RIPE 90, Lisbon
Newcomers Session
12 May 2025
11:30 a.m.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Welcome everybody. This is the Newcomers' Session. I think people are still coming in. I can hardly see the doors. It's very.blinding, so if you are presenting during the week, be prepared, wear sun glasses.
Just wait a couple of seconds. We have quite a number of newcomers for this RIPE meeting, it's great. My name is Mirjam Kuhne, I am the RIPE Chair. I am going to present part of the session to you, and then I'll hand over to other speakers.
All right, I think we can start. Everybody has found a seat.
Welcome to the RIPE 90 and to this Newcomers Session, so I hope we can explain how things work, maybe some of you have already participated in the online session that the RIPE NCC organised last week I think, so there might be some overlap, and it probably won't hurt to repeat some of it.
It's not RIPE 89, this is actually RIPE 90.
So you can see we were using the slides before, but if you have a sticker which has my first it RIPE meeting on it, which is also saying maybe for others who come and approach you and make sure you feel comfortable, that's why we're doing this, and of course also to have you here and make sure you feel included in the meeting.
RIPE 1 took place is Amsterdam in '89. This is RIPE 90 in Lisbon. I am Mirjam Kuhne, I am the RIPE Chair, I am originally from Berlin, I studied computer science in Berlin and in fact my first RIPE meeting of here in Lisbon, RIPE 19, I didn't put the year there, it's many years ago.
So, we actually had three RIPE meetings here, I'll come talk more about this in the opening. We also have the Vice‑Chair here, Niall O'Reilly, his first ‑‑ he is over there ‑‑ do you want to introduce yourself?
NIALL O'REILLY: A long time ago I studied electrical engineering, so I know something about feedback. But, my first RIPE meeting was even further ago, it was RIPE 3, it was in Amsterdam, and I have ‑‑ if you are finding, as a newcomer, that RIPE meetings are a bit bewildering, that's something that you still find even after years of experience, there is lots going on, but it's exciting and it's fun, and if I may put in a quick plug for an unofficial social event, on Wednesday evening some of us are going climbing, talk to me.
MIRJAM KUHNE: This is also a good thing about the RIPE meeting, there is also ‑‑ we'll get to the social event later, but there are some community organised kind of gatherings or interest groups that are happening throughout the week, so, you'll find out about that when you talk to people.
So, just a bit of blast from the past here, I did not have one of those at home, I did have an Atari as my first computer. What's more interesting, what I always find fascinating here on the right‑hand side is the map of the Internet in Europe, I think in 1990, it was drawn, to the RIPE meeting at the time, we had a Working Group called the connectivity Working Group I believe, or these kind of maps were updated over time in new countries were added to the networks, you will notice that many of those networks that are here on the slide, you can look it up online in the archives, there are academic and enron networks so he were this the main network operators at the time and they were also the, if you will, the finders of the RIPE community, the initial operators. So, it's always good to look back a little bit at our roots and where we are coming from. At some point obviously the connectivity Working Group, they didn't scale any more to draw these maps so they stopped and the Working Group closed.
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So, how many of you know the difference between RIPE and the RIPE NCC? I didn't see your hands. But okay. There are a number But there are also quite a number of you who don't. Let's talk a little bit about the difference here. So we have got the RIPE, the community, which I mean stands for Reseaux IP Europeens Network Coordination Centre and European and they were founded in 1989 as a loose group of operators who wanted to promote IP, as a community, it's open to all, it's not a legal entity, we have these meetings here to gather an extend information and do technical coordination of certain aspects of the network that have to be coordinated. And also, part of that is policy, developing policies, for instance, about how address space gets distributed, how is it registered and so on and so forth.
On the other hand, we have the RIPE NCC, the Network Coordination Centre for the RIPE community, which was formalised in 1992, primarily as a secretariat for the RIPE community. So in the beginning the community did everything kind of voluntarily, they organised meetings, somebody was hosting the mailing list, somebody else said I'm going to write this database, you know, on the side, and then at some point the community was growing and they felt it would be good to have some paid staff and so the secretariat was founded in 1992. And that's a legal entity, it's a membership association, it's run by the RIPE NCC staff, it has a Board that's elected by the members, and provides services to the RIPE community as a secretariat, and of course it's also accessed the regional Internet registry in this region who in turn implements the policy that the community develops. Hans Petter is going to talk a bit more about that part later on.
So the RIPE community, like what we are, we currently have, so we have these meetings and we have Working Groups, we have plenary sessions, we have Working Groups where most of the work gets done and here is a list of the Working Groups. I'll quickly go through them. You see some of them were may be obvious, the Address Policy Working Group, Database Working Group, IPv6, routing, they are longstanding Working Groups that deal with certain technical aspects of network co‑ordination, then we have others for instance the IoT Working Group, it's relative knew, the RIPE NCC Services Working Group is an interesting one because it's one of the formal links between RIPE and the RIPE NCC, when the NCC reports back to the community and the community provide feedback to the RIPE NCC.
The Security Working Group,s you have maybe heard of the Anti‑Abuse Working Group, that's now called the Security Working Group, they rechartered and renamed. The cooperation is also an interesting one because it provide a platform for technical community to come together with, not so technical members of this community like government representatives, law enforcement, regulators and talk about topics on that layer.
And there is some others, OpenSource. It's an interesting Working Group, they are quite active lately.
You'll see most of them meet during the week here and you'll find out what their scope is.
I mentioned mailing lists already. We work mainly on mailing lists and it has many good reasons, we had discussions earlier at previous meetings if we should add other communication channels. But the most kind of formal and official channel we use is mailing lists. They are all open. You be subscribe. Every Working Group has a mailing list and there is also one generic mailing list, the RIPE list, RIPE discussion mailing list for its entire community where we send announcements and, you know, questions for the community and you can also participate. It's a moderated list and the Working Group lists are also, they are moderated by the Working Group Chairs and the RIPE is model raid by the RIPE Chair team.
That might be a good start. If you are not registered, to look at that and you can find all the other lists on the website.
This is a fewer words about RIPE 90. It says there RIPE 90. So, this is the working plan, the meeting plan for the week. We are here now at the newcomers, just before lunch, so there is also newcomers lunch organised for you after this session. Then we'll start with the Opening Plenary and then some Plenary Sessions, they will run today and tomorrow and then Working Group sessions tomorrow afternoon and Wednesday, Thursday, and then we are closing off again with the Plenaries on Friday. And then there are also some birds of a feather sessions, there is one today at the end of today, it's the best current operational practices task force, that deals with, it's kind of an overarching group that deal with best current practices for operators and various topics here coming out of the community. They are meeting this time, this is the agenda. And then there are three other births of a fester, like BoF sessions during the week. There is one together today in parallel with the best current practices task force, which is talking with ‑‑ it's dealing, discussing, it's a platform for you to give feedback on a draft document that the ‑‑ I'm going, use a lot of acronyms now, the Address Supporting Organisations Address Council or also the Number Resource Organisations numbering Council, so its NRO NC they have drafted a document to replace an old document that talks about the creation or the criteria for setting up regional internet registries. It's been reviewed and there is a new draft. It's very relevant for this community because we all rely on the functions of RIR in this region and also in the other regions to keep the global Internet running. So there is a BoF today, I can recommend you to go to that. They are on the website you'll see a description of the BoF and the link to the document, if you haven't read that yet. So you know what to talk about.
On Tuesday, there is a diversity in tech, or DI session, that's usually, it's always a bit different. So this time we have some, two topics to talk about, there is a proposal to set up an advisory group from the community to the NCC's events team or provide some guidance on accessibility issues for meetings, and then there is another topic about mentorship. What's a successful mentorship and how can we help you to feel included and welcome in the community. I encourage you to come to that and give us some feedback on what you want from a monitor.
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On Thursday there are two more BoF sessions, one as a panel and maybe some activity to write some best current practices later on about authoritative name servers, that's kind of DNS related, then there is another one that talks about, you know, quality of registration data and the database at the RIPE NCC. So they are running parallel and you'll find more information on the website there.
Well how to participate: I mean obviously, you know, talk to each other. There is lots of coffee breaks and lunch breaks and social events. So it's really all about getting to know people and finding the people that you maybe want to engage with, that are interested in the same topics, or you have some questions for. So there are various ways to do that, obviously talk in person but also we have this tool that's running also for the remote participants if you are link to this, there is an audio and a video queue that you can use to get on the microphone. You can also use the Q&A button in the tool, there is somebody here in the room either the session chair or the chat monitor who will monitor that. And there is also a chat. So that's mostly for the online participation here but you can of course also come to the mic and the session Chairs will explain to you how that works.
We have, we have started a few meetings ago local hubs, which is actually a remote participants who come together in one place to participate in the RIPE meeting as a group, which is great. So this time we have two with, one in the Netherlands organised by Surf and one in Poland organised by the faculty of technical engineers. So they will be watching I think at least two days I think, maybe a few more days during the week, so be aware that there are also remote participants when you speak so that people can follow that.
Well, you are here, so you probably have good motivation to why participate, why you are here. Just a summary. I think this is a really good way specifically for newcomers also to kind of meet the experts and there are so many, there is so much knowledge and expertise about networking here in this community that that's really very worthwhile, we know coming to these events. If you are starting your careers, it's also a good way to build your professional network, maybe look for a job. And in general, kind of get ‑‑ keep the Internet, you know, running or stable in the way you want to be part of this community who helps build and further maintain this network. And you do that by contributing and participating here in the discussions. So, don't be shy if you have a question or you want to contribute to the discussion, please speak up.
I mentioned some of the Working Groups already, but there is also a Programme Committee, they are responsible for the content of the Plenary session that is you will see in the meeting plan. I said mostly today and tomorrow, a bit on Friday, and there is ‑‑ we have a new logo, but this is such a beautiful flag, this is a flag we had hanging out in the front of the hotel so we need to come up with a new banner or flag or something.
Here is the list of, the pictures of the people who are currently on the Programme Committee, it's a volunteer group, they are elected and there are actually two seats available this week, so you can still also run as candidate if you want to participate. The deadline is tomorrow. Then there will be election going on for the rest of the week, until Thursday, and Doris and Clara's term ends so there are term limits and they are looking for new candidates to help out. If you have any feedback and any comments about the programme, they'd be happy to hear from you, and that's why we also have this rating system in place where you are rate the talks online. You can go to each presentation and this is really helpful for those who organise the content.
There is a Code of Conduct. It's not the whole text here, but I just wanted to make you aware of this. We have a Code of Conduct in place. Please respect that and also, you know, know that it's there in case you experience something. There is a team that you can report to. I think all of them are actually here in person this week. You can report to the whole group or you can also contact them individually, and you can find them in the hallways.
As I said earlier, there is multiple ways to communicate with each other, of course in person, but there is also maybe one think the attendees list if you you are looking for somebody from a specific company or organisation or a topic or it's like I always wanted to talk to this person, have a look at the attendees list.
Social events are a great way to get to know each other. There are three organised social events in addition to for instance the climbing BoF that Niall had mentioned earlier on, there is one a reception later today at the end of the day, it's a welcome reception for everybody. Then on Tuesday, usually is a bit later, it's after dinner a kind of a networking eventuality. It's not so far from here this time and there is no transportation organised so you can walk over, it's a 15 minute walk through the park or there is also public transportation available if want to use that.
On Thursday there is a dinner organised. Unfortunately the tickets are sold out, but there is a waiting list you can still, you know, tell the registration desk in you are interested if you didn't get a ticket and they can put you on the list.
And that's it. Really, share your experience, let us know what you think. Fill out the survey, come talk to me if you have any suggestions. I am really specifically keen always to hear from new participants because you come here with a fresh eye and maybe experience some other communities that could help us to possibly improve or make you feel more welcome. So I am happy to hear that. There is some ways to interact with the community, and maybe lastly also, if you need support, there is a technical support, there is the meeting team outside. There is also the RIPE NCC has a lot of staff here if you have some questions about specific tickets, if you are a member, they can help you with that.
And we have of course the lovely Meet and Greet team. They are running around with the red T‑shirts, I don't know if there is anybody here in the room. I see red T‑shirts but I don't know if they are Meet and Greet. There is one over there. There is actually T‑shirts and also hoodies they are wearing, and there is a table out there, a red table you can find them there, they can answer any questions you might have.
And with that, I want to hand over to Hans Petter Holen the Managing Director, or CEO of the RIPE NCC, and he can tell you more about all the lovely staff that he brought to the meeting. So, thank you.
(Applause)
HANS PETTER HOLEN: Thank you Mirjam. Welcome everybody. I was a bit worried my voice wasn't carry today, but it seems like I can easily fill the full room. So, that's good.
I am Hans Petter Holen, I am the CEO of RIPE NCC and it's actually my fifth year anniversary now, 1 May, I have been here for a bit more than five years.
Good that you are still applauding. Since you are newcomers, you wouldn't know better.
Mirjam said her first RIPE meeting of RIPE 19, I am not quite that old in the community, my first one was RIPE 22, I figured out, so I have been around for a while as a community member, like you guys, but then as CEO for the last five years.
So, RIPE NCC is a formal organisation. It was set up by the community. The community met in '89 to solve all issues with Internet in Europe, and we are still doing that, and it's not only Europe, it's Middle East, central Asia as well, and in '992 they figured out we need a secretariat, we need staff that prepares this, it can't only volunteers. And even some years later after running as a project in the academic network organisation, it was set up as a membership organisation so all Internet providers in our service region and also other companies that needs resources directly can now be a member of the RIPE NCC.
The organisation is run by staff. We have between 180 and 190 full‑time staff members in Amsterdam and in Dubai, but also in other countries around our service region.
I am overseen by a board, so I can't do anything I want. The Board is looking after what I'm doing, and the members is actually looking at the Board and legacy transferring the Board. So it's a democratic organisation in the sense that the Board is elected by the members and they hire a Managing Director that serves. The RIPE NCC provide services and is the secretariat for the RIPE community. So this is the confusing part, right. RIPE community versus RIPE NCC, the secretariat. And we implement policies. I think that's also an important thing to be aware of. It's not us that decides the policies on who gets what resources and how to do things. That's you guys in the community.
So, we are now in the fourth year of our five year strategy that we put together four years ago, and the first pillar in this one is that we are here to support an open and inclusive and engaged community, because the community established the RIPE NCC and we are here to support the community.
Then a couple of years later, the community decided we participant a regional internet registry in Europe because at the time you had to call or send an e‑mail to the US and deal with the time zone differences so it would be much simpler to have that in European time zone and actually be able to set our own policies that are suitable for this region rather than what was suitable for the US or north American region at that time.
But we do more than just be a regional internet registry and supporting the community. In the Articles of Association, when the organisation was formed, it was clear that we should also do other activities, so we do activities to enable our members and community to operate on secure stable and resilient global Internet. I have more details on what we do in that area later on.
And in order to do this, we need a stable organisation with a robust governance structure, and we need engaged, competent and diverse staff to do this.
So, looking at the registry, we maintain the RIPE Database, that's the public view of what's in the registry and also what our members put in there in information about their networks and their customers again.
We allocate and manage Internet number resources, you can do that directly through the LIR portal, or we can help you with that. We investigate hijacks and policy violations, and we support and facilitate policy development process with the community, and you will meet our policy development officer Angela a bit later, she will come on stage and tell you more about that.
And we also have a way of securing your routing protocols, your routing data, BGP is inherently unsafe, you tell everybody else what addresses you will have in your network. With RPKI, you can send signed statements with digital certificates that these are your resources and please send that traffic only to me.
On the information services side, to help you on running the Internet and secure the Internet we maintain measurement services. We are collecting data from a measurement network, RIPE Atlas, from more than I think 11,000 probes, maybe a bit more around the service region, around the world even, so you can measure from all of these probes how your network looks from the those areas. We also collect all BGP data from multiple sources around the world, so you can have a look into BGP routing table through RIS and look at what the, what the routing table looks like at the other side of the world.
And to see all of this, you can use the visualisation in RIPE IP map or you can use RIPEstat which is kind of a view of all the registered data, all the measurement services where you can ask questions that combines this it data and presents them to you in an understandable way. We also delegate reverse DNS zones for the address ranges. So DNS maps from names to numbers but in reverse DNS you can map from number to name, that's something that follows the numbers that we allocate, so we delegate those zones to our members so they can fill those with the appropriate data.
And we also manage and provide reliable authoritative name servers, so we also provide some other DNS services to our members.
In the RIPE Database, you can register in the information about how you are using your resources, what you have passed on to your customers it, what's in your own infrastructure and all that. You can publish routing policies in the Internet Routing Registry, which is, you know, a subset of the RIPE Database, and you can use the data there to facilitate coordination between network operators. If something isn't working correctly in another network, you find a contact information in there to be able to reach out to them and resolve the matters.
We also have a rather limited role in managing something called ENUM, which was supposed to be a big thing using ‑‑ using the DNS to map towards telephone numbers back in the days. We still do that, but it's not taken off as much as we thought it would be when that was done. I already mentioned the reverse DNS.
And we do also, based on all the data, on the resources we do research in network operations and topology, you will see presentations on this later.
The LIR portal is is where you can have a look at the data we have about you because you are responsible for maintaining your data and you can do that online in the database. You can also, in the LIR portal, you can also make requests for IPv4 to the extent there are IPv4 addresses left. IPv6 and AS numbers. You can open tickets with member services and you can view billing and membership information. And you can secure your routing with RPKI.
And then I'll be mentions RPKI a couple of times, I have a slide here on the one slide overview of what this is.
So if you look at the bottom there, your computer or network is in the middle there, and you will, or your network is on the left and you have a prefix, some addresses that you announce to the regulations of the world through a BGP announcement, and tell, you know, whoever that wants to communicate with me, send this traffic to us. Now with RPKI are, the other networks can look you up in the RPKI repository at the bottom right to check if that route announcement is valid. And the way this works is that you can create an authorised statement for the prefix, top left, that says that this ASN is authorised to announce my prefix for these addresses, and then that's digitally signed and put in the RPKI repository. That's RPKI 101 in one slide for those who didn't know it.
Community and engagement. We do events, RIPE meetings, as this one, we do training courses, e‑learning and professional certifications, so you can even get, do a test and have proof that you actually know and understand this stuff.
Contribute to public policy and Internet governance discussions. It's been increasing interest from governments, from intergovernmental organisations like the ITU, like UN and so on, that puts out, you know, questions or proposals from time to time, and we follow those closely and do put in our responses based on our role and our principles here.
And they then contribute to public policy discussions in a variety of fora, on the Internet governance.
We also have blog or, you know, a magazine in digital format, RIPE Labs, where not only we but you can publish interesting articles about research you have done or technology or open source you have developed or anything that's interesting to the RIPE community.
And we also have a fellowship and a RACI programme to bring in new people into the community. So, RACI is tailored towards researchers, and fellowship is towards anyone that would like to have an introduction to this community.
In order to run the RIPE NCC, I have an executive team, and you may see some of them here in the room. Gabor is sitting over there, he is our new Chief Registry Officer and be nice to him, he started 1st May, so he kind of got one week and a bit to warm up.
Next to him here is Felipe, who you may know for many years, he the Chief Technology Officer, Hisham who is flying in today from Dubai, Elinora is chief information security officer, Simon Jan our Chief Financial Officer, Carolien our chief HR officer around Athina our Chief Legal Officer and to manage me and all of us, Daniella, my executive assistant, is also here, you have probably seen her at the registration desk already.
I mentioned that there is a Board overseeing what I'm doing setting the strategic directions, approving the budget and approving a lot of the formal policies or procedures that we use to implement policies. Our Chair, Ondrej Filip will also arrive a bit later. Piotr is already here, Sander is already here, Remco is already here. Raymond, our Treasurer, Maria Hall is also arriving a bit later and Harald is already here. Piotr is the secretary and Raymond is the Treasurer, and Ondrej is the Chair as I mentioned and the others are Board members that have various roles also in outreach and so on. So they try to travel not only to the RIPE meetings but also to the regional events and if you want to discuss about the RIPE NCC feel free to reach out to them, to my executive team or any of my staff members at the help desk and so on to give feedback to our work.
We have a support desk downstairs if you need help with something, feel free to reach out to them and they say that it's a one‑stop hub for anything RIPE NCC related and they really mean it, so go and talk to them.
On Wednesday, we have a General Meeting. That's a members only meeting. It's a separate meeting taking place from 6 p.m. You need to register to attend the general meetings, you need to be a member and register. But you can still do that, and you can then also vote for changes to the articles of association, mostly towards the arbiters, but also elect two new Board members for the next three years. So please sign up for that. Now if you are just interested in the services that the RIPE NCC produces, part of the GM is open to anybody, it's the Services Working Group, that's happening just before this.
And then, I am done talking and I'll hand over to Angela who is going to talk about our policy development process.
(Applause)
ANGELA DALL'ARA: Good morning everybody and welcome to our newcomers, also the old comers of course. I am Angela, I joined the RIPE NCC almost eleven years ago, after hearing Mirjam and Niall, I am also a newcomer, because my first RIPE meeting was RIPE 70, so I am a baby in this.
What I do is, I am the link between the RIPE community that proposes new policies and develops them and the RIPE NCC that is supposed to implement them.
So, if you have any questions about policies, about the process, if you have any doubt about if a policy is applying to your needs or if you need clarification, stop me or send me an e‑mail and I will be happy to answer your questions. And I am also here to invite you on Wednesday to the Address Policy Working Group because we are at the moment three policy proposals on the table. There are two regarding IPv6 and one is regarding the ASN numbers. You don't need to be a member to make a policy proposal. You don't need to be a member to participate in the discussion, but you really need to participate in the discussion because, as I said previously, you are all policy makers, you are going to help the proposers making their proposal better, because you can signal something they didn't have in mind when they wrote their proposal, and this is cooperation process. So, please participate, subscribe to the mailing list because all the discussions are happening in the mailing list, specifically for these three proposals in the Address Policy Working Group, but there is something going on also in the Routing Working Group, it's not a proposal yet but you might want to say what you think about it. So because you got a lot of information, I don't give you a lot of details, but I hope that you will enjoy your meeting and that you will participate in the discussion about this.
Now, I see Mirjam coming back. I'll give you the mode back, but I think we have probably Fallon that is going to tell us something about looking for...
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FALLON ALBRECHT: My name is Fallon I work for the RIPE NCC for ten years right now, and I am here with my colleague Antonella, and we are doing user research because we would like to know what you want from the RIPE NCC, what features are you missing, what do you think can be better. So, this week, we are here for two things: We are here for our OO2 solution for the RIPE Database, so if you have experience in 002 or you want to know what we think is the best way to go, please contact us, and we have Antonella for the prototype, for the framework, so if you are interested, please contact us. Thank you.
(Applause)
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you. That was a lot of information. Are there any questions? Otherwise we have some questions prepared for you: You can always ask us questions later. So I'll hand it over Gerardo. There is also a forum that the RIPE NCC is providing specifically about specific topics that you can also participate in. And so we come to the end. This is the questions slide, and then Gerardo it's you.
(Kahoot quiz)
MIRJAM KUHNE: There is something wrong with the screen, we can't see your slides.
There you go, the question now says, "Who makes RIPE policies?" Were you at this question?
(Continuation of the Kahoot quiz)
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MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you, that was fun as always. Thanks for participating. There is still time if you have any questions if anything wasn't clear to you, we have about ten minutes. After that there is the lunch break. There is actually a section for you for newcomers, a specific area where you can sit. You'll see some signs there, but of course you can mingle with anybody. You don't have to sit in the newcomers area.
As one of the things we organise for newcomers, there is some other sessions we organise for you, so you feel part of the community. I don't see many, I am kind of talking because I am hoping somebody will get up and ask me a question, so I don't see that, maybe later during the week you feel more motivated to participate and ask questions and give comments.
So, then yeah, that's it for the first session of the week, the newcomers. After the tutorials, and after lunch, we'll start with the Opening Plenary and Plenary talks, and then time to go right into the meat of things. Enjoy the rest of the week and see you around.
(Applause)
Lunch break.
