ripe-167

Dear Mirjam, dear Daniel, Robert, Andrey, dear Mr. Postel,

On Tue, 14 Oct 1997, Mirjam Kuehne wrote:

> Dear local registries,
> 
> The following document written by Robert Blokzijl, Daniel Karrenberg
> and Alexei Platonov was announced to the RIPE community and to all local
> registries after the last RIPE Meeting:
> 
> ripe-167: A Regional Internet Registry for the Commonwealth of
>           Independent States 

[...]

> If you then have any further questions, please do not hesitate to
> contact me or one of the authors.

	Being a person who actually operate one of the major
	LIRs in Ukraine, UA.GU, with almost 5 years of experience
	of administering IP networks,
	I'd like to comment on both the approach
	of ripe-167 and on some actual statements of it.

	I'd also like to provide some proposals about how to
	improve the state of affairs at least for Ukraine.

	I'm Cc:-ing this message to all interested parties,
	in a hope that a broader discussion will start then.

	ripe-167 was also discussed by the Ukrainian First National
	Conference "Internet technologies in National
	Information Infrastrure", in Yalta, November 3-6,
	organized under supervision of Ukrainian Ministry of
	Information and National Agency for Informatization.
	This is why there wasn't an earlier reply -- now
	my comments are accomodating the results of the discussion.

> Kind Regards,
> 
> Mirjam Kuehne
> Manager Registration Services
> RIPE NCC

	Let's examine the document below.

-------------------------- ripe-167.txt --------------------------------
#      
#     A Regional Internet Registry for the Commonwealth of Independent States
#                                        
#      Robert Blokzijl
#      Daniel Karrenberg
#      Alexei Platonov
#      2 October 1997
#      
# Table of Contents
# 
#          1.Scope 
#          2.Background 
#          3.Local Service Arrangement 
#          4.New Regional Registry 
#          5.Next Steps 
#          6.Addresses of the Authors 
#        ______________________________________________________________
#      
# 1.Scope
# 
#      This memorandum is intended to focus discussion about the
#      establishment of a Regional Internet Registry serving the CIS and
#      surrounding areas. Public comments are invited. The ultimate aim of
#      this process is to achieve rough consensus about the issue within
#      the region concerned. This memo represents the views of the
#      individual authors only. It has not been endorsed by any
#      organisation.
#      
# 2.Background
# 
#      Since the start of the RIPE NCC as a regional Internet registry in
#      April 1991 Russia and the other countries of the CIS (former USSR)
#      have been served by the RIPE NCC. Developments of the last few
#      years however suggest that it is difficult for the RIPE NCC to
#      serve all parts of this area because in practise there exist a
#      number of practical problems. These problems have to do with
#      circumstances caused by:
#      
#    - local language problems
#
	This is not a problem.  There is an axiom that at least for
	ISP there is at least one person onsite who has sufficient
	English skills to communicate with RIPE personnel.

#    - time zone differences
#           
	Assignment of IP address space and establishment of LIRs
	aren't a matter of minutes and even hours aren't always
	that critical.  In any case, if the process will take some time,
	it's not that big a problem.

#    -  travel difficulties
#           
#    -  effort necessary to organise coordination meetings

	Mailing lists aren't that bad for coordination, anyway.

#      If has been suggested more than once that the countries of the CIS
#      in fact form a separate region from Europe that needed special
#      regional support.

	This thesis isn't historically or politically correct.
	First of all, CIS isn't something solid or clearly defined,
	xUSSR is a much better definition.

	Some countries of xUSSR belong to Eastern Europe, culturally
	and historically.  Others are much closer to Middle East.
	And anyway, this is a set of _different_ countries,
	often they are much more isolated one from another
	than any given pair of Western European countries.
	Reality is: there isn't such clear "region" as CIS.

#      Because of these difficulties the RIPE NCC has cooperated with the
#      Russian Institute of Public Networks, RosNIIROS. RosNIIROS is also
#      known by its english acronym: RIPN. RosNIIROS have acted since
#      1992, in close cooperation with RIPE NCC, as a Local IR of last
#      resort. They also support the Local IR activities of a significant
#      number of ISPs in the region.
#      
# 3.Local Service Arrangement
# 
#      As everywhere else in the world, also Russia and the CIS have seen
#      a rapid growth in Internet activities, including a growth in the
#      number of ISPs. Currently about 100 ISPs are active in the region,
#      of which around 60 are located in Russia.

	If the above statement was supplied by some statistics
	and numbers, the picture might be much more clear.
	As for me, I consider the total of 100 is somewhat
	underestimated.

#      The current growth is
#      about 3 new ISPs per month. Most of the new ISPs are located in the
#      Urals region and further east in Siberia.

	Note: Urals and Siberia are parts of a single country -- Russia.

#      Because of this growth
#      and the difficulties described above, the RIPE NCC is exploring
#      ways to ensure optimal service for these registries.
#      
#      The RIPE NCC are currently considering to ask RosNIIROS to provide
#      full local support equivalent to that supplied by the Amsterdam
#      RIPE office to local registries in the region that wish to use it.
#      The NCC would remain fully responsible for operations including
#      service level and quality. The NCC would provide all necessary
#      resources to RosNIIROS. Local registries in the region would
#      continue to have a service agreement with the RIPE NCC but have the
#      option to receive service according to their preference from either
#      RosNIIROS or the RIPE NCC, but not both at the same time. We
#      envisage to start this arrangement sometime during the first
#      quarter of 1998. Of course all this will happen under the guidance
#      of the RIPE Local IR working group and IANA
#      
#      The subsequent period can then be used by RosNIIROS to gain
#      experience and increase the acceptance of their service. This time
#      will also be used to get a clearer idea of the exact extent of the
#      region served by the potential RIR. We expect this period to last
#      at least 12 months but not more than 24 months.
#      
# 4.New Regional Registry
# 
#      We expect that the above arrangement will work well. Because of
#      that it will eventually be used by the majority of the Local IR s
#      in the region. Steps will then be taken to convert the local
#      service arrangement into its own Regional Internet Registry
#      separate from the RIPE NCC. A prerequisite for this is widespread
#      acceptance, appropriate governance mechanisms and a truly
#      international scope.
#      
#      This whole process needs active involvement of all ISP's in the
#      region in the governance of the Regional IR RosNIIROS will actively
#      pursue to gain the acceptance and help to put the appropriate
#      governance mechanisms in place.
#      
# 5.Next Steps
# 
#      The authors invite a public discussion about this process
#      especially within the CIS region but also within RIPE in general.
#      RIPE NCC and RosNIIROS will take preparatory steps late this year.
#      If the discussion reveals no serious objections the local service
#      arrangement will start sometime during Q1/1998.

	What are the conclusion of reviewing this document?

	1. The document is based on political and historical
	   ideas from an epoque of 5 years ago.  They aren't correct
	   anymore.
	2. The document doesn't provide a solid set of argumentation,
	   neither in favor of "RR for xUSSR countries" creation itself,
	   nor in favor of creation of this RR in Moscow.

	As one can't get enough information from the document itself,
	what might be at the background of it?

	a. RosNIIROS is a governmental institution, it isn't
	   a collaborative organisation.  It's activity reflects
	   the policy of a single government -- Russian -- and this
	   policy often directly contradicts the interests of
	   other xUSSR countries.

	b. In the nearest past, Russian government started establishing
	   a policy of strong governmental regulation for Internet
	   activity on Russian territory.

	c. RosNIIROS isn't a single entity in Russia trying to achieve
	   the major role in regulating and directing Internet activity.
	   Naturally, they also might have an interest in broadening
	   their role to the whole xUSSR, to get a bonus in this
	   "competition".

	d. Holding an RR for a set of adjucent countries will allow
	   Russian governmental institutions to monitor Internet
	   activities there and even get some influence on them.

	e. Being an RR allows providing of the service involves getting
	   some funds from the customers, in this case -- from ISPs.
	   Probably, governmental funding of RosNIIROS isn't
	   enough for them today, and additional funding is
	   badly needed.

	These are my guesses and impressions, not clear facts.  These
	are _questions_.  But one can draw some conclusions even from
	questions.

	According to discussions with collegues and other interested
	parties, here and at Yalta conference, I'd like to finish my comments
	with the following conclusions:

	Most Ukrainian ISPs are voting against an attempt to establish
	an "RR for CIS"; what is CIS, anyway?  By the way, Russia
	is a federation itself, so Russia alone is in fact a region.
	So creating of RR for Russia in RosNIIROS would be much more correct,
	and make it so.

	In case RIPE will create a RIPN-based "RR for CIS" it would be
	boycotted by most Ukrainian ISPs due to unclear political
	and financial reasons of it's creation.  We prefer dealing
	with RIPE directly -- our contributions to RIPE are
	pretty sufficient for this.  As for new and young LIRs
	in Ukraine -- they in fact do have personnel who know
	English.  Also Kyiv is much closer to Europe than to
	Siberia.

# 6.Addresses of the Authors
# 
# Robert Blokzijl
# RIPE Chairman
# <k13 at nikhef.nl>
# 
# Daniel Karrenberg
# RIPE NCC Manager
# <dfk at ripe.net>
# 
# Alexei Platonov
# RosNIIROS (RIPN) Director
# <plat at ripn.net>
# 
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Best regards,
Andrew Stesin

nic-hdl: ST73-RIPE