[members-discuss] RIPE NCC and the geopolitical situation

Afghanistan is in APNIC - only problem child in RIPE at this time is Syria (and possibly Crimean LIRs).
RIPE is generally neutral (with a tendency to Western thinking) and member based (which at times were proportionally more vocal in East) which works well for balance.
NL is working well albeit not neutral in traditional terms; by the costs alone a change is in my opinion (and the few i can speak for) not needed and just a waste of money and resources - relocation costs a LOT and some people need to stay at least for now within, migrate, and get compensated for this.
However, spinning this on there are other EU neutral options without NATO (notably Austria) and EEA (Switzerland) but they are in not really cheaper.
More economical power of the host country is also useful and the NL government traditionally is more progressive and well equipped while both Austria and Switzerland are more traditional which for our use case is worse (but is good for UN institutions that pool in both).
If anything options have to be put up for vote and then likely fail to receive enough support for a single location IMO.
----

The sanctioned countries (or anyone for that matter) do not really have a choice to change to another RIR (especially if that RIR does not want them); we distributed this system on them - they did not pick it and by lack of IANA resources they cannot really change this.
They can also simply use NAT or build a local internet based on internal space/v6 - our Iranian LIRs here can tell you interesting stories on the progress ITC has with this there.
Aside this any large entity (both gov & corp) could buy legacy resources off the market and form a NIR (or even paid RIR) but this is no concern to us as RIPE members, it is just a part of legacy business in larger scale and will happen at some point anyway.
Sanctions are, at this time, not an issue by RIPEs location as far as i am aware - the few Syrian LIRs paid their invoices, anyone else is not really relevant sanctioned on EU/UN scale or relevant to RIPE (eg. North Korea).
Being in the Netherlands i am also sure being the key entity RIPE is and their technological understanding this could be dealt out or at least discussed with the relevant government dept.
--
William Weber
On Tue, Apr 17, 2018 at 18:01, Sascha Luck [ml]  wrote:
All,

the recent discussion about moving the NCC and the relative
political stability of countries in the service region has
caused me to think about the RIPE NCC in the current political
context. THere appears to be an incipient issue here:

1) Problem statement

the current geopolitical situation in the RIPE service region
has, unfortunately, greatly degraded in the recent past. There
are territorial conflicts (Ukraine/Russia), there are outright
civil wars (Syria, Afghanistan) and, perhaps closest to "home",
the cold war is back between "The West" and Russia as well as
Iran (both in the RIPE service region).
The rhetoric in both the EU and NATO (both of which NL is a
member of) is becoming increasingly belligerent and there is an
increasing likelihood of this stance leading to unilateral
sanctions against those seen as "enemies". Since "internet
propaganda", "Russian Trolls", etc are now often taking the blame
for every ill in Europe, I should be surprised if those didn't
also include internet resources. I would not see it without the
realm of the possible, that increasing political/legal pressure
would be brought on the RIPE NCC to deny service and perhaps
revoke resources allocated to these enemies-du-jour.

2) Possible outcomes

- Sanctioned countries might take their ball and go elsewhere
(another RIR?)

- Sanctioned countries might take their resources and set up
their own RIR, approved by IANA or, more likely, not.

- They might refuse (or be prohibited from) cooperation with the
original IANA/RIR/LIR system.

- In a worst-case scenario this could lead to the same resources
used by "opposing" RIRs and a fracturing of the internet.

- In such a case, it is hard to imagine the ITU (as an UN body)
*not* taking control of resource management to prevent such a
fracture.

3) Mitigations

- The only one I can think of is relocating the NCC to a country
- if that exists- which is neutral and does not participate in
these block fights (Switzerland?, Sweden?).

As a question to the board: does the RIPE NCC have any
contingency plans to mitigate this situation when it occurs?

Kind Regards,
Sascha Luck
- 
resources 

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