Talented researchers in the field of Internet technology share their work with the RIPE community as part of the RIPE Academic Cooperation Initiative (RACI). Successful applicants receive complimentary tickets, travel, and accommodation to attend meetings and get the opportunity to present their research to some of the leading technical figures in the Internet world.
Successful RACI Applicants for RIPE 90
- Savvas Kastanakis, University of Twente
“Critical BGP Prefixes: A Measurement-based Analysis on Critical Infrastructure Security”
Plenary: Tuesday, 13 May at 09:00 – 10:30 - Antonios Chatzivasileiou, University of Crete & ICS FORTH
“How Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Impacted the Internet Peering of the Conflicted Countries”
Plenary: Tuesday, 13 May at 14:00 – 15:30 - Nitinder Mohan, Delft University of Technology
“Frontiers of LEO Space Networks: Understanding the Intricacies of Starlink’s Internet Access”
MAT WG: Tuesday, 13 May at 16:00 – 17:30 - Florian Wiedner, Technical University of Munich
“Hardware-assisted Virtual Networking for low-latency network services”
MAT WG: Tuesday, 13 May at 16:00 – 17:30 - Joshua Levett, University of York
“WhoActuallyIs? Finding the Companies Behind the Networks”
MAT WG: Tuesday, 13 May at 16:00 – 17:30 - Aleeza Suhel Inamdar, Saarland University
“Routing Realities: Assessing the Practicality of Academic BGP Security Solutions in Network Operations”
Academic and NREN reception: Tuesday, 13 May at 18:00 – 19:30 - Sergey Gorinsky, IMDEA Networks Institute
“In-Band Quality Notification from Users to ISPs”
Academic and NREN reception: Tuesday, 13 May at 18:00 – 19:30 - Ramon Bister, Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences
“Towards Sustainable Networking: Enabling Carbon-Aware Routing with Path Efficiency Metrics and IOAM”
Academic and NREN reception: Tuesday, 13 May at 18:00 – 19:30 - Alexander Brundiers,Osnabrück University
“(IGP) Shortcuts Towards More Resilient Networks: Enhancing Proactive Protection & Reactive Restoration using Segment Routing Midpoint Optimization”
Academic and NREN reception: Tuesday, 13 May at 18:00 – 19:30 - Thomas Holterbach, University of Strasbourg
“The Next Generation of BGP Data Collection Platforms”
RIPE Community Plenary: Thursday, 15 May at 16:00 – 17:30
RACI Talks at RIPE 90

Savvas Kastanakis, University of Twente
Critical BGP Prefixes: A Measurement-based Analysis on Critical Infrastructure Security
Critical infrastructure relies on secure routing. This study proposes a new method to identify and assess “Critical BGP Prefixes” using real-world BGP and DNS data. It reveals insights into connectivity patterns, resilience to routing anomalies, and vulnerabilities to hijacking and route leaks. This work facilitates further research and reinforces CI resilience and security through actionable recommendations and open artifact release.
Savvas Kastanakis is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Twente. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science, focusing on Internet measurement and interdomain routing attacks such as prefix hijacking and route leaks. He is an active researcher and conference speaker in the field.

Antonios Chatzivasileiou, University of Crete & ICS FORTH
How Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Impacted the Internet Peering of the Conflicted Countries
This research investigates how the 2022 Russian invasion affected network peering in Ukraine and Russia. Using BGP and DNS data, it tracks the breakdown of cross-national peering, highlights IXP disruptions, and explores the long-term geopolitical reshaping of regional Internet topology.
Antonios Chatzivasileiou is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Crete. His research focuses on interdomain routing, infrastructure deployment, and Autonomous System relationships, with an emphasis on enhancing Internet resilience.

Nitinder Mohan, Delft University of Technology
Frontiers of LEO Space Networks: Understanding the Intricacies of Starlink’s Internet Access
This talk presents a global performance analysis of Starlink, comparing it with 5G and fiber networks. Based on 19M+ speed tests and controlled experiments, it examines Starlink’s capabilities in real-time apps and its divergence from terrestrial network paradigms.
Nitinder Mohan is an Assistant Professor at TU Delft. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Helsinki and is known for award-winning research in edge computing, satellite networks, and large-scale Internet measurements.

Florian Wiedner, Technical University of Munich
Hardware-assisted Virtual Networking for Low-latency Network Services
This study explores the use of virtual machines and containers in achieving low-latency network processing. Through optimisation techniques, it demonstrates how virtualised environments can rival bare-metal systems in latency-critical scenarios.
Florian Wiedner is a Ph.D. candidate at TUM, specialising in virtualised systems and low-latency packet processing. His work bridges theoretical modeling and real-world performance in time-sensitive networking.

Joshua Levett, University of York
WhoActuallyIs? Finding the Companies Behind the Networks
WHOIS and RDAP data lack transparency about actual network users. This talk introduces WHOactuallyIS, a service that aggregates diverse data sources to identify the true operators of Internet resources, beyond formal registry records.
Joshua Levett is a Ph.D. student at the University of York, researching Internet architecture and governance. He is part of the SYSTRON Lab, focusing on systems and network interoperability.

Aleeza Suhel Inamdar, Saarland University
Routing Realities: Assessing the Practicality of Academic BGP Security Solutions in Network Operations
While BGP security mechanisms have been well-studied academically, their real-world deployment remains limited. This talk analyses operator feedback on BGP security solutions, identifying implementation gaps and proposing ways to bridge theory and practice.
Aleeza Suhel Inamdar is a Master’s student in Cybersecurity at Saarland University. Her research focuses on the practicality of routing security mechanisms and formal analysis of security protocols.

Sergey Gorinsky, IMDEA Networks Institute
In-Band Quality Notification from Users to ISPs
IQN is a new system that lets end-users notify ISPs about Quality of Experience issues—without help from OTTs. Through novel packet patterns and encrypted traffic analysis, ISPs can infer streaming impairments like YouTube stalls in real-world conditions.
Sergey Gorinsky is a tenured Research Associate Professor at IMDEA Networks, Madrid. He leads the NetEcon group and is renowned for his extensive research in network economics, routing, and QoE inference.

Ramon Bister, Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences
Towards Sustainable Networking: Enabling Carbon-Aware Routing with Path Efficiency Metrics and IOAM
This study introduces a framework using IOAM and IPFIX to measure and optimise the sustainability of network paths. It enables real-time routing decisions based on path-specific efficiency metrics to support greener networking.
Ramon Bister is a researcher and educator at the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences. He specialises
in sustainable networking and authored a paper on energy-efficient routing presented at IEEE NetSoft 2024.

Alexander Brundiers, Osnabrück University / Deutsche Telekom
(IGP) Shortcuts Towards More Resilient Networks: Enhancing Proactive Protection & Reactive Restoration using Segment Routing Midpoint Optimization
This talk presents Segment Routing Midpoint Optimization (MO), which significantly reduces network configuration complexity in response to outages. MO enables faster and more resilient network restoration using existing hardware capabilities.
Alexander Brundiers earned his Ph.D. from Osnabrück University and now works as a system engineer at Deutsche Telekom, developing next-gen traffic engineering solutions for IP backbones.

Thomas Holterbach, University of Strasbourg
The Next Generation of BGP Data Collection Platforms
GILL is a new BGP data collection system with massive scalability, efficient compression, and targeted insight extraction. This platform supports large-scale peering and data-driven network analysis through its public MRT dataset.
Thomas Holterbach is a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Strasbourg. He is known for building measurement platforms such as bgproutes.io and for his work on BGP convergence and teaching with the mini-Internet.