RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 (1.1)
- Date: Mon, 31 Jul 1995 19:14:33 +0200
Dear Contributors,
enclosed you find the document for decision under point 4 of the
agenda for our meeting on September 1st. Comments and suggestions
are always welcome.
While it is desirable to propose several alternative packages of
activities at this stage in the decision process, this is hardly
possible for 1996. The NCC is currently still suffering a serious
shortage of personnel resources. This shortage was created by the
funding problems in 1995 as well as the unclear funding situation that
existed until Q2/1995. We are only slowly recovering from this problem.
PostScript follows ASCII as usual. Use the PostScript if you can,
because it contains typographical information lost in the ASCII.
If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
I will respond a.s.a.p. after my return from vacation on August 14th.
Regards
Daniel Karrenberg
RIPE NCC Manager
RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996
Daniel Karrenberg
July 1995
____________________________________________________
RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996
Daniel Karrenberg
RIPE NCC
Version 1.1
Scope
This memorandum describes the RIPE NCC activities
and associated expenditure for the year 1996. The
companion document "RIPE NCC Revenue & Charging
1996" describes ways to generate the necessary rev-
enue.
The "RIPE NCC Activity Plan" (ripe-125) defines the
activities of the RIPE NCC desired by the RIPE com-
munity. Based on that document in this memorandum
the RIPE NCC manager describes the activities which
the NCC will be able to carry out in 1996 and speci-
fies the resources needed. The NCC Contributors
Committee then produces compulsory advice to TERENA
about the activities they wish to see carried out
and the resources they will commit for this as per
point 3.2 of the committee's terms of reference.
1. Workload & Challenges
The bulk of resources expended by the RIPE NCC is
proportional to the number of local Internet Reg-
istries which in turn is mostly equivalent to the
number of serious Internet service providers. Con-
sequently any estimate of the resources needed has
to start from a prediction of the number of local
registries. This number has been growing steadily
ever since the NCC has started operations.
Recently the growth rate has considerably increased.
In Q1/95, after the introduction of the current
charging scheme, a sharp increase in the number of
local IRs was observed. This trend continued in
Q2/95 and still continues to this day. For details
see the report on the 1995 revenue situation.
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The table below gives an overview of the observed
and expected number of registries:
+------------+-----------------+-----------------------------------+
| | Observed | Expected |
|Registries | Q4 Q1 Q2 | Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 |
| | 94 95 95 | 95 95 96 96 96 96 |
+------------+-----------------+-----------------------------------+
| Large ISP | 17 17 19 | 20 22 24 26 28 30 |
| Medium ISP | 28 31 35 | 38 42 46 50 54 58 |
| Small ISP | 51 84 119 | 153 188 222 256 290 324 |
| Enterprise | 14 15 17 | 18 20 22 24 26 28 |
|Last Resort | 31 32 32 | 32 32 32 32 32 32 |
| | | |
| TOTAL | 141 179 222 | 261 304 346 388 430 472 |
+------------+-----------------+-----------------------------------+
The figure below illustrates that we expect the
total number of registries is expected to grow lin-
earily during 1996:
500++---------------------------------------------------+
| | A |
| | ** |
450++ | ** |
| | *A |
400++ | ** |
| | *A* |
| | *** |
350++ | *A* |
| | ** |
300++ | A* |
| | ** |
| | ** |
250++ | *A |
| *** |
| *A* | |
200++ ** | |
| *A* | |
150++ ** | |
| A* | |
| | |
100++----+----+----+-----+----+----+-----+----+----+----+
Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 .
1994 1995 1996 .
The almost linear prediction looks very simple at
first glance. Some other indicators predict more
than linear growth while others predict slightly
less than linear growth. These numbers represent
the best possible estimates the RIPE NCC is able
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Daniel Karrenberg
July 1995
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produce. We now have mechanisms in place to detect
deviations from expected figures very quickly and
take necessary actions.
Challenges
Given the increased growth rates and the current
staffing situation there are two main challenges for
the year 1996 are
o Consolidation of Registration Services
o Re-Start of Other Activities.
Registration services are the most critical services
the NCC provides. They are critical both in terms
of response time and of quality. Quality is mainly
measured in the degree of fairness and transparency
of decisions as well as the support of the local
IRs, the customers.
With the high growth rate of requests and the
increasing number of players, registration services
are undergoing a major transition and will continue
this process through much of 1996. The major
aspects of this are similar to the issues currently
faced by ISPs:
Increasing Division of Work
During 1996 we will reach a total of 9 persons
spending the majority of their time on regis-
tration services, compared to three persons at
this stage. This necessitates a total revision
of how this work is organised.
Hierarchical Organisation
We will introduce a much clearer division of
senior vs junior and second-line vs first-line
support.
Dedicated Person per Customer
The first-line support persons will have their
own set of customers, so that each customer
normally deals with only one person at the NCC.
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Request Tracking
The flow of requests among this many people
necessitates other queueing and tracking mecha-
nisms than electronic mailboxes. Several
request tracking (trouble ticketing) systems
have been evaluated. Ticketing and message
lookup by ticket number is already implemented.
Request tracking will be added as soon as prac-
tical.
Resource Accounting
Together with request tracking we will get much
more detailed insight in how resources are
being used in registration services. We will
develop these data to detect problems and fur-
ther optimise registration services. We will
also investigate how this can be used for
charging purposes.
Documentation and Training
With the increasing number of customers, train-
ing and documentation are increasingly impor-
tant. We have already started specific train-
ing courses about registration services for
both new and established customers. This will
continue together with improvements in documen-
tation.
Due to the high growth rate in registration services
and critical staffing situation the other NCC activ-
ities have been suffering badly. Some of these
activities are quite important to the European
Internet community and have to be continued or even
intensifies. Furthermore it is important that the
NCC keeps doing other work than registration ser-
vices in order to keep highly qualified people
interested to work here. Therefore other activities
have to be (re-) started during 1996 with enough
resources to produce useful results.
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2. 1996 Activities & Expenditure
Normally it is desirable to propose several alterna-
tive packages of activities at this stage in the
decision process. However due to the critical
staffing situation and the continually high growth
rate this is quite impossible for 1996. The
resource shortage in 1994/5 combined with the
increased growth of the Internet severely limit the
degrees of freedom to develop alternatives. Conse-
quently I propose only one set of activities
together with the appropriate budget.
The table below gives an overview of the proposed
activities and the associated expenditure. The fol-
lowing sections will detail all activities according
to the "RIPE NCC Activity Plan" ripe-125.
+----------------------+------------------------------------+
| | 1995 |
| | revised % 1996 % delta |
+----------------------+------------------------------------+
| | |
|Registration Services | 358 68 556 61 198 |
| Other Services | 71 13 162 18 91 |
| Admin & Reporting | 78 15 138 15 60 |
| New Activities | 22 4 60 6 38 |
| | |
+----------------------+------------------------------------+
| TOTAL (kECU) | 529 100 916 100 387 |
+----------------------+------------------------------------+
Registration Services
The "Registration Services" budget line represents
the basic NCC activities related to the NCC being a
Regional Internet Registry, such as handling of
incoming requests for address space, assignment and
allocation of the address space and the coordination
with organisations such as other regional Internet
registries and IANA. Also included in this budget
line are the activities related to the support and
the training required to secure a proper start out
of new registries, which will eventually lead to a
reduction of the load on the RIPE-NCC. In relation
to the Activity Plan these are 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, 3.8,
and half of 4.1.
The high absolute growth in "Registration Services"
represents more personnel being hired for these
activities as well as some external contracts to
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produce documentation and training material. Note
that the majority of the increase due to the catch-
up programme being performed in the second half of
1995 as per the revised expenditure plan reported
elsewhere. This increases the budget lines in 1996
because the salaries are budgeted for only part of
the year in 1995. Real growth in personnel in 1996
thus is less than it may appear at first sight. I
do not propose linear growth with workload. Assum-
ing unchanged workload growth patterns 1996 will
see a consolidation followed by very modest growth
in 1997. At the same time note that the relative
size of "Registration Services" decreases slightly
in relation to the other activities.
Other Activities
The "Other Activities" line encompasses all activi-
ties which are not part of the other three cate-
gories. These are the technical activities not
related to registration services or new activities.
In particular the maintenance of the Routing Reg-
istry as well as other tools developed at the RIPE-
NCC, such as PRIDE, the update of the Database man-
agement tools, and the maintenance of RIPE related
documents and meetings organisation. For details
see the following sections.
This budget line increases significantly in absolute
terms. These activities have been neglected during
the past resource shortages. Those in the most dire
need of attention will be progressed again.
The budget line also increases slightly relatively
to the others. This does not so much reflect a
change in policy but rather the fact that not enough
resources were available in the previous period,
causing a shift towards "Registration Services".
Administration and Reporting
The "Administration & Reporting" budget line repre-
sents activities 6.1-6.4 of the activity plan, as
well as the formal procedures concerned with billing
and invoicing.
This lines increases in absolute terms because the
resources necessary for regular reporting will be
available again. Also the effort involved in charg-
ing and billing has turned out to be considerable
even with the current relatively simple charging
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model.
Note:
The constant relative size of this category is
slightly misleading because of a budgeting
change. In 1995 this category was bearing the
full cost of NCC computer system administra-
tion. This cost is now being divided over all
activities because the systems are obviously
not being used just for "Administration &
Reporting".
It is important to note that this figure assumes a
charging scheme for 1996 which is very simple. More
involved charging schemes will add significantly to
the resources necessary in this category.
New Activities
The "New Activities" line represents the participa-
tion in special projects approved by the RIPE commu-
nity and the NCC contributors, as defined in the
RIPE-NCC activity plan (4.4).
The currently planned activities are related to IPv6
tracking and testing. This represents roughly 50%
of the planned expenditure. The remaining 50% are
reserved for necessary activities arising during
1996. Note that this is less than one third of the
ceiling set by ripe-125.
Support for New Registries
The expenditure proposed on activities specifically
for new registries is ECU 172k all of which is in
the "Registration Services" category.
Reserves
Although building reserves is not expenditure, the
buildup of prudent reserves should continue in 1996.
This is necessary because TERENA has to avoid lia-
bility for NCC operations as much as possible. As
the size of the NCC and the commercial and strategic
impact of its services increase, liabilities and the
need for stability increase as well.
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Summary
The proposed set of activities strikes a balance
between what is desired by the community and what
can be achieved by the NCC considering the necessary
growth, while maintaining a reasonable level of cost
at the same time.
The main challenges for 1996 are re-structuring and
consolidation of registration services as well as
re-start of other important activities.
The total increase in expenditure compared to the
revised 1995 budget is 73% while the number of cus-
tomers rises by 55% at the same time. The high
total growth is a consequence of the catch-up opera-
tion in progress and mainly due to the additional
staff hired during 1995. Their salaries show in
1996 for the first whole business year.
Assuming no major changes in workload by the end of
1996 the RIPE NCC will have reached a stable state
producing a high level of standard services while
still being capable of starting new activities as
needed in the changing Internet environment. Fur-
ther growth of the NCC is expected to be moderate in
1997 and beyond.
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Activities in Detail
The remaining sections of this document detail the
planned activities according to the "RIPE NCC Activ-
ity Plan" (ripe-125). The numbering scheme corre-
sponds to ripe-125 and significant parts of the
activity descriptions have been included.
3. Technical - Coordination Activities
3.1. Internet Registry for Europe
The RIPE NCC will will act as the European registry
for the delegation of Internet numbers. The RIPE NCC
will perform this function in close cooperation and
coordination with
a. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
(IANA)
b. The global Internet Registry (currently
the Internic)
c. Local Registries of European service
providers.
In exceptional cases the NCC can act as the Registry
of last resort for European organisations.
This activity will be resourced sufficiently to
achieve the high service level available tradition-
ally with the goal of processing fully documented
address space allocation and assignment requests
within a maximum of two working days. The personnel
resources available at full deployment will total
some 200 hours per week.
In addition to that this activity includes the main-
tenance of local IR training material and the deliv-
ery of courses for new and established local IRs.
Some of this work such as technical writing will be
contracted out.
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3.2. Maintain a database of European IP networks and their man-
agement information.
The database to be maintained will contain several
classes of objects. These objects are described in
detail in ripe-13. The NCC will be responsible for
the database entries; this includes
a. collection of database entries
b. checking of individual entries
c. checking of consistency and integrity
of the database.
Quarterly reports on changes in the contents of the
database will be produced, together with statistics
about the number of database entries.
This activity will have its resources increased suf-
ficiently to resume the necessary maintenance work
(b and c above). It will be executed by registra-
tion services staff and thus form a buffer activity
which can be expanded and contracted according to
the immediate needs of activity 3.1.
3.3. Distribution of the database.
Secondary copies of the database can be installed at
other sites upon request. It is the responsibility
of the NCC to keep track of such secondaries. The
RIPE NCC will provide assistance to local registries
in setting up secondary database servers. An up to
date record of secondary sites will be maintained on
line.
The database availability is currently excellent.
This activity is not urgently needed. No resources
are allocated for it. However, should the need
arise it can be started up quickly because the nec-
essary technology will be enhanced in activity 4.1
and used by activity 3.4.
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3.4. Coordination of database exchange with other organisa-
tions.
The NCC will coordinate and execute the exchange of
database information with NCC's outside Europe. The
result will be that for the end user of the database
one uniform set of global information will be avail-
able.
This activity has seen almost no progress other than
in the Routing Registry part of the database where
little resources are needed to exchange information.
In other areas of the database there was no progress
at all in 1995. In 1996 this will be started again
with emphasis on registration data exchange with the
InterNIC. The possibilities of RWhois and whois++
will be explored. The activity has 12 engineer-
hours per week allocated.
3.5. Keep a record of operational contact points.
This will consist of a list of NOC's and responsible
people that will be used as a reference list for the
individual NOC's to be used in case of network
related incidents, including security incidents.
Individual NOC's will be able to subscribe to a
weekly update service.
The database and self-maintained (majordomo) mailing
lists at the NCC have proven sufficient for this
activity. No resources are allocated in 1996.
3.6. Placement of name servers and backup servers in Europe,
and beyond.
On a regular basis the interworking between the DNS
name servers in Europe, and their connections to
name servers outside Europe, must be checked.
Detected errors and inconsistencies must be
reported. Corrective actions must be followed in
case of severe problems. The result will be a con-
sistent set of name servers.
This activity has not consumed resources in 1995.
No resources will be allocated for 1996. However,
the RIPE NCC will continue to monitor the DNS and
react to requests from RIPE if necessary and if
resources are available.
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3.7. Referral Service.
The RIPE NCC will perform a Referral Service for
Internet Service providers. The NCC will do this in
a fair and impartial way. The service is only
available to service providers contributing to RIPE
NCC funding.
This activity has 4 hours/week of administrative
staff time allocated to it, which is sufficient
given the high degree of automation used for this
activity.
3.8. Coordination with Local Registries.
The RIPE NCC will keep close contact with Local Reg-
istries in Europe. The RIPE NCC will assist such
registries in setting up and maintaining their ser-
vices. This activity may include presentations on
the work of the RIPE NCC for broader audiences, such
as relevant conferences and workshops. It may also
include coordinated development of common tools.
The first part of this activity is indistinguishable
from activity 3.1. Nominal resources will be allo-
cated to the second part.
3.9. Routing Registry Maintenance
The RIPE NCC will maintain the RIPE Routing Registry
according to the relevant RIPE documents. It will
encourage European service providers to use the RR
and support them in doing so. The NCC will actively
work with service providers to minimise gaps in cov-
erage. It will provide training and report on the
status of the registry. The NCC will coordinate
with other RRs to achieve Internet wide RR coverage.
The RIPE NCC will identify and propose needed exten-
sions to the RR.
This activity will be stepped up significantly in
1996 to 20 hours/week of engineering time. This is
expected to be sufficient to do significant work in
extending coverage and awareness as well as keeping
the quality of registered data at a high level.
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3.10. PRIDE Tool Maintenance
The RIPE NCC will maintain the Routing Registry
Tools developed by the PRIDE project. This activity
does not cover development of new tools or signifi-
cant new features. The RIPE NCC will identify and
propose needed extensions to the tools.
While this activity is highly desirable, it is
impossible to do significant work on this in the
current situation. It is expected that others such
as the US Routing Arbiter project will take the lead
in this activity. 12 hours/week engineering time
should be sufficient to track and influence other
activities. Once the NCC stabilises in 1996 sepa-
rate funds could be raised to step up this activity.
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4. Technical - Development Activities
4.1. Database management tools.
Tools for management of the database and their main-
tenance are an important work item for the NCC. The
result will be the availability of a consistent
database.
This activity is important to the functioning of the
NCC and will be done with 20 hours/week engineering
time. A prioritised work plan has been presented to
the RIPE DB working group. This plan will be exe-
cuted with the current priority items being com-
pleted in 1996.
4.2. Database querying tools.
Development and maintenance of the whois utility.
The result will be a program, available from a file
server, that permits remote interrogation of the
database.
Tools are available. Only nominal effort is fore-
seen for maintenance in this area. No new develop-
ments.
4.3. DNS quality control tools.
Utilities for quality control of the interworking of
the DNS name servers will be developed and main-
tained. The result will be a set of software and
documentation, available from a server.
Both tools and regular output of them are available.
Only nominal effort is foreseen for maintenance in
this area. No new developments.
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4.4. Special projects.
The RIPE NCC can participate in special projects
that have been approved by at least the RIPE commu-
nity. The nature of the participation can be admin-
istrative, managerial or technical. The total amount
of NCC participation should not exceed 20% of the
NCC resources. Results of the special projects will
be publicly available.
24 hours/week engineering time will be allocated for
this. The currently planned activities are related
to IPv6 tracking and testing. This represents
roughly 50% of the planned resources. The remaining
50% are reserved for necessary activities arising
during 1996.
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5. Administrative - RIPE Activity Support
5.1. Keeping the RIPE document store.
The NCC will keep RIPE documents on line and easily
accessible to the RIPE community. Copies of other
document stores relevant to the RIPE community, such
as the repository of RFCs, will equally be provided.
Modern document retrieval utilities will be
installed and maintained to facilitate access to the
document store.
This activity has received almost no attention in
1995, resulting in the need for better maintainabil-
ity as well as for revision of the server software
and re-homing to a newer platform. Significant
staff time and some external consultancy will be
used to make the document store more useful and eas-
ier to navigate. The main emphasis will be on use-
ful information for NCC customers and will concen-
trate on access via WWW.
5.2. Technical and secretarial support for studies undertaken
by RIPE.
The NCC will provide technical and clerical support
for RIPE studies and working groups in order to
enhance continuity and coordination of the work
between RIPE meetings.
No resources will be allocated to this activity in
1996
5.3. Organisational support for RIPE meetings.
RIPE meeting attendance is expected to be on the
order of 80 persons, meeting three times a year.
The NCC will provide clerical support to organise
these meetings in order to keep them productive.
The current level of resources is about 6 hours/week
of staff time which will be maintained in 1996.
Most of this time goes into organisation of the one
meeting outside Amsterdam while the meetings in Ams-
terdam take comparatively little resources.
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6. Administrative - Reporting
6.1. Quarterly Activity Reports
Quarterly reports an all activities will be produced
for the RIPE participating organisations and the
RIPE NCC funding organisations.
This activity has had almost no resources allocated
in 1995 due to the staff shortage. Keeping opera-
tions going is considered more important than
reporting. In 1996 sufficient resources will be
allocated to resume formal quarterly reporting.
6.2. Quarterly Problem Reports
Quarterly reports on outstanding problems will be
produced for the RIPE participating organisations
and the RIPE NCC funding organisations.
See above.
6.3. RIPE Meeting Reports
The NCC reports on its ongoing work and outstanding
problems also to each RIPE meeting. These meetings
currently take place three times a year.
These reports have been delivered even in 1995.
Sufficient resources will be allocated to continue
them in 1996.
6.4. Annual Reports
The NCC will produce annual reports.
The annual report will contain a summary of the
activities and an overview of the financial situa-
tion.
Sufficient resources will be allocated to prepare
the 1996 annual report.
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