RIPE NCC Activity Plan 2005

RIPE NCC

Document ID: ripe-339
Date: 22 December 2004
Updates: ripe-291

Table of Contents

1. Vision and Strategy
2. New Activities 2005
3. Established Activities
4. Unforeseen Activities

1. Vision and Strategy

The RIPE NCC will strengthen the open, bottom-up, consensus driven policy- making process that has been central to the RIPE community since its inception. The direction and input of the RIPE community and the RIPE NCC membership will continue to be followed and translated into public and membership services. The RIPE NCC will continue to operate under its principles of openness, transparency, neutrality and impartiality.

Building on its position as a neutral, credible and authoritative organisation, the RIPE NCC will develop relations with a growing community of stakeholders, industry bodies and government representatives. The RIPE NCC will maintain its outreach efforts to explain the proven, long-standing industry self-regulatory structures of the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) and secure continued support for the existing registry process. Not least, the RIPE NCC will use the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process to develop new contacts and communicate the principles of Internet industry self-regulation to policy makers, both in the public and the private sector.

In order to achieve this, the RIPE NCC and the other RIRs will focus efforts through the Number Resource Organization (NRO). The NRO facilitates RIR co-ordination, provides third parties with a convenient single contact point to the RIR system and acts as a body capable of safeguarding the unallocated Internet number resource pool.

The RIPE NCC will proactively encourage ongoing consultation with its members in order to assess their changing needs. The RIPE NCC will use feedback received to help make informed decisions and ensure a consistent quality of service to the membership.

RIPE NCC Focus Points

The RIPE NCC is a Membership Association that follows the direction and input of the RIPE NCC membership when it comes to developing the activities and services it performs. The RIPE NCC focus points for 2005 continue the work started in 2004, and incorporate the feedback received from members over the last year. This allows the RIPE NCC to refine its focus on activities that offer the greatest benefit to RIPE NCC members and the RIPE community.

As in the previous years one of the main focus points for the RIPE NCC remains the quality of services it provides to its members and the Internet community. The core of the RIPE NCC service portfolio offered to members is the distribution of Internet number resources. The initial response time to Internet resource requests received is expected to remain stable at around one working day, consistent with the level maintained in 2004. Focus in 2005 will move to decreasing the overall time to completion of number resource requests.

Continuing the focus on membership support in 2004, the RIPE NCC will give specific attention to establishing a RIPE NCC Member Service Desk. The aim of the RIPE NCC Member Service Desk is to provide members with any additional help necessary to resolve queries involving RIPE NCC Registration Services, the RIPE Database and RIPE NCC billing procedures. The desk will be available through direct e-mail and phone contact.

Following from the focus on qualitative and accessible information supply in 2004, in 2005 the RIPE NCC will give specific focus to accuracy and consistency of public registration data of Internet number resources. In addition, the RIPE NCC will use the information supply infrastructure developed over 2004 to provide simple and ready-to-use information services.

2. New Activities 2005

Below is a list of new RIPE NCC activities scheduled for 2005 and activities that represent a significant change in resource allotment from 2004.

Information about the budgeted costs for these new activities is available in the RIPE NCC Budget 2005 at:
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/budget2005.html

RIPE NCC Member Service Desk

Feedback received from RIPE NCC members has revealed a need to further improve the communication channels members can use to contact the RIPE NCC. Recent initiatives have focused on proactively calling members to resolve issues. These have proved successful, and suggest that direct contact is an efficient way to assist members.

The aim of the RIPE NCC Member Service Desk is to provide members with any additional help necessary to resolve queries involving RIPE NCC Registration Services, RIPE Database and RIPE NCC billing procedures.

The RIPE NCC Member Service Desk will provide a single point of contact that RIPE NCC members can use to resolve issues that cannot be resolved satisfactorily by other methods. The RIPE NCC Member Service Desk aims to improve the ease and efficiency with which members can interact with the relevant person at the RIPE NCC. The desk will be available through direct e-mail and phone contact.

The current channels used by members to contact the RIPE NCC will remain available. The RIPE NCC Member Service Desk is intended to support members who have issues that cannot be resolved through these regular channels.

Various interfaces to the RIPE NCC Member Service Desk, such as jabber, PSTN or VoIP, will be investigated and prepared.

Dependent on feedback from RIPE NCC members, the scope of the RIPE NCC Member Service Desk may be expanded in the future, with the long term goal of consolidating the communication channels members can use to contact the RIPE NCC.

This activity includes the capital expenses of telecommunications equipment that will be deployed company-wide.

Further Deployment of Mirror Instances of the K-root Name Server

The RIPE NCC will continue to deploy mirror instances of the K-root name server. This will further improve the distribution, redundancy and performance of this crucial service as well as its resilience against Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. In 2005 the RIPE NCC will continue deployment of K-root local nodes in the RIPE NCC service region. The cost for each local node will be covered by the relevant local community.

The RIPE NCC will also deploy several (2-3) K-root global nodes in North America and Asia-Pacific. The RIPE NCC will cover most of the costs of global node deployment.

Improving Data Integrity

In 2005, the RIPE NCC will focus efforts on improving the accuracy, integrity and consistency of data related to Internet number resources. This will include consolidation and cleaning up internal and external databases. Mechanisms will be established to ensure higher quality data in the long term, decreasing discrepancies thus increasing the speed at which requests can be processed. The improved integrity of data will benefit the Internet community by increasing the reliability of using registration data in the daily operations of LIRs and ISPs.

Developing New Training Methods

To adapt the training offered by the RIPE NCC to the differing needs of the audience, new training methods will be developed, particularly focusing on additional training strategies.

The intention is to reach a broader audience, particularly those who are unable to attend RIPE NCC training courses due to geographical, financial, scheduling or other constraints. Offering more accessible training will help members to send better-prepared requests to the RIPE NCC Hostmasters. This aims to ensure a more timely completion of allocation requests.

In addition, the RIPE NCC will develop new forms of training and information dissemination to specifically target non-traditional audiences such as journalists, politicians and administrators. This is a logical progression of the RIPE NCC's outreach efforts developed over previous years. The aim is to encourage well-informed decisions and to win continued support for the existing RIR framework.

Membership Survey

The RIPE NCC will commission an independent member and stakeholder survey, similar to the survey conducted by KPMG in 2002. Based on the results of this survey and in close interaction with the members and stakeholders, the RIPE NCC will continue to improve its operational quality and organisational structure.

Cross Registry Information Service Protocol (CRISP)

Responding to requests from the community for a standard, uniform global view of Internet number resources, the RIPE NCC will continue to participate in the IETF process to develop the Cross Registry Information Service Protocol. In 2005, the RIPE NCC will provide server implementation and client tools, while co-ordinating with other server operators, client tool authors, and service providers to encourage use.

Deployment of Anti-SPAM Measures and SPAM Abuse Policies

The RIPE NCC will deploy technical facilities to minimise the effect of SPAM towards the RIPE NCC and the mailing lists it provides for members and the RIPE community.

3. Established Activities

Information on the RIPE NCC’s established activities (Membership Services, Co-ordination Activities and Information Services) is available in the RIPE NCC Activity Planning Support Document at:

http://www.ripe.net/ripe/draft-documents/gm-sep2004/ap2005.html

4. Unforeseen Activities

These activities are entirely unforeseen at the time of writing the activity plan or have started recently and are not at the stage where they can be developed as regular services. A new activity will only be started after thorough analysis of its need, with a clearly communicated project plan, deliverables, budget and timeline. A quick, well-focused reaction to the changing environment and new requirements of the RIPE NCC members and other stakeholders has always been a strong point of the RIPE NCC.