Yerevan Regional Meeting Report

The meeting was hosted by the RIPE NCC, ARMIX (Armenian Internet Traffic Exchange Foundation) and Arpinet LLC, one of the largest Armenian ISPs.

RIPE NCC Managing Director Axel Pawlik and RIPE NCC Director of External Relations Paul Rendek welcomed everyone to the meeting. The Armenian Minister of Economy, Mr. Karen Chshmaritian, opened the meeting by saying that IT is a top priority for the government and he hoped to see more such events in Armenia, which he hoped would contribute to the development of Internet infrastructure in the region.

Axel Pawlik, RIPE NCC, gave an overview of the RIPE NCC's services and activities and encouraged all those in attendance to participate in the RIPE community and to give the RIPE NCC feedback about the services and support they need in their region.

Eugene Prokhorenko, IIAP NAS RA, asked why the RIPE NCC only runs K-root and not more root name servers. Axel responded that there are many organisations that run the root name servers, and that beyond the organisations running the core nodes there are also many more local instances running, in order to provide redundancy and ensure the robustness of the DNS.

Igor Mkrtumyan, ISOC Armenia, said that running a local K-root instance would not solve all of the problems in Armenia because of all the different domains, and asked what more could be done. Kaveh Ranjbar, the RIPE NCC's Chief Technical Officer, responded that hosting content within Armenia would help ensure that critical infrastructure remains up and running in case of being cut off from the global infrastructure. Dmitry Burkov, RIPE NCC Executive Board Member, also emphasised the importance of Armenia hosting content and maintaining infrastructure within the country.

Kaveh Ranjbar, RIPE NCC, gave an overview of the RIPE NCC's technical services, including RIPEstat and RIPE Atlas, and highlighted some interesting statistics about the Armenian region, including the fact that Armenia is generally prepared for IPv6, but that not many users are actually reaching content over IPv6 yet.

Eugene Prokhorenko, IIAP NAS RA, asked how Kaveh came up with his figure of IPv6 users in Armenia, pointing out that certain technical configurations mean that many IPv6 users can be hidden behind a few addresses. Kaveh responded that he looked at APNIC statistics, which are based on Google Ads and are reliable. He said that looking to the outside world, Eugene is correct and it might appear that users are on IPv6, but that as far as the rest of the world sees Armenia, the numbers are lower. He also cautioned that having a lot of IPv6 users hidden behind a small number of addresses is not a viable long-term solution.

Igor Mkrtumyan, ISOC Armenia, gave an overview of the Armenian Internet Registry System, including the state of IPv6 deployment, ccTLDs, DNSSEC and the hosting of root name servers.

Christian Teuschel, RIPE NCC, gave some background on RIPE Atlas, the global Internet measurement network, and how operators can use it to get a global view of their own networks and region.

An attendee asked how HTTP measurements work. Christian explained that the community feedback was to only allow HTTP measurements from RIPE Atlas anchors, and that these are not GET requests.

Matt Parker, RIPE NCC, explained the RIPE NCC's registration services as well as the RIPE Policy Development Process. He gave an overview of address space allocation in Armenia and the surrounding region, and encouraged attendees to ensure that the information they have entered in the RIPE Database is correct and up to date.

Tigran Terteryan, Arpinet LLC, asked whether there is a deadline for getting rid of IPv4. Matt responded that there is no deadline and that different sources have their own estimates of when IPv4 might run out. He added that the RIPE NCC has had IPv4 space returned from IANA, which means we can continue to distribute space to new members in order to help them with the transition to IPv6.

Shahin Gharghi, Rased Maral Ava Jonoob, asked about the process of selecting RIPE Working Group Chairs and how they ensure they are independent and unbiased. Hans Petter Holen, RIPE Chair, explained that any chairs who develop a conflict of interest step down as chair and that each working group has their own process for selecting chairs, which is up to the working group itself to decide.

The first session of the afternoon was dedicated to presentations about IPv6, from both a technical and business perspective. Arnak Melikyan, Arpinet, explained Arpinet's IPv6 deployment and gave a technical overview of how their network is configured. Timo Hilbrink, XS4ALL, explained how the Dutch ISP was one of the first to offer IPv6 in the region and how they deployed their IPv6 network. Thomas Mazejian, VivaCell-MTS, presented the business case and the different advantages for deploying IPv6 for mobile operators. Vahan Hovsepyan, ARMIX, explained how the Internet of Things will change things for economies, technical operators, developers and users.

There was some discussion about how to deploy IPv6 more quickly and widely. Paul Rendek, RIPE NCC, commented that IPv6 is even more important in the face of the mobile Internet. He also said that the RIPE NCC has a relationship with GSMA and that operators are starting to take note of IPv6. He said that users don't care about the underlying technology and just want an Internet that works, but that corporate management needs to understand the importance of IPv6. He also mentioned that the idea of smart cities has helped put some pressure on regulators in different regions to move forward and deploy IPv6.

Armen Manukyan, ABC Domain, explained how the frequency of DDoS attacks has increased in Armenia in recent years, and gave some tips and strategies that network operators can employ to help mitigate or prevent them.

Ferenc Csorba, RIPE NCC, gave an overview of RPKI (resource certification) and demonstrated how network operators can create certificates that verify they are the registered holders of specific IP address ranges.

Tigran Terteryan, Arpinet LLC, said that some databases like MaxMind are not always up to date when it comes to geolocation, and asked whether the RIPE NCC could provide something better. Christian Teuschel, RIPE NCC, said that MaxMind only updates their data once a month. However, he said that MaxMind has a paid version of the dataset available that provides more timely data. He encouraged everyone to participate in the crowd-sourced geolocation project OpenIPMap, which will eventually be included in RIPEstat. Tigran asked whether an API would be available, and Christian said that RPKI data would be available via RIPEstat, hopefully by the end of the year.

Sergey Myasoedov, ENOG Programme Committee, gave an overview of ENOG, the Eurasia Network Operators Group, and encouraged everyone to attend the next meeting, ENOG 10, in Odessa, Ukraine from 13-14 October 2015.

Paul Rendek, RIPE NCC, closed the meeting, thanking the hosts and sponsors, asking for attendees to fill out the feedback form, and mentioning the different trainings available from the RIPE NCC. He also invited everyone to attend the ENOG 10 Meeting and the RIPE 71 Meeting in Bucharest, Romania from 16-20 November 2015.

All presentations from the meeting are available for download.