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Minutes
1. Welcome, Preliminaries
RIPE NCC Executive Board Chairman Nigel Titley opened the RIPE NCC General Meeting (GM) at 18:16 (UTC +2) and welcomed attendees.
2. Financial Update and Outlook 2012
Jochem de Ruig, Chief Financial Officer of the RIPE NCC, gave the RIPE NCC financial update and presented on the outlook for the rest of 2011. The presentation is available at:
There were no questions.
3. Reports from the RIPE NCC
The RIPE NCC report for the General Meeting was presented in the RIPE NCC Services Working Group at RIPE 65. This took place on 26 September 2012 from 16:00-18:00 (UTC +2). General Meeting attendees who were not registered for the RIPE Meeting were welcome to participate in the RIPE NCC Services Working Group session. The RIPE NCC report was not repeated in the General Meeting. It is available at:
https://www.ripe.net/lir-services/ncc/gm/september-2012/presentations/ripe-ncc-update
4. Report from the Executive Board
The Chairman of the RIPE NCC Executive Board, Nigel Titley, gave the report from the Executive Board. The presentation is available at:
A member asked if the RIPE NCC Executive Board approved that PI End Users should become members of the RIPE NCC if they wished to use RPKI.
Nigel said that this was not approved by the Board and is still under discussion.
A member asked if the RIPE NCC and the Executive Board were moving to a position that all services become member-only services, in other words “paid-for services”. He said the proposed charging scheme options seemed to indicate this and he stated it would not be a good idea.
Nigel said that this was indeed the direction the RIPE NCC was moving in and he said if anyone thought it was a bad idea then they should provide the Board with feedback to say so.
A member said section 3.10 of the Activity Plan and Budget 2013 showed the ICANN/IANA/IETF/ISOC/RIRs item having a budget of almost EUR 1.2 million for 3.2 FTEs. He asked why this figure was so high.
Nigel noted that this figure included the RIPE NCC's annual ICANN contribution.
A member asked which of the three Charging Scheme options was taken into account when predicting the income in the Budget.
The RIPE NCC's Chief Financial Officer, Jochem de Ruig, responded that all three Charging Scheme options would provide roughly the same income, which is shown in the Budget.
RIPE NCC Executive Board member Fahad Alshirawi said that the RIPE NCC was in a transition phase from an organisation that focused on IPv4 address space allocation and management to one that provided other services. He said the Board was open to suggestions on how to pay for services but he felt that during the transition phase the charging should be as simple as possible to make the change as easy as possible for members.
5. Draft RIPE NCC Activity Plan and Budget 2013
The Chairman said that the Executive Board welcomes any input about the Draft RIPE NCC Activity Plan and Budget 2013 prior to, during and after the General Meeting September 2012. The Draft Activity Plan and Budget is available at:
A member said that RIPE Atlas was quite a large item in the Budget and he asked if there was a projection that this would shrink or grow in the future.
Nigel said the issue is that RIPE Atlas was originally marked as capital expenditure to be depreciated over three years but this cost item could not be taken as an asset and is accounted for in the expense actual figures. He said it appears as a large cost now but this should not be so big in future.
A member said that the Activity Plan noted that there could be instances of K-root on the RIPE Atlas anchors in the future. He asked if there was a timeline for this because it could consolidate some costs.
Nigel said that this would not save too much money because the Atlas Anchors would be virtual instances running on one piece of hardware.
A member said training costs were included in the membership fee and members could send as many staff as they wished to training over a number of years. He asked if it would be worth considering asking members who use training services more to contribute more.
Nigel agreed that this would be worth looking at.
RIPE NCC Executive Board Treasurer Remco van Mook noted that staff trained by the RIPE NCC tend to move around in the industry, so the training has benefits beyond the individual member. He agreed that it was worth looking at the costs for training.
Fahad said a lack of investment in training could lead to the community working with less educated people and have hidden costs in other ways, such as the RIPE NCC having to spend more resources on tickets. He said there would probably be no major reduction in training costs.
A member asked if the Board could elaborate on the cost of subsidising RIPE Meetings.
Nigel noted that the RIPE NCC does not subsidise tickets for individuals except in very rare cases. He said the member fee contributes about 50% to the costs of meetings, including RIPE NCC staff time. He added that the ticket cost would be double if this did not happen and he did not wish to discourage the RIPE community by making the ticket price prohibitive.
A member added that RIPE NCC members also pay with annual contributions for the salaries of RIPE NCC employees, and he wished to know if the Board looked at the costs of RIPE Meetings in terms of employee hours.
Nigel confirmed that this was indeed the case and the Board rated the hours as a monetary contribution to the cost of the RIPE Meetings.
A member said the RIPE Atlas costs were approximately EUR 2 million and this was the first time he had seen the costs written down. He said this may well be a good thing but he asked if there could be an explanation of how the costs reached this level.
Nigel said that the level of costs for RIPE NCC measurements have been approximately 10-15% of the budget for the past number of years.
The member said a previous RIPE NCC membership survey focus group asked about the idea of paying for services that the member wanted and ignoring those that it didn't have use for.
Nigel said that the overall message from the last membership survey was to continue with the service developments in measurement areas such as RIPE Atlas. He added that if there were a strong message from the membership to discontinue a service then the Board would ensure that it was discontinued.
6. RIPE NCC Charging Scheme 2013
Jochem explained the three charging scheme options that the members would vote on. The presentation is available at:
https://www.ripe.net/lir-services/ncc/gm/september-2012/presentations/ripe-ncc-charging-scheme-2013
Executive Board member Fahad Alshirawi said it was important to note that for Option B, if all members selected to be in the small category, this would lead to the same model as Option A, and not guarantee a reduction in fee for the Small category because everyone would pay the same fee.
A member asked if this meant that his fee could rise if he stayed in a medium category while everyone else moved to a smaller category, and Fahad confirmed that this was indeed the case.
Jochem explained how the voting process would work.
RIPE NCC Executive Board Treasurer Remco van Mook said that if all three Charging Scheme options were rejected by the membership, the current Charging Scheme would stay in effect and all members would pay more in 2013 than if they chose one of the three options.
A member said there was a provision in all three options saying that those paying for services would have to become members to continue using the services. He asked if those choosing to become members would have to pay the additional sign-up fee.
Nigel said they would not have to pay the sign-up fee.
A member asked if all members chose the Small category under Option B would that lead to all members paying the same fee.
Nigel confirmed that if everyone chose the same category then all members would pay the same fee. He added that in such a case, Option B would in effect be the same as Option A.
A member asked why the options were presented in that order because this could influence the result of the voting.
Nigel said there was no particular reason why this order was chosen.
A member said that he could calculate his own billing score under Option C but he did not know where he ranked overall among all RIPE NCC members. He said this ranking was important because it determined the billing category he would fall into.
Remco said this was a flaw of the current Charging Scheme and is one of the reasons the Executive Board has spent considerable time to try to have it changed to a better and more transparent system.
A member asked if those using paid services such as DNSMON who became RIPE NCC members would pay anything extra above the membership fee.
Nigel said these members would pay the membership fee only.
A member thanked the Board for the three proposals. He said he was greatly in favour of simplicity so he recommended that members vote for Option A.
A member from a small LIR said he would pay the same as large companies under Options A and B. He also said that the difference between Option C and keeping the current Charging Scheme was that under Option C members would be charged for IPv6 address space. He asked why anyone would prefer Option C to the current Charging Scheme.
Nigel said that we were moving to an IPv6 world and in such a situation it is fair to charge for IPv6.
Remco added that it was the unanimous decision of the RIPE NCC Charging Scheme Task Force that IPv6 should be charged for in a normal way.
A member said he understood that small organisations might not want to pay the same as large organisations but he was not sure the current formula differentiated fairly so he was in favour of the simplest option.
A member asked if the time margins would be changed if Option C were approved so members could know their billing score earlier.
Nigel confirmed that this would happen.
A member said that Option A could be approved even if the membership showed a greater preference for Option B.
Nigel confirmed that this was the case but the Articles of Association did not allow a ranking vote to be carried out for resolutions because resolutions have to be voted for or against.
The member asked if the category choices of members themselves under Option B would be published.
Nigel said that the RIPE NCC would publish this information.
7. Presentation on legacy address space and the RIPE NCC
The Chairman noted that Niall O'Reilly gave a presentation on services for legacy resource holders at the RIPE NCC Services Working Group. The presentation is available at:
A member asked for a summary of Niall's presentation.
Nigel said the position of the RIPE NCC was that whenever there was a policy on this issue from the RIPE community then the RIPE NCC would implement it.
Niall said that he gave an update on the progress of RIPE Policy Proposal 2012-07 through the RIPE Policy Development Process. He noted that the Discussion Phase for this proposal would end on 9 October. He said that the next version of the proposal would probably be much shorter, would declare address policy issues out of scope for legacy resources, that there should be a policy framework for registration services, and that there would be an itemisation of the various services and cases that need to be addressed.
Nigel said that members who were interested in this policy proposal should join the RIPE NCC Services Working Group mailing list and make their comments there.
8. Voting on resolutions
Discussion of these resolutions took place under agenda point 6.
The Chairman suspended the General Meeting at 19:20 (UTC +2). He explained that the electronic voting period would remain open until 14:00 (UTC +2) on 27 September and that the results would be announced at 15:45 (UTC +2) on 27 September.
9. Announcement of voting results
The Chairman reconvened the General Meeting at 15:45 (UTC + 2) on 27 September.
The results of the voting on the GM resolutions were as follows:
Resolution 1: The General Meeting adopts the RIPE NCC Charging Scheme 2013 – Option A.
Yes |
– |
197 |
No |
– |
105 |
Abstain |
– |
11 |
Option A passed and will be adopted as the RIPE NCC Charging Scheme 2013. This meant that the voting on options B and C was not taken into consideration.
10. Close
The Chairman thanked the RIPE NCC members and closed the meeting at 15:50 (UTC +2).