed and
approve a system of usage based charging in 1996. For this to be in place
from 1996 onwards, it is vital that the discussions begin soon. Critical
decisions need to be made regarding the metrics to be used, the percentage
basis of the "usage" based fee. Input is sought from the local registries
themselves and the discussion on the local-ir at ripe.net mailing list should
begin between now and the next RIPE meeting in Rome.
Concern was expressed that public bodies and government funded IP
services will need to know their expected costs ahead of the financial
year.
6. Training
Given the overhead that the new registries are now putting on the RIPE NCC,
it is clear that is now a need for some registry "induction" or training
to take place. It was agreed at the contributors last year in September,
that the start up fee would be used to provide some of the resources for
this activity. The proposed medium for the training is the WWW. All local
registries are asked to provide any material if they have in-house material
themselves that is applicable.
Action: Mike Norris
To send mail to the list asking for input on the content of the training
material.
It was agreed that the focus of the training would not be "how to be a
service provider" but on the functions of a local registry, especially
with respect to RIPE interaction.
7. Revision of ripe-104
Very Small Enterprises - VSE's
Previously circulated to the mailing list was a document by Daniel Karrenberg
describing a proposed method of handling requests from VSE's whose address
space assignment utilisation rates are very low. There was no feedback to
the document so the discussions have died.
Briefly, the document proposed the following :
- if no outside connectivity and low host numbers, dont assign unique
address space.
- when VSE's do connect, ISP's are recommended to use dynamic address space
assignment.
Wilfried Woeber commented that the ideas presented in the paper sounded
sensible, but he was concerned that he lacked a thorough understanding
of the technical implications. It was agreed that an "applications document"
was needed to accompany this proposal and to circulate the draft of this
document to the list.
Action: Daniel Karrenberg
To draft outline "applciations document" to support the proposed plan
on how to deal with address space requests from VSE's
Action: Mike Norris
To recirculate to the local-ir at ripe.net mailing list the document on
VSE's as drafted by Daniel Karrenberg.
Slow start of registries - Assignment Window
In the next revision of this document, there will be a description of the
"handholding" procedures and the sliding window mechanism which is now
applied to all new registries.
Daniel Karrenberg announced that a number of registries, in the past, have
assigned excessive amounts of address space to their own organisations. This
practice clearly does not follow the procedures for address space assignment
and is not in the interests of conserving address space. After some discussion
it was agreed that local IR's will themselves have a self-assignment window,
with a threshold of either 4 or 8 class C`s which they can assign to themselves
without review. Anything higher than this, must be submitted to the RIPE NCC
for review. Daniel expressed a preference for a window of 4 class C's.
Future of Last Resort Local IR's
Last Resort IR's are not currently being charged for RIPE NCC services,
because they provide valuable support function to the RIPE NCC.
In the future, 2 options present themselves:
o last resort IR's charge for their services like any other ISP and
multiple ISP's may co-exist. They could be called "provider independant"
registries
o The distinction between last resort and other registries will disappear
as all will be providing a chargeable service.
This brings up the issue of the "ownership" of address space.
The discussion of portable address space within the IANA is currently
very topical. The IANA says that *unless* a contractual arrangement
with the customer is made, by the ISP, the customer retains the right to
take the address space with them if they change ISP. To try to negate
this trend, ISP's could make a charge for out-of-block routing
announcements. The customer is faced with the choice of a price/
renumbering trade-off.
8. Revision of European IP network number form (ripe-124)
- There was a request that the supporting text for the admin-c: contact
person asks that the contact person is available at the site of the network.
9. Global Coordination
Daniel Karrenberg reported that both the InterNIC and the AP-NIC procedures
with respect to address space assignments are in line with the RIPE NCC.
However, the IANA does still make large assignments (which the InterNIC
has to carry out).
It is felt by all Regional Registries that rfc1466 is in need of revision.
On Friday 27th January, 1995, a meeting has been scheduled between all the
Regional Registries to discuss and align policies as well as draft a revision
of rfc1466.
Action: Mike Norris
To circulate to the local-ir at ripe.net mailing list a summary of the meeting
between the Regional Registries.
10. Reverse domains
This is reported previously by Geert Jan de Groot under 18.3
11. Tools
- Geert Jan reported that 70% of the reverse domain delegation requests contain
errors in their set up and are returned to the sender. The French NIC is
developing a tool (Christophe Chaillot) which does some error checking. The
tool will be distributed once it is finished.
- Daniel Karrenberg asked the audience how many people were using the stt tool
developed at the RIPE NCC. No-one admitted to using it.
12. Database issues
12.1 RIPE handles
Geert Jan gave a short presentation on the use of RIPE handles and how
they can be generated using the tool that he has developed. The tool
uses finger to find the first free handle in the RIPE database.
Action: Geert Jan de Groot: to summarise the RIPE handle tool and to
distribute to the local-ir at ripe.net mailing list.
12.2 Use of "person" object
The use of the person object was clarified. The admin-c: contact should
be a person and the tech-c: contact can be a NOC.
13. AOB
Billing
There is a directory ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/new-registry which contains
all the billing relevant documentation. Daniel Karrenberg asked everyone to
note that the format of some of the information in this directory has changed
recently.
Part of the registry database maintained by the RIPE NCC has "billing
information". Please note that if you are a member of the EU, you should
quote your VAT number otherwise you will be charged +17.5% extra.
If you have any doubts about the billing data we hold about your organisation
please dont hesitate to check with <billing at ripe.net> to ensure that our
data is correct and up to date.
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