RIPE NCC Resource Certification Service Launch

Dear colleagues,

The RIPE NCC is proud to announce the production launch of the RIPE  
NCC resource certification service.

With the support of the RIPE community, we have worked very hard to  
create a service that will help to make our registry more robust and  
provide a vital element in making Internet routing more secure. Now,  
more than ever, it is important to be sure who is the legitimate  
holder of a block of IP addresses.

As a first step, the RIPE NCC (in coordination with the other four  
RIRs) has created a hosted platform. This means that all LIRs will be  
able to generate a certificate of holdership that will be held in a  
repository maintained by the RIPE NCC. The feature set is, as it  
stands, very limited: the certificate will only cover Provider  
Aggregatable address space, and it is not yet possible to run your own  
Certificate Authority or generate "child" certificates to create a  
chain of trust. All of these capabilities will be rolled out over the  
course of 2011, based on the wishes and input of the RIPE community.

This brings me to an important point. While the technology is now in  
place, the policy describing the details of the certification system  
has not yet passed the RIPE Policy Development Process. We have  
decided, however, to launch the system with the most limited feature  
set possible, so that the membership can try it out. Our hope is that  
this will make resource certification more tangible, and assist the  
community in making an informed decision about what the system should  
offer, now and in the future. I invite and encourage you to discuss  
this on the RIPE NCC Services Working Group mailing list:
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/wg/ncc-services/index.html

Ongoing development of the RIPE NCC certification service will, of  
course, be planned in accordance with the certification policy that is  
agreed on by the RIPE community.

For more information, please visit:
http://ripe.net/certification

If you have any questions or comments, please email <certification at ripe.net 
 >.

Best regards,

Alex Band
Product Manager, RIPE NCC