Meeting Report

The tenth South East Europe/RIPE NCC Regional Meeting (SEE 10) took place from 11-12 April 2022 at the Grand Hotel Union in Ljubljana, Slovenia. It was a hybrid meeting in which many virtual attendees also participated. In total, 294 people from over 40 countries registered for SEE 10. The meeting was co-hosted by the RIPE NCC, ARNES and SiNOG.

The meeting was opened on Monday, 11 April by Hisham Ibrahim, Chief Community Officer at the RIPE NCC, along with Jan Žorž, SEE 10 Programme Committee Chair, Mirjam Kühne, RIPE Chair, and Tomi Dolenc of ARNES. They welcomed participants to the first hybrid SEE meeting.

Hisham Ibrahim also gave the RIPE NCC Update, after which Bernard Li of LINX discussed LINX’s experience with deploying 400G. He shared LINX’s strategy to successfully roll out 400G using a multi-vendor environment, although he acknowledged challenges to this approach, such as varying standards for protocol implementation.

A series of lightning talks followed the Plenary sessions. Desiree Miloshevic Evans of DESCON analysed the data collected by DESCON’s Klimerko devices, which measure air quality. Next, Massimo Candela of NTT discussed monitoring BGP and RPKI using NTT’s software tool, BGPalerter. In the last lightning talk of the day, René Fichtmüller of Global NOG Alliance gave an update on 'Keep Ukraine Connected', a task force working to deliver donated technical equipment to operators in Ukraine so the Ukrainian Internet can remain operational.

The day concluded with an exciting presentation and panel about the history of Internet development in former Yugoslavian nations. Jelena Cosic of the RIPE NCC and Slobodan Markovic of UNDP gave a Plenary talk that outlined how the region’s Internet connectivity was established, shifting from JUPAK, a national packet switching network, to ZaMIR, a BBS network, and finally to IP-based Internet. This effort was led by the academic community through organisations such as the European Academic and Research Network (EARN) and the Yugoslav Scientific-Technical Information Network (SNTIJ), leading to well-developed Internet in former Yugoslavian nations.

Following this introduction, the Plenary panel featured pioneers from those early days of the Internet who played key roles in the development of networking in the region. Mira Tasić of RNIDS in Serbia, Avgust Jauk of ARNES in Slovenia, Darko Bulat of First Croat Internaut in Croatia, Željko Drašković of MIXP in Montenegro, Wam Kat of ZaMir and Daniel Karrenberg of the RIPE NCC came together to answer questions about their experiences with developing Yugoslavian networks.

The second day of SEE 10 kicked off with a Plenary from Sankalp Basavaraj of Akamai Technologies. Basavaraj gave an overview of measuring and improving web performance and stressed the importance of perceived performance from the client's perspective. Next, Nikos Kostopoulos of NTUA/GRNET explained how GÉANT’s WifiMon monitors Wi-Fi network performance. He shared some results of WifiMon monitoring and concluded that Wi-Fi network evaluation is most accurate when using several tools to monitor, such as both crowdsourced and probe measurements. Following this, Ondřej Caletka of the RIPE NCC explained the importance of transitioning to IPv6 and outlined how to do so effectively.

Next up was an IXP Plenary session featuring talks from representatives of IXPs throughout the SEE region. Cristian Copcea of InterLAN Internet Exchange introduced attendees to TVX, InerLAN’s TV exchange platform. Daniele Arena of NaMeX Roma IXP shared an update on ANIX and its potential expansion of coverage across the Adriatic Sea. Vladislav Bidikov of Ss. Cyril and Methodius University shared the history of IXP.mk and its plans for the future. Zoran Perovic represented SOX and offered a look at what the IXP is working on. And finally, Vladimir Gazivoda of the University of Montenegro reported on MIXP and its experience over the past year.

In the following Plenary, Tomek Mrugalski of ISC explained Kea 2.0, a replacement for ISC’s DHCP server, and outlined its differences from its predecessor, such as improved multi-threading performance. Next up were two Plenary discussions on anycast. Sander Steffann of 6connect spoke about the organisation’s path to a global DNS platform using anycast and the challenges along the way. He invited listeners to offer feedback on their results. Then Remco van Mook of Lynkstate shared the organisation’s project to measure network performance for hundreds of millions of end-users with the help of a global anycast network. He demonstrated the value of anycast measurements but stressed the importance of using the appropriate environment and tools.

In the final Plenary of SEE 10, attendees heard all about SD-WAN from Goran Slavić of NCR. He covered how SD-WAN works and the considerations for operationalising it. He also pointed out that SD-WAN can be merged with cloud security in the new SASE (secure access service edge) model, which requires giving more attention to regulatory concerns. Then, there was one last lightning talk given by Vesna Manojlovic of the RIPE NCC, who introduced attendees to successful projects that were supported by the RIPE NCC’s Community Projects Fund. These included the 'Let’s Connect!' project for a secure VPN solution, the Internet Health Report and improved IPv6 support on the Tor network. She also explained the goal to bring more justice, equity, diversity and inclusion into the Community Projects Fund in terms of both the selection committee and applicants to the fund, and she encouraged attendees to apply.

SEE 10 meeting closed with a talk from Hisham Ibrahim of the RIPE NCC. He shared some statistics about the meeting and thanked the hosts and sponsors. He also thanked the SEE 10 Programme Committee for their efforts and encouraged attendees to share their feedback on the meeting. Lastly, he invited attendees to join in at RIPE 84.

The meeting presentations were given in English. The presentations are available in the presentation archive.

The SEE 11/RIPE NCC Regional Meeting will take place on 3-4 April 2023.

You can watch the recordings below.