RIPE NCC Services Working Group Minutes RIPE 84

Wednesday, 18 May 2022, 14:30 – 16:00 (UTC+2)

Chaired By: Kurt Erik Lindqvist
Co-Chairs: Rob Evans, Bijal Sanghani
Scribe: Ulka Athale
Status: Final

A. Administrative Matters

Kurt Erik Lindqvist welcomed attendees. The minutes from RIPE 83 were approved. Kurt reminded the Working Group that Rob Evans’ seat is up for selection and that the candidate field has been rather thin. Kurt said that he had been co-Chair since the RIPE NCC Services Working Group was founded in 2003. He encouraged people to think about stepping up to chair working groups, not just for RIPE NCC Services but also for other working groups.

B. RIPE NCC Update

The presentation is available at:
https://ripe84.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/97-RIPE-NCC-Update.pdf

Hans Petter Holen, Managing Director RIPE NCC presented the RIPE NCC Update covering key issues the RIPE NCC has been working on such as the impact of the war in Ukraine, and the efforts to improve different services. He also honoured Daniel Karrenberg for his contribution to the RIPE NCC and the RIPE community over the past thirty years.

Carsten Schiefner, speaking for himself, asked why Dutch banks were reluctant to accept payments from Iran and Syrian. Hans Petter replied that the level of sanctions applicable to the RIPE NCC and financial institutions differ. Anti-money laundering laws also require compliance, and this makes banks sceptical to receive money from high-risk countries.

Carsten then followed up by asking whether this was left to the discretion of the banks or whether it was required by the Dutch government?

Hans Petter emphasised that the banks would be able to best answer that but possibly negative media attention might have had an impact. He also added that he was confident that the RIPE NCC could proceed to receive money in a compliant and safe way.

C. RIPE NCC Operations Update

Felipe Victolla Silveira, Chief Operations Officer, RIPE NCC 

The presentation is available at:
https://ripe84.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/84-Operational-Update-RIPE-84.pdf

Felipe presented an overview of policy transfer tickets, new LIR applications, ticket response timelines and the efforts to measure member satisfaction. He also spoke about the tools the RIPE NCC uses for sanctions compliance and an ongoing project to modernise RIPE NCC Access.

Elvis Velea, V4Escrow, acknowledged that he had been quite rough on the RIPE NCC last year and he would like to applaud the improvements in the service level. He also wanted to applaud the introduction of several APIs in the LIR Portal. He asked if it was possible to introduce an API for transfers requests as well. He also added that while the ticketing system in the LIR Portal is not ideal, it had also really improved, and he complimented Felipe on the efforts made.

Felipe thanked Elvis for his compliments and suggested that Elvis send an email about the API request, which could be added to the quarterly roadmap and reviewed alongside other requests from the community.

Cynthia Revstrom suggested that it would be better to go with a non-cloud SSO option seen how critical the NCC is for many things. If possible, having a solution that is based on open source would be preferable for security reasons so that everyone can audit it.

Felipe said that they would take the feedback into account.

Fredrik Korsback, AWS, asked if the RIPE NCC was also planning to look at BGPSec, he added that this could be really looking at the long-term but a start needs to be made somewhere. 

Felipe replied that this was being considered but at the same time it was important not to clutter the dashboard with ASP objects or BGPSec. The idea behind refactoring the user interface is to ensure that it still looks neat and works.

Harry Cross commended the RIPE NCC on the ticketing system and asked if it was possible to get access to the raw Zendesk instance behind that.

Felipe said that this had been considered but it did not meet all the internal requirements to do so.

Dmitry Serbulov asked how the RIPE NCC could ensure neutrality if it uses cloud services from private providers?

Hans Petter replied that any subcontractor the RIPE NCC uses may be subject to sanctions. Therefore, the selection subcontractors needed to be done carefully. The RIPE NCC always weighs whether it is better to outsource something or do it ourselves, but that balance keeps shifting.

D. The RIPE NCC and Sanctions

Athina Fragkouli, Chief Legal Officer, RIPE NCC

The presentation is available at:
https://ripe84.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/99-99-Sanctions-Update_RIPE-84_v1.2.pdf

Athina provided an overview of which sanctions were applicable to the RIPE NCC, and how they have been handled over the years. She also explained the procedures applied to members under sanctions investigations and ended by reiterating the RIPE NCC Executive Board’s expression of solidarity with operators who have the difficult task of maintaining Internet access while suffering from the terrible effects of armed conflicts and war

Fahad Al Shirawi, speaking for himself, commented that the RIPE NCC has an issue with banks in the Netherlands. He asked why the RIPE NCC doesn’t receive money in the UAE instead as it has an office there.

Hans Petter replied that he had a ticket booked to the UAE for the coming Wednesday, and he now also had a residence permit for it as well.

E. RIPE NCC Technology Update 

Kaveh Ranjbar, Chief Information Officer, RIPE NCC

The presentation is available at:
https://ripe84.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/101-101-Technology-Update-RIPE-84.pdf

Kaveh shared the latest work from the RIPE NCC such as improving its email infrastructure, reducing the TTL for NS and DS records, changing how they sign for DNSSEC, and making to possible to receive RIS realtime data by connecting to the RIPE NCC’s Kafka stream. He also announced that the new version of RIPE Atlas probes would soon be available. He then explained the updated service criticality framework and invited the community to participate in the discussion.

There were no questions or comments.

F. Open Microphone Session

Kurtis Lindqvist, Working Group Chair

Rolf Wichertjes said that he noticed that a lot of the discussions were about moving services to the cloud. But the question about which would be used remains.

Kaveh replied that this particular question had been addressed in the cloud framework document which includes several criteria – legal, financial, technical to select a cloud provider including a competition framework, and that he was keen to find a Europe-based provider.

Dmitry Serbulov asked whether there would be a discussion about changing the payment scheme for IPv4 in the RIPE NCC. 

Hans Petter replied that new Charging Scheme options were discussed over winter but these were not placed on the agenda for the upcoming General Meeting due to uncertainties following the war in Ukraine and it was probably better to postpone that discussion and take it up at the next RIPE Meeting.

Z. Any Other Business

There were no further question or comments.

Kurtis thanked the Working Group and said he looked forward to seeing them at the next RIPE Meeting.