Minutes

1. Opening

1.1. Welcome

Rob Blokzijl welcomed the participants to the 25th RIPE meeting hosted by NIKHEF in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

1.2. Papers tabled

• Agenda for the 24th RIPE meeting
• List of Participants of the 24th RIPE meeting
• Flyer JENC8 conference

2. Adoption of the agenda

The agenda was approved.

3. Minutes 24th RIPE meeting

The minutes of the last meeting were approved with no changes.

4. Action points 24th RIPE meeting

The action items from the 24th RIPE meeting minutes were reviewed. The following list comprises the ongoing action items only. All other action items were closed.

Action 23.1 on Geert Jan de Groot
To write up recommendations for managing nameserver configurations.

Action 23.3 on RIPE NCC
To incorporate a page where TLD policies can be published at its WWW site.

Action 24.4 on Willem van der Scheun (taken over by Joachim Schmitz)
To investigate the status of the CIDR FAQ and see whether additions are needed, probably by triggering a discussion on the mailing list.

5. Next Meetings

The dates of the next meetings were discussed. The following dates were agreed upon:

• RIPE26 (Amsterdam, The Netherlands): 20-22 January, 1997
• RIPE27 (Dublin, Ireland): 21-23 May, 1997

6. Report from the RIPE Chair

Rob Blokzijl talked about the changes that had taken place between the first and 25th RIPE meeting. He mentioned how the audience had changed from a few people actively engaged in building the first Internet in Europe, to a large audience running a thriving business. This has impact in both positive and negative ways.

He also mentioned that from RIPE25 on, the minutes will be in a different format. The minutes of the working group reflecting the general meeting will not be incorporated anymore into the general minutes. The general minutes will only contain a short summary. The minutes of the working groups can be found at the pages of the working groups on the RIPE WWW server.

The last point Rob made was that it may be healthy for RIPE to have another person as a chair after a long time. If anybody has ideas on new chairpersons, then this can be discussed before the 26th RIPE meeting at the ripe-list mailinglist, so at that meeting decisions can be taken.

7. RIPE NCC reports

Mirjam Kuehne, Daniel Karrenberg, Carol Orange and Paul Ridley gave comprehensive overviews of the state of affairs at the RIPE NCC. The overview is well summarised by the slides they used for their presentations, which can be found at:

• ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/presentations/ripe-m25-dfk-NCC-Report.ps.gz
• ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/presentations/ripe-m25-mir-RS-Report.ps.gz
• ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/presentations/ripe-m25-orange-CS-Report.ps.gz

For more details, please refer to the RIPE NCC quarterly reports. There was a question from Peter Galbavy whether there was a particular pattern in the growth of different size categories of registries. The answer was that the increase in the number of small registries was very large in comparison to the other categories. This was also a reason why the contributors decided to introduce a minimum size category based on address space allocation history. (See next agenda point).

8. Report from the Contributors Meeting

Daniel Karrenberg gave a summary of the discussions that took place at the Contributors' Committee meeting. First, there had been reports from the RIPE NCC about the past year and the new internal structure. Then the activity plan and operating budget for 1997 had been presented and adopted without much discussion.

3 different charging models had been presented, and the opinions at the Contributors' Committee meeting had represented the discussion on the mailinglist quite well, with many people preferring model 1 as being the simplest, and also some preferring model 3. Ultimately, the decision that had come out was to go for a charging scheme based on model 1 with fixed fees and 3 categories, but with a minimum category decided by the RIPE NCC, based upon address space allocation.

There had been quite some discussion about the amount of reserves the RIPE NCC should have, mainly because of the corporate tax that would have to be paid on them. This had evolved into a discussion about a new organisational structure of the NCC, which was something which all parties concerned found necessary. A small committee had been established to investigate possibilities in this field.

After his summary, Daniel expressed his thanks for the vote of confidence the Contributors had given to the NCC by approving the activity plan as presented, and by instructing the NCC to design and implement a mechanism for determining charging categories by themselves. He stated that the minutes of the meeting were still being worked on and would be published soon.

Kurt Kayser asked whether the NCC had considered getting subsidy from the European Commission. Daniel replied that this would not happen, because the NCC is already well funded from the contributors and should remain independent from the influences that come with other funding sources. Rob Blokzijl added that the European Commission never reserves money for continuing services, only for projects with limited time scope.

There was a suggestion that the Contributors' Committee meeting could be held closer in conjunction with a RIPE meeting. This would be considered for the next year.

Wilfried Woeber noted that at the Contributors' Committee meeting it was stated that if a small group would be formed to look into the possibilities for the NCC's new formal structure, the work of this small group would be done in as open a way as possible. Wilfried stressed he wanted to have this implemented, which was promised.

Antonio Blasco Bonito asked whether the discussions on the mailinglist would also be incorporated in the Contributors' Committee meeting minutes. Daniel replied that as usual only the meeting itself would be minuted. He added that he had reported on discussions on the mailing list to the meeting and that report would be minuted.

9. Distribution of Remaining Classful Internet Address Space

Agenda point not minuted, as the discussion is not relevant to people not attending the meeting. (It involved a lot of letters A, B and C made of chocolate.) If this issue comes up at any next meeting there will be a multimedia recording of the deliberations.

10. Regulation issues on the Internet

Rob introduced the subject by briefly summarising three areas of possible problems concerning regulation: address space, name space and content. After this, the discussion focused mainl;y on content regulation.

Rob asked the audience whether RIPE should get involved in the discussion surrounding content regulation on the Internet. Peter Galbavy remarked that there are two different aspects to this issue. RIPE should decide whether they want to be involved in lobbying/advising in the process of making regulations. As a different point, it would be good to have a central point of information about regulation issues, local law concerning Internet Service Providers, etc. Rob Blokzijl added that it would be up to the ISPs themselves to come up with this information.

Daniel summarised the opinions expressed about this at the NCC Contributors' Committee meeting: the RIPE NCC should not be involved in lobbying and industry representation issues that are not clearly related to the NCC's activities themselves. The reason is that the NCC has to keep a neutral and impartial position. Daniel suggested that industry representation work for RIPE could be organised seperately. Joachim Schmitz noted that lobbying should not be an activity inside RIPE as RIPE is a technical forum. But he added that a position on regulation issues should be developed, because questions about regulation issues will undoubtedly come RIPE's way.

Keith Mitchell reported that Peter Dawe has set up an organisation called Safetynet, that concerns itself with illegal content on the Internet. Among other plans, they have set up a hotline where people can report illegal things, and are developing a rating scheme for WWW sites and newsgroups. Safetynet is not a 'network police' organisation forcing ISPs to cut off sites from the Internet, only warns the ISPs when illegal content is found on their servers. The LINX (London Internet exchange) has endorsed Safetynet's activities. So far this has been enough for the politicians not to involve themselves in the LINX. Keith Mitchell said he thinks that RIPE should at least endorse some kind of activities, or the politicians will force regulation.

Daniel Karrenberg asked whether a situation has ever been encountered where transport, instead of storage, of illegal material was involved. Keith Mitchell answered that Safetynet only has authority over things that are stored in the UK. If a problem concerning Internet content stored in another country is encountered, the appropriate authorities in that country will be notified. Peter Galbavy added that also the UK police are not interested in packets carried over the Internet, but only in illegal things stored on UK territory.

A short discussion took place about different rating schemes that Safetynet was going to implement and about 'different levels of illegality' of newsgroups.

Daniel Karrenberg asked the audience if someone had more information about a case in Germany, where a prosecutor had chased ISPs for carrying illegal packets. Geert Jan de Groot said he heard that it got undone. Joachim Schmitz explained about the situation in Germany, where it is not yet clear which laws apply to ISPs. Inside the government, there is a discussion about how to deal with telecommunication issues. The current position is that Deutsche Telekom is not liable for the content (of the conversations they carry) as long as they don't know it. The government are thinking of applying the same rule to ISPs. Also, the ISPs are liable for content that is stored in Germany, but not for anything else.

Bernhard Stockman said he would think that broadcast laws apply more easily to ISPs. Ruediger Volk said that that would mean that supervising bodies would have to be there to watch the content of the broadcasted material, which is not a practical situation. Peter Galbavy responded that the internet is parallel to the phone network in the aspect that there is one link from the source of information to the client.

Mike O'Dell said that the distinction between the transport of information and the source of information should be emphasised to those making policy. Cliff Stanford stated that in the UK, this has been brought across to the government and the publisher of the website is liable, not the person who owns the computer on which the information is stored. Joachim Schmitz added that a German legal study, which has respect with the German government, came to the same conclusion.

Rob Blokzijl rounded the discussion up. He said he could draw the conclusion that RIPE should not involve itself in political lobbying or regulation. The RIPE meeting was however a good place to exchange info regularly.

11. Report from the IETF

Joyce Reynolds this time held a more introductory talk about the structure of the IETF. The topics she talked about are well summarised by slides that can be found at:

• ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/presentations/ripe-m25-jkrey-IETF.txt

12. Reports from the Working Groups

The chairs from the various working groups gave reports on the working group meetings that were held earlier. A summary of the working groups reports is appended below. Full minutes of the working groups will be accessible from http://www.ripe.net/wg/index.html

12.1. Local IR Working Group

Minutes: RIPE 25

1. Chair: Mike Norris
   Scribe: Anne Lord
   Attendance: over 90 people
   Agenda agreed
2. Minutes, actions
   All actions completed
   1. complete ripe-104++ & circulate
   2. produce new IP address request form
   3. circulate paper on charging
   4. ask Internic about removal of European networks from database
3. Reports from registries
   1. NCC report to plenary
   2. Contributors Committee agrees 1997 workplan including Registry tasks
4. IP address space assignment
   1. documents ripe-140, 141, 142
   2. Inconsistencies
   3. nic-handle in person object should be mandatory admin-c, zone-c, tech-c should contain nic-handles
   4. status attribute in inetnum object should be mandatory
      Both agreed, recommended to DB WG
5. Charging Document
   1. agreed also by DNS WG
   2. now becomes a RIPE document
6. Training
   1. NCC will try to put slides in HTML format
7. I/O with other WGs
   1. DB: recommendation at 4.2.
   2. DNS: endorses Charging Document
8. Global Registry Coordination
   1. good relations, regular contact
   2. duplicate registrations now removed
   3. database mirroring with APNIC and other registries;
      Internic: still problems
9. Reverse domain space
   1. monitored by NCC
   2. reverse domains should go in database
10. AOB
    1. Internet Registry Evolution
    2. urge discussions, input to mailing list ([email protected])
    3. NCC will attend meetings and report
    4. PIARA - not chartered yet

12.2. Routing Working Group

Minutes: RIPE 25

Meeting 23.9.96 16:00-18:10
89 participants
Chairmen: Willem van der Scheun, Joachim Schmitz
Scribe: Mike Norris

• New chairman Joachim Schmitz (JS395-RIPE)
• Presentations
  • Joachim Schmitz, DFN-NOC: Working Experience with ROE
  • Tony Barber, Pipex: Experience with Progressive BGP Route Flap Dampening
  • Cengiz Alaettinoglu, ISI: The RA ToolSet
    During the RIPE meeting a test installation of the RA ToolSet was accessible to the participants
• Actions
  • Action 22.10 on Joachim Schmitz
    To trigger the discussion on the mailing list of the Routing WG, which focus to choose for a future tool development project and to come to consensus on it
  • Action 24.4 on Joachim Schmitz
    To investigate the status of the CIDR FAQ and see whether additions are needed, probably by triggering a discussion on the mailing list
  • Action 25.R1 on Daniel Karrenberg/RIPE NCC
    To report on the results from the route aggregation analysis on the 26th RIPE meeting
  • Action 25.R2 on Joachim Schmitz
    To coordinate making the presentations at the Routing WG available

12.3. Database Working Group

Minutes: RIPE 25

Chair: Wilfried Woeber
Scribe: John LeRoy Crain
Participants: 51 (according to the sign-up list)

Agenda:

12.3.1. Results and decisions

The usual report about the status of the DB and the DB software was offered by the RIPE-NCC (Carol Orange) and well received by the group. There is still a couple of minor bugs around (as can be expected anyway when implementing a major new software release), these bugs are being fixed asap.

The behaviour of the software when doing an inverse lookup ("-i" flag) is to be changed to imply "-r" (recursion disabled).

NIC-Handles (in general) and the status: attribute for inetnum: objects should be enforced by the DB software. This is to bring the software in line with the requirements in the address allocation guidelines documentation. The proposed flag day for these changes is 1.1.1997.

In order to avoid confusion, the string AUTO (which is used to request and control automatic handle assignment) shall be reserved (not to be used for a real handle).

There was general consensus that the quality and consistency of the data in the RIPE-DB should be improved. The group formally supports this activity which is also part of the RIPE NCC Activity Plan for 1997. A project has been set up with the Free University of Amsterdam to look at the consistency issues. Students may wish to interview selected users.

Current thinking is that there shall be more sanity checking at the time of a transaction (each time) and that we need some background checks that can be performed at regular intervals. These should then catch inconsistencies which can not be properly detected by the transaction tests. Making this process succeed is expected to require collaboration and some effort from Local-IR folks as well as from the routing folks.

Ambrose Magee was introduced as the new primary maintainer of the DB-SW. He then reported on the proposed structure of the Documentation for the RIPE Database objects, the usage and the software. The group endorsed the concept with some minor proposals for improvement and stressed the importance of the documentation, and in general, the importance of consolidation vs. new functionality.

Input received from the DNS-WG asked for a referral mechanism in the RIPE-DB to support registering 2nd and lower level domain objects at the site of a TLD Administration, but still offering access with whois by way of the RIPE-DB. There was a reasonable number of TLDs represented that promised support on their end for implementing that approach.

The decision reached calls for an interim solution to add a referral mechanism to domain: objects. This would only be used in (TLD) domain: objects that describe the TLD and point to the authoritative DB that holds the 2nd and any lower level data.

During the discussion of the DB-SW behaviour of handling multiple maintainer entries, it was clarified that there is no hierarchy involved. The software just scans all entries and tries to find a match. The first match found is honored. This is in line with the current concept and design.

12.3.2. New actions

Action 25.DB1 on Wilfried Woeber, Carol Orange
To come up with a technical proposal for better DB consistency checking.

Action 25.DB2 on all WG members
To think about implications of the proposed DB consistency checking and to provide input.

Action 25.DB3 on Carol Orange, Daniel Karrenberg
To report about the FUA findings (on DB consistency) at next ripe meeting.

Action 25.DB4 on Carol Orange, Daniel Karrenberg
To document the approach to find and change references to person objects in order to support migration to mandatory handles (using inverse look up and "search and replace") and send it to the list.

Action 25.DB5 on Ambrose Magee
(time allowing) To implement the change that "whois -i ..." implies "whois -i -r ..."

Action 25.DB6a on Wilfried Woeber
To ask on the DB-WG mailing list about the need of improved inverse lookup functionality (more attributes allowed for -i).

Action 25.DB6a on Daniel Karrenberg
To look at query logs for "failed" -i attempts.

Action 25.DB7 on RIPE NCC (Ambrose Magee)
To produce the RIPE-DB Documentation a.s.a.p. and according to the agreed structure.

Action 25.DB8a on RIPE NCC (Carol Orange)
To publish the "known bugs" list, on the Web or on the FTP-Server.

Action 25.DB8b on RIPE NCC (Carol Orange)
To publish the "open issues" list (consolidated wish list) on the Web or on the FTP server.

Action 25.DB9 on RIPE NCC (Ambrose Magee, Carol Orange, Daniel Karrenberg)
To propose and implement (a.s.a.p.) a referral mechanism for TLD domain: objects (only).

Action 25.DB10 on Wilfried Woeber, RIPE NCC
To make a proposal on the technical and procedural requirements of making the status: attribute for inetnum: objects mandatory.

Action 25.DB11 on RIPE NCC (Ambrose Magee)
To change the DB-SW to obsolete the advisory: attribute in aut-num: objects.

Action 25.DB12 on RIPE NCC (Ambrose Magee)
To add mailing lists with their descriptions to the database documents.

12.4. NetNews Working Group

31 attendees
scribe: Roderik Muit

12.4.1. Newsflow analysis

The scripts have been improved by Heiko Rupp. They are running on 6 European News servers currently, and a set of 11 maps is produced every week.

Action 25.N1 on Netnews WG
To look for additional measuring sites for News traffic

Action 25.N2 on Netnews WG
To produce coordinates of important News servers

Action 25.N3 on Felix Kugler
To check with Heiko Rupp if if volume data could be added easily in his newsflow analysis scripts

12.4.2. Optimization of resource usage - building the Newsbone

The "Newsbone" is a fast interconnection of European News servers with US feeds. The Newsbone feeds should be adapted to the underlying network as good as possible to save bandwidth. The WG discussed procedures and network requirements for joining the Newsbone.

12.4.3. Improving quality of service - guidelines for Newsbone sites

Newsbone sites should meet certain criteria like minimum expire times, the set of carried newsgroups, article transfer delays. The basic configuration parameters should be accessible. As a very important feature, Newsbone sites will be expected to have open monitoring facilities which show inbound and outbound traffic flows as well as queue sizes.

Action 25.N4 on Felix Kugler
To produce a small document about Newsbone requirements and put it on the mailinglist for further discussion

12.4.4. News administration

Control message handling is regarded as a key issue of proper administration of a News server. To prevent damage by faked control messages, PGP-support is considered to be the optimum solution. However, there are only few control messages and few servers using this at the moment. A reference WWW/FTP-server could be an alternative solution to solve the security problem. There are doubts, however, if such a server is feasible.

Transport classes: Configuring News servers in a way that binary groups suffer first in case of backlogs is considered "acceptable practice".

Tools: four different monitoring tools were presented, more are supposed to show up in the next months.

Action 25.N5 on Newsbone administrators
To add PGP support to Newsbone servers

Action 25.N6 on Felix Kugler
To put available checkgroup messages on a WWW server as intermediate solution and as startup help for new sites.

Action 25.N7 on Newsbone administrators
To install monitoring facilities at the Newsbone servers

12.4.5. Introduction of new technologies

IP-Multicast: Heiko Rupp could not attend the meeting, and his MCntp project could not be discussed in detail. Next time !

A survey of available satellite feeds was presented. Only one seems to have adequate bandwidth, estimated start of service is November 96.

Action 25.N8 on Newsbone WG
Please post any experience with satellite newsfeeds to the netnews-wg list!

More information about News and this group's work is available from

• http://www.xlink.net/~hwr/netnews
• http://www.switch.ch/switch/netnews/wg

12.5. DNS Working Group

24 September 1969 from shortly after 09:00 until about 10:30.
Chair: Lars-Johan Liman & Ruediger Volk
Notes: Niall O'Reilly

The agenda was constructed, dynamically, as follows.

1. Administrivia
2. Agenda bashing
3. New DNS features
4. New TLDs
5. Standardisation of registration procedures among TLDs
6. Relation of RIPE db data to TLD registry data.
7. AOB

The meeting was informed of new DNS features: dynamic DNS, security, incremental zone transfer, notification, lightweight transaction security; and that implementations were beginning to become available, although these were beset with political difficulties about security.

Participants were encouraged to obtain experience and to report this at next meeting.

Issues surrounding new TLDs were discussed at length. It was agreed that a document from RIPE was needed which would be sent to relevant political authorities, and that a sub-group should meet to attempt to draft the text. It was noted that a RIPE opinion had been expressed at RIPE-23. US State Department, ITU, and DGxiii were identified (but not exclusively) among the relevant authorities.

Some participants indicated an interest in greater uniformity of registration procedures among (ISO-3166) TLD registries. As a first step, it was suggested that a central Web page with links to the pages of various registries would be useful. It was mentioned that this was actually already on the NCC work list.

Some registries are using RIPE-like database objects in their registration procedures. This involves undesirable duplication of database registration. The solution used by NL, SE was noted. Automatic referral was also identified as a useful solution.

It was agreed to refer this issue to the database WG and to retain it on the DNS agenda for the next meeting.

It was agreed that the working group support the Norris/Karrenberg paper (RIPE-150) on charging by registries.

Discussion at the plenary after the presentation

There was a question whether some software containing the mentioned new DNS features could be recommended. It was noted that the notification mechanism was implemented in the new BIND release, and for the other features there was no real answer.

Antonio Blasco Bonito mentioned that, though there was no uniformity in TLD procedures, at least uniformity in documenting these procedures should be aimed at. He asked for a minimal set of requirements for TLDs on documenting their procedures. Lars-Johan Liman took up the action of producing this.

Action 25.1 on Lars-Johan Liman
To circulate a minimal set of requirements for TLDs on documenting their procedures.

Bernhard Stockman reported that there was no progress yet on the experiment for setting up new root servers. A short discussion followed about the purpose of this experiment.

Geert Jan de Groot brought to the audience's attention that the funding for the developers of the BIND software has almost reached its end, and asked if RIPE should do something about supporting the continuing development. The RIPE chair took the action to investigate this issue, and report back to the mailinglist.

Action 25.2 on Rob Blokzijl
To investigate the state of funding of BIND software development, and report to the RIPE mailinglist.

13. Report From the Routing Arbiter Project

Cengiz Alaettinoglu gave a presentation about the work done at ISI on the Routing Arbiter project. His presentation is well summarised by the slides he used, which can be retrieved from

• ftp://ftp.isi.edu/ra/Presentations/RA-Review-Jul-96.ps.gz

14. AOB

Mike O'Dell (UUnet) reported that Vern Schryver (SGI) has found a simple method to defeat the SYN flooding attacks that were reported around the time of the RIPE-meeting. This method is based on a mechanism similar to RED (Random Early Drop), applied to the TCP incoming connection queue. More information on RED can be found at

• ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/papers/early.ps.gz or
• http://www-nrg.ee.lbl.gov/floyd/abstracts.html#FJ93

15. Closing

Rob Blokzijl thanked the participants for attending and NIKHEF for providing the room facilities and lunches, and declared the meeting closed.

List of open action items

(new action items in working groups are now kept in separate working group minutes)

Action 23.1 on Geert Jan de Groot
To write up recommendations for managing nameserver configurations.

Action 23.3 on RIPE NCC
To incorporate a page where TLD policies can be published at its WWW site.

Action 24.4 on Joachim Schmitz
To investigate the status of the CIDR FAQ and see whether additions are needed, probably by triggering a discussion on the mailing list.

Action 25.1 on Lars-Johan Liman
To circulate a minimal set of requirements for TLDs on documenting their procedures.

Action 25.2 on Rob Blokzijl
To investigate the state of funding of BIND software development, and report to the RIPE mailinglist.