Meeting Report

The SEE 9/RIPE NCC Regional Meeting took place online on 28 September 2021. The meeting was hosted by the RIPE NCC. With 153 people having registered to attend, we saw 84 of those join the meeting on Meetecho.

The meeting opened with Jan Žorž, chair of the SEE 9 Programme Committee, welcoming attendees and introducing his co-chair, Vladislav Bidikov. He explained the format of the online meeting and then opened the floor to the speakers.

The first presentation was given by the RIPE NCC’s Vesna Manojlovic, who discussed the resilience of technical communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also elaborated on her mapping of OSI layers with Maslow’s pyramid of needs and how this relates to supporting the wellbeing of the RIPE community.

Following up on the topic of resilience, there were four talks addressing how regional IXPs adapted to increased traffic from the pandemic. Vladimir Gazivoda of the University of Montenegro spoke about how the Montenegro IXP (MIXP) handled COVID-19. Next, Vladislav Bidikov of Ss. Cyril and Methodius University gave an update on Macedonia’s IXP.mk.

Following these two speakers, Zoran Perovic of Serbian Open eXchange (SOX), the Serbian IXP, gave a talk on SOX’s experience during the pandemic and its approach going forward. Finally, Cristian Copcea of Romania’s InterLAN Internet Exchange offered an overview of recent developments at the organisation and its current situation.

After this series of presentations on different regional IXPs, David Huberman of ICANN shared the results of his reverse DNS (rDNS) survey of South East Europe. His survey looked at the deployment status of rDNS for IPv4 in different countries and in the general region. He also stressed the importance of reverse records for troubleshooting purposes.

Next, Pavle Mijuskovic of the Agency for Electronic Communications and Postal Services (EKIP) gave an overview of the electronic communications market in Montenegro. His in-depth analysis examined Internet speeds, coverage and traffic patterns in the country, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The final presentation of the meeting was given by Predrag Puharic of FKKSS. He spoke about the lack of a national CSIRT in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the challenges this absence presents. He described a possible solution to the problem, the creation of a national Cyber Security Excellence Centre that can facilitate the establishment of the country’s first academic CSIRT.

After the presentations, Jan Žorž opened the floor for general discussion. Several participants asked questions and shared comments about different networking issues in South East Europe.

The meeting closed with Vladislav Bidikov thanking participants for attending. Jan Žorž also thanked attendees and invited them to join the follow-up discussion on SpatialChat.

A recording of the meeting is available on this page. 

Thank you to all who attended the meeting and to our speakers for presenting.

Save the date for SEE 10: 11-12 April 2022!