Biographies of Executive Board Candidates

Fahad AlShirawi

Biography
Fahad is the Managing Director of 2Connect. Established in 2004, 2Connect is a leading telecommunications service provider in the Middle East.

Fahad also serves as a Board Director at the Bahrain Internet Exchange (BIX), is Chairman of the Organising Committee of the Middle East Network Operators Group (MENOG) and was appointed as a Board Member representing the Kingdom of Bahrain at the Arab Regional ISP & DSP Association (ARISPA).

Fahad is an active Member of RIPE NCC and an avid supporter of all things Internet.

Motivation
Fahad is passionate about his work and the impact on the region and its growth. He's constantly advocated communication as a catalyst for economic growth and believes the Internet to be at the core of such growth. Fahad spends most of his time in non-profit initiatives that promote those passions.

Joao Luis Silva Damas

Biography
Joao Luis Silva Damas (Joao Damas) has been involved with RIPE since 1997, joining the RIPE NCC as network engineer. Joao left the RIPE NCC in 2003, at the time being the CTO, to work for Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) as Senior Programme manager, being involved in network operations, DNS operations (including F.root-servers.net and ns-ext.isc.org), and progressing BIND, as well as performing public benefit work in various areas.

He has continued to be active in RIPE as Chairman of the Routing WG since 2003 and beginning in 2004 putting together the programme for the RIPE Meeting plenary, aka European Operators Forum (EOF).

Joao also participates in work at other RIR communities, mainly at LACNIC and APNIC, and in the IETF.

In 2008, together with colleagues, launched the ESNOG group and corresponding meetings, bringing together Spanish ISPs to interact with each other.

Motivation
While currently not working for an LIR, Joao would like to be in the RIPE NCC Association's board seeking to represent LIRs at large in the RIPE region, without regard to nationality, language or business type.

Joao is fully committed to the stability and progress of the RIPE NCC, both as an RIR and in its broader Network Coordination function. The preservation of the Internet bottom-up self-regulatory processes needs the stability provided by an established and yet dynamic entity and I will contribute to that by all possible means.

Joao is an easy target to approach at many international meetings and via email. For more detailed information, have a look at http://www.c-l-i.net/joao/ripe-2008

Ian Meikle

Biography
I joined the Internet community when employed by Nominet, the .uk ccTLD Registry, in 2000. My main responsibility at Nominet is ensuring continuity of the services that we offer to registrars and the wider community. This includes the domain name registration process, DNS and whois. I am also responsible for the Nominet network, which underlies these services and I was instrumental in Nominet becoming an LIR. As a result we have joined several Internet Exchanges, where we operate an open peering policy.

I have attended RIPE meetings since 2001 and recently became a co-chair for the Test Traffic Working Group. I am also a member of the UKNOF programme committee. I represent Nominet, and vote, at the RIPE NCC GMs and other industry meetings.

Nominet has changed a great deal since I started and, as the Systems Administration Manager, I have been closely involved in the change process. Though still a not-for-profit organisation we have faced up to the commercial challenges of diversification through the move to providing ENUM registration. I would like to bring my experience of working within a similar registry, during a period of change to bear on the challenges the RIPE NCC faces.

Motivation
My vision for the RIPE NCC is for it to become more strategic in the approach it takes towards its responsibilities.

The diminishing pool of IPv4 resources presents a big challenge for all the RIRs. RIPE NCC has the advantage of an established community to help deal with this. First and foremost I want to ensure that the coming re-distribution of addresses is equitable.

Besides the big change in IP address distribution I want to focus the NCC on its corporate responsibility, to ensure it is giving something back. Not just to LIRs but also the wider community.

The Internet is a vital part of global industry. Some of the services that the NCC operates, notably K root, should be recognised as Critical Infrastructure. I want to push for that to happen.

I am also keen to improve the way the NCC communicates, both in terms of technology and the way it uses language.

Kees Neggers

Biography
Kees Neggers is Managing Director of SURFnet, the national research and education network in the Netherlands. He has been one of the leaders in the development of international research networking and the Internet since the mid-eighties. He was involved as an initiator and Board member in several international network related organisations such as RARE, RIPE NCC, TERENA, Ebone and the Internet Society.

Present positions held in Internet-related international activities include Chairman of the RIPE NCC Executive Board, European Co-Chair of the Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental Research Networking (CCIRN), Chairperson of the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF), Co-Chair of the Global Ring Network for Advanced Applications Development (GLORIAD) and Member of the Board of the Internet Educational Equal Access Foundation (IEEAF).

Jim Reid

Biography
Jim is a freelance DNS consultant who spends too much time writing or reviewing policy documents, RFPs and contracts instead of tinkering with name server configurations. He has advised governments and other regulatory bodies about Internet governance matters and technology trends. His work has entailed close liaison with ICANN, government officials, law enforcement, IPR lawyers and the UK Information Commissioner's Office. Jim was a founding director of the UK ENUM Consortium, the non-profit industry group responsible for the oversight of ENUM in the UK.

He is co-chair of the DNS Working Group and founded the ENUM Working Group. He has just completed a 3 year term on the RIPE NCC Executive Board.

Jim has worked for Internet start-ups, academia, non-profit industry associations as well as a multinational company and an international treaty organisation. He owns and runs a small consulting company.

Max Tulyev

Biography
All of his career since 1999 Max has been linked with Internet Service Providers (ISPs), from user support up to being a small business holder. In 2003 Max moved to Moscow, Russia, and worked for Garant-Park-Telecom (.RU and .SU registrar). Max established the .RU DNSSEC test bench and IPv6 connectivity at Garant-Park-Telecom. In 2006 he moved back to Kiev, Ukraine to focus his work on his own ISP, NetAssist LLC, now an extra large LIR. It is also the first ISP in Ukraine to have an IPv6 block with IPv6 Internet connectivity.

Max has experience of cooperating with RIPE and the RIPE NCC since 1999.

His hobbies are spelestology, travel and the Internet.

Motivation
The main motivation for me is that the Internet is a really interesting thing :)

Probably, IPv4 space will be ended when I'll be the RIPE NCC Executive Board member. It will not be a good time for the Internet, but we have some time to prepare. Things that are OK now will not work later.

First, all policies should be checked to see that we can enforce them. If there is some we can't, we should initiate policy change or implement enforcement schemes. The most important is an ability to take back really unused space. Implementation of RIPE DB actuality checks is a must. Also, we should check new requests much more strictly because of IP squatters. For this, communication with authorities should be enhanced (i.e. do these companies really exist, etc.). As our company is registering a lot of PI networks dealing with a lot of customers, I have experience in how to fix some security holes.

Second is the legal aspect. After all free IPv4 space is exhausted, we should expect a lot of time to be spent in courts, so the group of RIPE NCC lawyers should be enhanced.

Third is IPv6 migration. From my point of view, if at least half of the resources (not ISPs, not users) are not be accessible through the IPv6 network when IPv4 is exhausted, migration to IPv6 will have failed. So we need to do some steps to help and to motivate resources (hosters, filestores, etc.) to move to IPv6.

Andreas Wittkemper

Biography
Andreas Wittkemper is employed by Verizon Business Germany where he is responsible for the worldwide domain registration for all Verizon EMEA customers. He maintains the relationship with various NICs such as DENIC, EUrid, Nominet and many others. He is also the RIPE contact for Verizon Business. His career at a commercial ISP started in 1996 when he joined EUnet Germany as a hostmaster and he is leading the Expertise Centre DNS & IP team within Verizon EMEA now.

Andreas has been involved with RIPE since RIPE 31 in Edinburgh. From 1998 on he has attended all RIPE Meetings and has seen the growth that happened over the years to the RIPE NCC and the community. He is representing and voting for Verizon at the General Meetings since 2003 and is in regular contact with Executive Board members and RIPE NCC key staff.

Motivation
Andreas strongly believes in the community process and that RIPE should stay independent from international regulatory frameworks. In light of the IPv4 address space depletion, Andreas recognises the RIPE community as the driving force behind the upcoming redistribution policy. This policy will have to fairly consider not only the interests of major stakeholders but those of the community at large. Andreas is ready to invest a considerable amount of his time in the work at the Board and he has the backing of his employer for this.