RIPE 88
20th May 2024 ‑‑ Main Hall.
Newcomers' Introduction.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Good morning everyone, this is the Newcomers Introduction Session. If you don't want to be here, then you are in the wrong room, it's only thing going on right now, it's great to see so many newcomers here at the meeting in RIPE 88 in Krakow, my name is Mirjam Kuhne, I am the RIPE chair. If you have any questions, I am Mirjam, the RIPE chair, since 2020. I have been involved in the RIPE community for a very long time and also worked at the RIPE NCC, on and off a few times in different roles. And yeah, so I have been, I have a lot of experience, so please don't hesitate, come to me and ask me any questions you might have about the RIPE meeting or the community at large or if you want to meet anybody in particular.
Also have the Vice Chair, there you are, right in front of me, if you want to introduce yourself.
NIALL O'REILLY: Thank you Mirjam, I'm Niall O'Reilly, you even have a photo of me, I have been coming to RIPE meetings even longer than Mirjam has, I started in 1989 and at the time the internet in Europe was still mainly present in universities and research institutes, the commercialisation was only beginning. So like most of the other people who were coming to RIPE meetings then, we were getting the DNS sorted out, we were getting all sorts of initial infrastructure done and I was delighted to have RIPE meetings to come to because I could learn stuff because it was all new and in the intervening years, I have led a couple of RIPE working groups, DNS related ones and 2020 like Mirjam, I was selected to join her and be Vice Chair of RIPE and it's still great fun.
And there we are. I will hand the mic back to Mirjam
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks Niall, a bit more information because he mentioned where he is from, I am from Berlin originally, studied computer science at the technical university in Berlin and now we have, many more people from Germany usually at this meeting, I am happy to meet you all.
A bit of a blast from the past. This is just a bit of fun. I don't know if any of you have seen or if you had one of those machines in the back, yeah, I see someone. But it's fascinating it shows the internet in Europe in 1990, roughly around the time when the web community started, and you probably won't be able to read this but they are mostly research networks that were connected at the time. Interestingly enough we had a couple of weeks ago in Athens at the southeast European meeting, we had a special session of the 40th anniversary of the run community which was actually the academic networks at the time that started a lot of the internet developments in Europe and there was really fascinating to meet those pioneers.
So for a longest time, we had a connectivity working group at the beginning of the RIPE community and those people would keep track of those maps and would add when country was added to the Internet or a new network was added, it was a big deal and new graph was produced and published on the website. You can still find some of those earlier diagrams as a RIPE document in the RIPE document store on the RIPE website.
So some work for you here, maybe there's a poll on the Meetecho if you are online, you will see that, pop in the interface, you are here in the room I'd like you to try to this out, you had an email that had a Meetecho link, if you go to that email, there's two links online and there's a section that says if you are on site, click this link and then you will, it will open the Meetecho app in your browser.
Meetecho is the platform using throughout the week, it might be useful for you to play around with it a bit. Have you started a poll? Yes, it's going on. So the question is do you know the difference between RIPE and the RIPE NCC. Often blur the difference there and everybody can understand RIPE to mean RIPE NCC or RIPE, we are going to tell you a bit more about this. But to get started, I'd like you to fill in the poll.
You see the results coming in? Oh the poll ended 59 minutes, we are not going to wait that long. No.
So I will wait maybe another minute or two, people have found the link, it's good for you to have that handy because I will get back to that later, that's also a good way to chat with each other to ask questions, to find the other people also in the app to communicate with the online participants and so it's just a little test if that's possible to find.
We can close the poll I think and see the results hopefully...
Is it closed? Yes, can we see. Can somebody read out the results, I don't know if you can see them on the screen or somebody can just throw the numbers at me.
ULKA ATHALE: We have the poll results on the screen as well! I have lost my Eurovision moment! We have certified the results.
28 yes and 12 no... I am going to talk to you a little bit about RIPE and later we have, am I too close to the mic, is there an echo? No, then we have the managing director of the RIPE NCC to tell you more about the RIPE NCC later.
So, yes, let's start with the RIPE community. So RIPE stands for Reseaux IP Europeens, European IP network, was starred in 1989 by some of those pioneers that I mentioned earlier and some of the academic institutions and the national research networks. It was always created as an open community, it's not a legal entity, just an open group of people who come together with a common interest and a common goal and that was at the time to promote IP and that's still to promote the internet and internet infrastructure, co‑ordinate certain technical aspects that need to be coordinated in order to connect all these networks and make the internet.
So that's still a main, the main goal of the RIPE community and plus a number of like best practices and at the RIPE community rights and policies for instance how to distribute IP addresses. RIPE NCC was formed a little later and it was initially formed as the RIPE, as is secretariat for the RIPE community to organise meetings, mailing lists, maintain the first RIPE database that would have like contact details for networks and for IP addresses and to find each other.
So the RIPE community formed the RIPE NCC as a secretariat and then later the RIPE NCC was also then acredited as the first IP registry because it already existed, it provided great services to the community, the community trusted the RIPE NCC to also then become the first regional internet registry and fulfil that role.
In addition to all the other secretariat services they already did.
The RIPE NCC is a membership organisation, it's a legal entity, it has staff, and Executive Board, that's elected by the members and provides services to members but also to the community at large and to us here at the RIPE community and it also has the function to implement the policies that are agreed and developed here in this community so there's quite an intricate relations between the two organisations.
Well the RIPE community has different aspects to it, I will get to the meeting plan and what you can expect during the week but one important aspect are the working groups, there are 12 working groups at the moment with various topics as you can see here, you can also find the list of all working groups on the website.
Who the chairs are, what the charters are, the main topic, some of the working groups are currently reviewing their charters so it might be interesting to follow that discussion and yes, just find the working group that to discusses topics that you are interested in.
Our main communications channel are mailing lists, because it started in 1989 and it's still what will we use but also because until recently it's quite a reliable communication channel, it has archives and you can find things and it's kind of where you can find, you can subscribe all the lists are open, you can subscribe to all the mailing lists there. You also have other channels, the RIPE NCC maintains a number of social media engagements for the community, there's a forum and people also set up other communication channels on the side that you can join.
When you first start, you be subscribe to the RIPE list as a first step. There's kind of the over arranging mailing lists for all anything related to the RIPE community as a whole, not specific to one working group and it's open, you can subscribe, there's information on the slide here you can find to how to subscribe there. It's not a lot of traffic, it comes kind of comes in bursts, there are relative announcements from time to time, people kick off discussions that are interesting for the whole community.
Now, let's dive into the RIPE 88 a bit more. You can see here the meeting plan. You probably looked at that before you arrived. Just in case I will quickly go through it. We'll have some lunch after this, there's specific lunch reserved also for newcomers, you get to newcomers and also you will get to know the other community members who will join us there and we have open plenary sessions today and tomorrow with, that is put together by the Programme Committee, you know, Monday, Tuesday and a bit of Friday and then tomorrow afternoon, we will start with the working group sessions, they go until Wednesday and Thursday as well.
And then on Wednesday, you see a little darker green square there that's the RIPE NCC membership general meeting, that's only open to members.
So yeah, you could have a free afternoon and enjoy this beautiful city here.
I mentioned the BoF, before BoFs or birds of a feather, bird of a feather, like to flock together, is that what it says, I can never remember that, it's not my language. Basically it means people with the same interests or similar interests come together to talk, to discuss one specific topic, it's usually a one off, like one session doing a meeting, to exchanges some ideas so we have two of them today, this week. One today and one tomorrow. You will find some more information on the website with a more detailed description as well. It might be interesting to experience that.
On Thursday we also have a diversity and inclusion session, we have done it a few times, it's different every time, sometimes they are presentations and sometime there's a good discussion going on, last time we had some lightning talks and this time also we put together interesting programme with some topics that maybe only fit otherwise in the programme, they are really interesting and we like to hear from you, your experiences and if you have any ideas how to increase the inclusion and diversity here at the RIPE community.
There are several ways you can participate: Online, if you are following online, you are going to be on the Meetecho app for most of the people, there is a queue if you have a question, then you can raise your hand basically and then the session chairs can give you access to video and audio. I encourage you to do that when you are in the room, it kind of helps with the queueing, especially if there's a lively discussion going on, and everybody is in the same queue and it makes it easier for the chairs.
But there's also a Q&A in the Meetecho and we have microphones here in the room for those of you who are here, you can use those. And there's a chat in Meetecho that you can use to talk to each other and ask questions that other people might be able to answer.
I am also really pleased to see that we have local hubs again. For the first time as a pilot we experimented with it last time and we have four of them, basically people come together in their home town or home country and have a minute me RIPE meeting instead of sitting at home alone behind a screen, they come together in one place and have a sort of community feel to it and then follow the meeting remotely. Not all of them will be there all week but I hope you will hear more from them later in the week.
So, if some of them are already online, I don't know, welcome to this meeting as well.
You are all here, so you must have a motivational reason why you participate but maybe just to give you a bit of an extra motivation, obviously this is a really great place to meet some of the experts and some people have some great experience and great expertise, there's some people who are surrounding in this community who basically starred the networking in Europe and that's really good, if you think of the internet is still relatively young and some those first generation pioneers are still around, but overall I mean all of us, you have expertise in certain fields and so it's a great way to exchange knowledge and information.
It's also a good way if you are just starting your career to maybe get some help or advice and kind of form your career that way, find a job, find an internship and also of course it's important to participate to help us further develop this community and further kind of shape the internet the way you want it to look like.
Yes, I mentioned the RIPE plenary sessions today and tomorrow and Friday, which is put together by the Programme Committee that looks like this. These are all the people, I don't know if you have anybody here in the room from the Programme Committee? Yes, I see Clara and Wolfgang over there, they do some great work in the background putting together the plenary sessions and trying to make sure everybody gets a slot and has basically built an interesting programme with a wide scope of topics. There's some elections going on, you will see more information, you can select new people on to the team.
And the PC and working group chairs would like you to rate the presentations, it gives them good feedback about their work and what topics you would like to see and if you like the way it was presented or if you are interested in other topics, if you go to the meeting plan or on the website, you can find the presentations there and all the slides are usually uploaded before the sessions, you can also look at the slides on your screen or before the presentation and then there's also a rate the talk button and you can give some feedback there so that would be really useful.
Obviously we also have a Code of Conduct in place that you all should have seen when you reg stead for the meeting. Basically this is quite a diverse community, with people from all walks of life and different nationalities and different backgrounds and so we want to treat each other with respect and tolerance and we want to make sure everybody feels safe and included. If you experience anything that you don't like or you think something that's not right or a breach of the Code of Conduct, we have a great team of experts that form the Code of Conduct team, I see some of them here in the room, Vesna is over there. There are posters in the hall also where you can see the faces, not all of them are here at the meeting but they all communicate with each other behind the scenes, you can also contact them online, there's information on the website and how to find them and they have a secure way of communicating if you need that.
Networking in this context I think meets mostly social networking, how you find each other, talk to each other, there are various ways to do that, I already mentioned that but there's one other thing, the attendees list might be an interesting point of information for you and you can see who else is here, many of the attendees have switched on their social feature, I don't know what it's called, then you can also see how you find them and what, find the email address and contact them and set up a meeting with them. Here on site, not for those online, we have some social events lined up during the week, there's a meeting with events later today, welcome session and then tomorrow is networking like a party after the sessions and on Thursday, we have a dinner, you can find all this information on the website.
There's also a special session organised on Tuesday for those of who have academic background or students or you are working in research institute, there's an opportunity to meet with each other and build a mini community within the community.
Of course we want you to also talk to everyone else.
Yes, let us know what you like about the meeting also, provide us feedback, there's a feedback form on the website and there's also a lot of engagement on social media.
Some information about if you need more information than what I am providing you here and if you have any questions, there's a great meeting team and also a good technical team on site, the best way is just go to the registration desk or maybe even better, find those people in the red t‑shirts, do we have anyone in the room. Alistair here is also one of the meet and greet designated people but usually whoever is on duty, they have these red t‑shirts on and they just know everything, anything you can ask them, where is lunch, how do I connect to the network, they can point you to the right place.
So don't hesitate to ask any questions about anything.
About the meeting or the community.
And then one last thing I want to point out is what a bit of a task for you maybe, the RIPE NCC is currently undergoing a project to update and modernise and upgrade their website, we started with the main RIPE.net, it has a new infrastructure, we have better way to find the RIPE community an the RIPE NCC and they have also undergoing a project to do that for the meeting website so the meeting website is is a separate site, if you registered, you end up at RIPE 88 or RIPE.net and you see the information there and so since you have just done this mostly for the first time, the newcomers of you, you really like to get your feedback also so we have Phil sitting right there, he is the main contact person for this project. And so if you have any feedback and anything awkward that you noticed when you are going through the process or anything that you think is missing or unclear, please let Phil know.
Don't tell me.
I have no influence on this. I am just benefitting from the great services they provide. And that closes my part of the presentation, I would like to hand over to Hans Petter who is the managing director of the RIPE NCC.
(APPLAUSE).
If you have any questions for this part, remember that, at the end.
HANS PETTER HOLEN: So thank you Mirjam, I woke you up now. So, I am Hans Petter Holen, the managing director of the RIPE NCC. And I have been a member of this community since mid 90s when I was working for one of the first ISPs in Norway and I needed IP addresses and therefore I contacted the RIPE NCC.
RIPE NCC as Mirjam said was set up by the community and it was formalised in 1992 as a project and later on as a membership association.
It's run by staff, we are now almost 19 full‑time staff both in Amsterdam and Dubai and other locations.
we provide services and are the secretariat for the RIPE community and we implement policies set by the community.
Our strategy is to support and open inclusive and engaged RIPE community.
And we do that, an the community asked us early on as Mirjam mentioned to operate a trusted efficient, accurate and resilient registry, that's the regional internet registry for Europe, Middle East and central Asia and back in the days you could come to the RIPE NCC to get IPv4 addresseses. Today we don't have that many left of those, there is a waiting list and there are some small bits and pieces returned to us from time to time but we still have IPv6 addresses. So, if you haven't thought how to deploy V6 yet, that's something that you should do.
And we have content on the agenda that may be interesting for you in that respect.
The internet is connecting networks, now connecting networks actually needs network engineers to talk together and that's why we also want to enable our members and community to operate one secure stable and resilient global internet. We are more than just a registry, we are more than just a phone book that some people would like to describe us on because in order to run this registry and defend this registry against governments and big corporations and others that do not want to see a strong collaborative open secure internet, we need to do more than just keep a record.
And in order to do so, we need a stable organisation with robust governance and we need to attract engage competent and diverse staff, we have staff from more than 42 countries in our organisation.
The RIPE NCC registry maintains the RIPE database, allocates managers internet number resources and we have a portal to, the LIR portal you can manage your resources but we don't only do that, we investigate hijacks and policy violations because weigh want to keep the registry accurate. We support and facilitate the policy development process with the community, so Angela will be on stage later and talk a bit about that and also we operate the RPKI service where you can sign a statement to which AS numbers can announce your IP addresses and your blocks.
We have information services, RIPE Atlas a huge measurement network with more than 12, 13 probes all around the world and you can run your measurements in there to see how your service looks from anywhere in the world.
We have RIS where we collect routes from BGP and you can use IPmap and you can use RIPE stat to look at this data. We also delegate reverse zones for IP addresses, some services like email looks up your IP addresses the reverse DNS to see it's associated with the domain name the email comes from; it's an important part of the internet infrastructure.
I already said the main driver to get to the internet to work is people talking together. Yes it's about routers and protocols and the right configuration but in order to get all this right, you need to talk to each other. And communicate. So we organise RIPE meetings like this, we have two a year, we do regional meetings in southeast Europe, in Middle East and in central Asia, and we do other smaller events as well. We offer training courses, e‑learning and professional certifications, we contribute to the global public policy and internet governance discussions, not because we like to do that but we do that to defend the RIR system an the open internet.
And to educate the governments that is involved in the governance of the internet.
We publish and curate articles on RIPE Labs, if you have something interesting to share with the community, you can approach us to get it published on RIPE Labs and we have done the RIPE NCC community project fund.
To steer in organisation I have an executive team and you will see most of my colleagues here, Felipe, James, chief registry office, Hisham, Eleanora is on maternity leave, a stand in chief information security officer but he is not here, he takes care of security while we are here, our chief legal officer, our chief human resources office, Simone keeps track of all the money as our chief financial officer and Daniella keeps track on me an the board and the whole executive team.
The Executive Board is elected by the members, there is a general meeting on Wednesday where there is a board election and there are two seats up for election. So it's going to be exciting to see what new blood we will get in on the very important board that sets the strategy and approves the activity plan and the budget.
Andre is the chair, Piotr is a local from Poland so if you have any questions in Polish, you can ask them to him. Remco and Job and Raymond and Maria and Harald will all be here as well. We have a support desk where we have NCC staff available to help you and this is your one stop shop for anything related to RIPE NCC.
And they really want to talk to you.
General meeting, I mentioned, it's a separate meeting taking place on Wednesday from 4 o'clock. And only members can participate.
So you need to register separately for the general meeting. And members can also vote online. So those that are not present here, they can also follow the general meeting online and take place in the voting.
And then with that, the guidance to the RIPE NCC in policies, yes Angela, I am just sort of keeping it rolling, Angela will now talk a bit about the policy development process.
(APPLAUSE)
ANGELA DALL'ARA: Thank you. Hans Petter, I am Angela Dall'Ara, the Policy Officer at RIPE NCC for the last four years. I joined organisation ten years ago as internet analyst and I am here for to welcome all your newcomers, it's always a pleasure to have new friends in the family and of course also old comers, it's always a pleasure to see each other again.
I am sort of a link between the RIPE community and the RIPE NCC for what is concerning the policy development. The RIPE NCC is implementing the policies that are accepted by the community, everybody is part of the community so you don't need to be a member, you don't need to be an internet operator, you can propose a policy or have a good idea and propose it for the development in RIPE NCC in the community to be implemented by the RIPE NCC, no matter where you come from, which is your position.
What I'm trying to do here is really to invite you to be part of discussion, make yourself acquainted with the policy development process, it is a process that is very inclusive, it's working for a long time in the community and for this time, I would like you to focus a bit on the discussion that there will be in the Address Policy Working Group because for them it's time to review the policy for the IPv6 IP addresses distribution. We have policies that are already something like 20 years old so probably it's time to have a look at them and see if what we have now is ready and is fit to respond to the needs for the years to come.
So I invite you to join the session on Wednesday morning and also invite you to join other sessions, Anti‑Abuse Working Group or Database Working Group, those are the working groups where you can find topics that can lead to new proposals.
If you have any questions about how policies are developed, about the process, which are the faces, what happens, which are the different requirements for a proposal to advance through the policy development process, don't be shy, ask and I am going to be happy to help you in getting more familiar with the process.
Just to let you know, lately we had a couple of policy proposals that got accepted and they were proposed by newcomers. So again, try to be part of policies. Last year, last time I said you are all policy makers. I repeat the concept, we really look for your participation and to help you out in being, in sharing your ideas and make them implemented if possible.
And with this I give you Mirjam back the floor.
(APPLAUSE)
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you very much, Angela, very inspiring. Now this actually concludes our session. Did you want to talk about that? Or that's for me, OK. Keep in touch, I thought this was Angela's part. We already said most of that, so there is some, of course, communicate with each other.
Now are there any questions after all of this information that we threw at you? Do you have any questions about anything you heard, anything you expected, that we didn't cover? You know what to do, the rest of the week. You know who to ask.
Seems so. If you don't have any questions, we have questions. So we'll have a quiz for you and you will hopefully hear ‑‑ did you want to say anything else Hans Petter? There is a quiz that we prepared for you, a bit of fun and I hope it all goes well. Our Quiz Master will be there in the background starting it. I see him. There you go. Take it away.
(Kahoot Quiz)
Well thank you. Thank you for playing.
(APPLAUSE)
We hope the rest of the meeting will also bring a little bit of fun at least in amongst all the serious discussions we are going to have so thank you all for participating, I hope you have a bit of a better idea how to get through the week and make the best out of it. We'll have lunch prepared, we are a little early, we have lunch prepared and in the lunch times are downstairs and ‑‑ lunch rooms are downstairs. It's basically where with everybody else in the same room, there are special cards on the table if you want to sit at a newcomers table and get to know each other a bit more but of course it's not a requirement, you can also sit with us so I hope you ‑‑ sit with us, I hope you make a lot of contacts and don't hesitate to speak to any of us. Have a great week and I hope to meet many of you in person here during the week.
(APPLAUSE)
LIVE CAPTIONING BY TINA KEALY, RPR, CRR, CBC, DUBLIN, IRELAND.
