Open Source Working Group Minutes RIPE 83

Thursday, 25 November 14:30 - 15:30 (UTC+1)
WG co-Chairs: Martin Winter, Ondrej Filip
Scribe: Vesna Manojlovic
Status: Final

A. Administrative Matters

This presentation is available at:
https://ripe83.ripe.net/presentations/78-Opensource-WG-Agenda-RIPE83.pdf

There were no changes to the agenda.

The minutes from RIPE 82 were approved.

Kurt Kayser, Kurt Kayser Konsultation, asked speakers to mention specific licensing if that info is available to help users gain clarity about possible licensing issues.

B. Virtual IPv6 Security Lab Environment

Ondřej Caletka, RIPE NCC

This presentation is available at:
https://ripe83.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/57-RIPE83-IPv6-security-labs.pdf

Ondřej Caletka, RIPE NCC, explained the set-up of the virtual lab environment built to support “IPv6 Security” training. In order to keep the e-learning affordable, accessible and easy to use, a VM (virtual machine) was selected as a solution. Another challenge was to find the one VM technology supported on multiple operating systems. Ondřej mentioned that under the hood “everything is based on Open Source” and publicly available on GitHub. Main elements are VirtualBox, Vagrant, LXD, ttyd, tmux, NGINX and Ansible. Ondřej invited the audience to enrol in the IPv6 Security Academy course.

Ondrej linked to his recent RIPE Labs article and the IPv6 Security course in the chat.  

Brett Carr, Nominet, asked about the feasability of maintaining the lab setup for multiple platforms, such as newer Macs. Ondrej replied that for now the platforms are limited, but if there is considerable interest in the future, it would be easy to port the solution to the desired
platform. He added that he was also accepting contributions from the community

C. Through the Looking-Glass - 5 Years of BGP Adventures

Annika Hannig, DE-CIX

This presentation is available at:
https://ripe83.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/77-alice-ripe83.pdf

Annika Hannig, DE-CIX, brought us back to RIPE 73 when “Alice” looking glass was first developed as a project at the RIPE NCC hackathon. Since then, it has been deployed on many IXPs and many new features has been added. Future plans include maintenance and code cleanup.

Questions and comments in the chat were mostly about the availability of Looking Glass services, so this might become a new feature request.

Gordon Gidofalvy, Tucows, asked if the Alice looking glass was specifically made for use in IXPs. Annika said that you can use it whenever you are using a routing daemon. She added that it's primarily used by IXPs as it is focused on IXP functionality.

Dirk Meyer, Servator, asked if Alice can be used to monitor border routers instead of route servers. Annika said again that you can use it whenever you are using a routing daemon like
Bird or open BGP. She added that if you are using equipment from another vendor, you can create a fork and create a pull request and it will be merged.

Vasilis, Magma Project, expressed a need for a collection of available looking glasses.
Annika replied that Alice is not an universal looking glass - it is a specific way of looking at one IXP's routeserver.

Vesna Manojlovic, RIPE NCC, wanted to know if Annika needed something specific from the community. Annika replied that all contributions are welcome: pull requests, getting together to work on features at the hackathon and hoping that there will be more interest after the layout has been modernised.

D. Building a Modern TCP Stack for High-Performance DNS on Top of XDP

Libor Peltan, CZ NIC

This presentation is available at:
https://ripe83.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/63-KNOT-20211125-LP-RIPE83-XDP_TCP.pdf

Libor Peltan, CZ NIC, gave us a peek into the modern TCP stack for DNS on top of XDP. This was very well received by the participants in the chat, who complimented him on the neat solutions and pointed out to similar work by other research organisations.

Benno Overeinder, NLNet Labs, pointed out similar work done by his colleagues, which has been written about on APNIC blog and on RIPE Labs.

E. Introduction of Marcos Sanz as Additional WG Chair

As the final agenda point, Marcos Sanz was introduced as additional WG Chair. His motivations for serving are: giving back to the community, bringing new energy to the team and help guide FLOSS projects.