RIPE 87
Newcomers introduction
29th November 2023
11:30 a.m.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Good morning to RIPE 87 in Rome. This is the Newcomers Tutorial. It's great to see so many of you. I know there are a lot more newcomers registered, they might come in still or they'll ‑‑ we'll see them during the week.
I'm Mirjam Kuhne, I am the Chair of the RIPE community. You'll see a lot more of me during the week. I just have a question for you to start with, first. Have some of you attended the online Newcomers Session that took place last week?
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There will be some information that you might have heard before but this is also more specific about the RIPE meeting here.
So, let's get started.
This is always a challenge. It's one button on this thing that I need to press.
So, welcome to the first ‑‑ your first RIPE meeting, this is the 87th RIPE meeting already. One took place in 1989, and I'll tell you a bit about the RIPE community and also the difference, the RIPE NCC and how this started. This is an established community. We had three meetings to start with every year, now we have two meetings per year. And ‑‑ so my first RIPE meeting was RIPE 19. It's a long time ago. I'm from Berlin originally. I studied computer science at the Technical University in Berlin, and then I work for the RIPE NCC for many years, and kind of moved ‑‑ grew with the Internet community in my career. And then I also worked for some other organisations in the meantime, and I have been appointed the RIPE Chair September 2020, so this is my third year. I started right during the pandemic. It was a bit of a challenge to kind of get the community going and to be new in this role and behind my screen, but I'm really happy to have a physical meetings again and to see you here in person.
We also have a Vice‑Chair, Niall O'Reilly. If all goes well, he is online. I don't know if he wants to say a few words. I can also introduce you to him. He can't be here in person this week, unfortunately, but he is following it as much as possible online, and he can also be reached by e‑mail. You see the mail address there, and he has actually a long history in the RIPE community. He says his first RIPE meeting was RIPE 3, so even longer than I have attended and he has also been a working group Chair for a number of Working Groups. He comes more from the DNS side of things so he is a DNS expert.
I am just checking. The Meetecho screen, if somebody has any questions, because there will also be people following remotely and we shouldn't forget about them.
Just a blast from the past. I don't know if any of you remember the thing on the left. I didn't have any of those. I had an Atari when I started my computer science career. But the one on the right is a bit more interesting because that's something the RIPE community was providing when we started. There was somebody ‑‑ there was a working group that was called the connectivity Working Group and they were keeping and maintaining those maps and they were adding new network connections. This is basically the European IP network at that time, and we'll get back to that later on. This is basically all the networks, the network connections at the time, mostly academic networks, all NRENs in Europe, they started connecting and so, we were keeping those maps and they are probably still somewhere on the net and they got too big and complex and we stopped maintaining those maps.
I have a question for you. I think one of you is going to start the poll.
So, if you are on Meetecho or also if you are in the room, do you know the difference between RIPE and the RIPE NCC?
Some of the new people, have you heard why is there two acronyms, RIPE, RIPE NCC? No, not many people in here. I don't know, if you see people online, if there is a poll? Are people saying something?
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Some people know the difference. I'll probably tell you what this actually stands for. RIPE stands for Reseaux IP Europeens, the European network, and the RIPE is the network coordination centre for RIPE. So for the RIPE community. I have a bit more information about this. You will hear more about this during the week and we have another introduction presentation after me from a colleague from the RIPE NCC.
So, the RIPE community was formed in RIPE ‑‑ in 1989, by kind of some of the early IP users and mostly academics, mostly scientists, physicists, people from NRENs, from the universities in Europe, somebody from CERN, so there was kind of a handful of early adopters and they were promoting IP and at some point they got together and they felt they needed to coordinate certain things like who has what IP address, how do we connect to each other, how do we find each other if something goes wrong? Maybe write a sort database where we can register all the contact information and all the IP addresses that were in use at the time. And so that's how it started, small, as an open community. It's still very much like that, even though it's a lot bigger, but it's still open to everybody, everybody ‑‑ anybody can join and can participate in these meetings.
It's not a legal entity. It's just an open community that has these two meetings per year but also operates a lot on mailing lists in the meantime.
It's mostly there for information exchange. Still the technical coordination that's needed in order to connect those networks together that form the Internet and that's the core of the RIPE activities.
And also, a lot of best practices for network operators and a certain amount of policy development, for instance like how to assign IP addresses, or, you know, what to register in the RIPE database.
On the other side, we have the RIPE NCC, the network coordination centre for the RIPE community and that started out as the secretariat for the RIPE community. So, as I said, the early RIPE participants, they are all volunteers and still, today, a lot of work is done on a volunteer basis here, and so there was someone said, okay, I'll write this database and maintain it and somebody else said well, I'll maintain ‑‑ I'll host a mailing list here in my server and someone else said, we can meet in my institute. It's all based on volunteer efforts, and at some point the RIPE community felt it would be helpful to have some help, some administrative support, and so they formed this network coordination centre, the RIPE NCC, to take over some of those tasks. In 1992, the RIPE NCC was created, it was first part of one European NREN association, or the association of all the academic networks in Europe, which made sense because most of the RIPE participants came from that community. And then later it was started as a membership association, as it is today.
And then, shortly after, it was also formed as the first Internet ‑‑ regional Internet registry. All the community said we already have the secretariat, the coordination centre. Why do we still have to go to the US to get our IP addresses, let's just use that NCC, to also delegate or allocate, administer the IP addresses in Europe. And that's how it started and then the RIPE NCC became the first RIR and got addresses from IANA and so on and so forth. So a bit of history.
Today, the RIPE NCC very much looks at the community for guidance and policy decisions and discussions are made in the community and then the RIPE NCC implements them, and you will hear more about this later on.
This is the RIPE community today, all of you, and a lot more people out there. We have 12 Working Groups at the moment. You will see a list of Working Groups. They are all having sessions this week, so Monday, Tuesday are mostly Plenary Sessions and then Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday, Thursday there are Working Group sessions, and you can find all the agendas on the meeting plan. They speak for themselves, the names, but you can also find information on the website, on the ripe.net website for all these Working Groups, what the Charter is, who the Chairs are and the tasks and minutes of last meetings and so on and so forth. It's all public on the website.
As I said, the RIPE community is open to anybody. All you need, basically, is an e‑mail address and so a lot of discussions take place on mail, on the mailing lists. Each Working Group has their own mailing list, and then there is one larger mailing list for the whole RIPE community, the RIPE list. And a lot of of the discussions that take place here during the week, which is of course great to have discussions in person, then decisions are usually made on the mailing list. If there is a discussion about a certain policy, it will usual continue on the mailing list after the meeting and then the decision or the call for consensus, actually it's a consensus‑building process, is then made after the meeting on the list. So everybody can participate. Also those people who can not be here at the meeting.
Even though it makes a lot easier now that we have a lot better online facilities, of course, that people can also participate during the meeting if they can't be here in person.
So, find the Working Group that you are interested in. Subscribe to the list. Maybe subscribe to the RIPE list and get some more general information about the RIPE community, and there you go, you are part of the community.
I already said all that. So there is a link to the mailing list information.
Nice art work that the colleagues made. Nice.
Just to get a bit more into the RIPE 87:
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The RIPE 87 week, so you know what you are getting yourself into. So this is the meeting plan. You also have that on your badge when you open it, there is the the meeting plan on the second page. So, as I said, this morning there are tutorials. We are now in the Newcomers Session. After this, we have a lunch organised, mainly focused for newcomers, so there is one room that will be labelled ‑‑ one of the coffee‑break areas where you may be just been before this session will be labelled for newcomers, so if you want, you can all have lunch together, get to know each other a bit better, but it's not a requirement, you can of course also mingle with others, but I thought maybe on a first day, it's nice for to you get to know each other and then, as of this afternoon, you'll be together with the rest of the community.
Then, we'll start with an Opening Plenary after the lunch session, and then more Plenary Sessions. In the afternoon, there are usually things called BoFs, birds of a feather, that's more informal sessions that people can ‑‑ that brings people together that are interested in a certain topic. It's not a working group, it's just a one‑off kind of discussion about a topic, and then, tomorrow, more Plenary Sessions, and then in the afternoon it starts with the Working Groups, it goes on till Thursday Working Group sessions and then Friday we'll have ‑‑ we wrap it up again with Plenary and then a Closing Plenary.
Wednesday is a bit special. Wednesday afternoon, there is a working group, it's the RIPE NCC Services Working Group which is a really good place to bring together the RIPE NCC members and the community and for the RIPE NCC to listen to the communities input and also for the community to hear reports and updates from the RIPE NCC and the activities and services. And then after that it's the members meeting, the General Meeting, you'll see in the darker green, that's reserved for members of the RIPE NCC, and then discuss member‑specific topics like activity plan, budget and so forth. That requires a different registration, that's for you who are members and who don't know how to participate, the RIPE NCC's service desk can help you out with that.
As I said, today, there is a BoF and then there is also something called the Best Current Operational Practices, which kind of started as a BoF or as a task force and it's still of a bit of an informal session, it's not an actual Working Group, and they are really focusing on best current practices for network operators and they have quite an interesting agenda this time, so if you are interested in that you can participate. And in parallel, unfortunately, we have things, some parallel sessions this week, something about sustainable networking, which is a bit of a theme this week; I have seen some related topics on the agenda.
And then, tomorrow afternoon, there are two other BoF sessions on IP multicast and one about more community‑related topic about the community; in other words, used to call the ENOG and ‑‑ maybe moving things for no central Asia. That's going to be a discussion about that.
Another kind of special session on the agenda which you might have sign is the diversity and inclusion in tech on Thursday afternoon. This time, we'll have a number of lightning talks and then a general open discussion on how we can continue to further be open and inclusive for new participants in this community.
Again, it's open to anybody. It's not like specifically for one group of participants.
During the week, if you want to participate, the easiest way is speak up during the sessions, go to the microphone, or use the Meetecho app. You'll hear more about that in the Opening Plenary. There will be a presentation about the online platform that we are using and how you can participate through that. You can also then, on the Meetecho platform, use the Q&A and the chat function, so you maybe want to get familiar with that. You should all have received a link to that Meetecho platform that we are using.
If you have any questions, you know, ask me or ask the meeting team. I think we have some contact information later.
Also, somebody special this week that we are experimenting with, I am excited about, it's something called local hubs. We had some requests from part of the community in other places, of the RIPE NCC Services region, of the RIPE region, that are kind of, they couldn't come to the meeting and they felt like maybe we can have a little mini, kind of, have a little mini RIPE meeting together, so we come together in a university or one of the, you know, one of the operators there in the country, and so you'll probably see during the week on the online platform some groups of people from these countries that actually took initiative to organise a little get‑together to follow the RIPE meeting together rather than everybody in their own home, which I think is really nice to have kind of a more community building in those countries. And then hopefully we'll see many of them also in person at the RIPE meeting, the next RIPE meeting.
You already made it here. You already have some motivation, why you want to be part of this community, but maybe just to give you some other ideas. This is a really good way to engage with experts in network operations, various aspects, you know, there are so many people here in this community that have a lot of expertise in various parts of this, of Internet operations.
It's also a good way to build your personal career, you know, and start, you know, getting to know people, people get to know you. And you can also obviously be part of this community and further continue to build a better Internet. And so we really need you to be active in this community and hopefully we'll see many of you back maybe also in some more leadership roles in the future.
There is a RIPE Programme Committee. I think, Max, you are here, right? I saw you in the back, there is the Chair ‑‑ maybe he is not here any more. There was the Chair of the Programme Committee was here in the back, but you'll see here also present during the open Plenary, so there is a Programme Committee that's probably for the Plenary presentations, they are submission and proposals get submitted to the Programme Committee and then they decide. They are also elections, this time for two seats on the Programme Committee, so if you are interested, jump into that, that's still possible.
Here is the faces of the current Programme Committee members. You will see them around during the week and they'll also be introduced later this afternoon.
You can rate all the presentations when you go on the website, there is a button you can give feedback to the Programme Committee and to the Working Group Chairs also on what you think about the topics and the presentations, so we can further improve the content.
This is important. I think there are some of the Code of Conduct team members here in the room, so we have a Code of Conduct at the RIPE that everybody subscribes to when they register for the meeting so please all follow the RIPE Code of Conduct and, you know, be nice to each other, but still if there is something that you feel is bothering you or there is some behaviour that you think violates the Code of Conduct, please don't hesitate to contact any of these people here. There are some in the room. Sebastian is a new member of the Code of Conduct team. I don't know if there is anyone else here, but you'll see posters and pictures of the people here. Some of them will follow on line and, it's kind of half, half, here and others are online, and there is of course also a page on the website that you can use to report and to contact them.
Again, you can use the Meetecho platform to interact with each other. Of course you can also interact here in person but if you are online you can follow ‑‑ you can use that platform. It's everything together on this one platform. You can ask questions, get to know each other, chat. You can see on the attendees list some of the attendees have added their pictures and AS numbers that they are responsible for and e‑mail addresses so you can find, and maybe people you want to talk to via the attendees list as well.
Social events:
That's also an important part, of course, to get to know each other and find other participants.
So, there is one this afternoon, there is the welcome reception in the, it's called the clubhouse, I think it's one of the outside buildings here, you'll find signs later on. And then there is a nice social tomorrow that we will be bussed to and then, on Thursday, it's the RIPE dinner, traditional RIPE dinner, so I recommend you to participate.
You need, for the RIPE dinner, you need a special ticket that you should have seen when you registered and how to get that.
There is also a parallel event for people who work for NRENs, going back to our routes, the national research and education networks, we have many participants in the RIPE community and there is a special event for, you know, academic and NREN participants if you want to to go to that.
And share your experience, there is a feedback form. You can you can always come to me or any of the staff had he registration desk if you have any questions or if you want to give us any feedback, any ideas you have. We especially want to hear from new participants, what your impression is and what you think is missing or something you like or something we could do better in the future. So please don't be shy. You are really very important to us.
There is a lot of technical stuff also on site. So if you have any questions, you can contact them, find them either in the hallways but also there is an e‑mail address up there, if there is something not working with your wi‑fi or if you have any questions or questions about your presentations if you are presenting, they'll be happy to help you. And some general questions about anything relating to the meeting, you can always send mail to meeting [at] ripe [dot] net and they will be able to help you there.
And the easiest way is, of course, go to find the meet‑and‑greet desk. These are the people in the red shirts. Do we have any of you here in the room? They are probably all at the registration desk right now because ‑‑ you are there ‑‑ you are wearing two hats. Meet and Greet and the Code of Conduct team. And the meet‑and‑greet desk is right next to the registration desk so if you have any questions about the meeting plan, how to find the room or whatever, they'll be there to help you out.
And that's all for my part. I'm going to hand over to Athina, who is going to talk a little bit about the other organisation, the RIPE NCC.
ATHINA FRAGKOULI: Hello, everyone, welcome. My name is Athina Fragkouli, I am the Chief Legal Officer of the RIPE NCC. It's nice to have you here for the first RIPE meeting.
Mirjam talked a little bit about the difference between the RIPE community and the RIPE NCC. The RIPE NCC is not a community, it's a legal entity, and it was formalised by the RIPE NCC in 1992. It is a membership organisation. It has an Executive Board that is elected by the members and it has employees, staff. We provide services, we implement the policies that are developed by the RIPE community. We are pretty much the RIPE secretariat, in a few words.
Our strategic objectives, as an organisation:
First and foremost is, of course, to be the secretariat of the RIPE community. We want to have an open, inclusive and engaged RIPE community. We work towards that.
We are, of course, a registry. We operate the registry. We try to make sure that it's trusted, it's efficient, it's accurate and resilient. But we're not just a registry. We are the RIPE NCC. NCC stands for Network Coordination Centre. So, what we do, we try to coordinate the members and the community to develop a global Internet that is secure, stable and resilient.
Of course, this can only be happening when you have a stable organisation and a robust governance structure, which is the first objective, and last but not least, the fifth objective, none of them can happen without having a competent staff. So, our objective is to attract engaged, competent and diverse staff.
So, if we can group our activities in three categories.
This would be the first category. It's the registry. We operate the registry, we maintain the RIPE database, we allocate inter number resources that can be managed by the LIR portal. We investigate potential registration hijacks and we make sure the policies are implemented correctly, so we investigate possible policy violations as well. We support, as we said, the policy development process of the RIPE community. And we ensure secure routing with RPKI.
The second group of our operations is the information services.
We have Internet measurement services such as RIPE Atlas, RIPEstat, RIS, RIPE IP Map, which we develop and maintain.
We also operate the K‑root server, which is one of the 13 route name servers globally that support the DNS. And we also delegate reverse DNS zones for the address ranges that we manage.
The third group of our activities have to do with the community and engagement.
We organise RIPE meetings such as this one, but also other regional meetings and events.
Training services:
We offer training courses, e‑learning and certified professionals.
We engage with public, in public policy discussions that have to do with the Internet, and of course we contribute in Internet governance discussions.
We have this nice web block that is the RIPE Database Labs, it's a very nice website, please visit it. We publish, there, articles that are written by our staff but also by third contributors and we run the community project fund, which is a fund for projects for the good of the Internet.
This is the executive team of the RIPE NCC. You can see on your left hand, Hans Petter Holen, he is the Managing Director and the CEO of the RIPE NCC. You can see me on the other side in the corner at the bottom, and in this meeting you will see James Kennedy, the Chief Registry Officer. Hisham, he is sitting over there ‑ please stand up ‑ is the Chief Community Officer. Simon‑Jan, he is in the back, Chief Financial Officer, and myself of course, will be walking around, please approach us. We'll also give presentations, mostly on Wednesday, at the NCC Services Working Group and at the GM. And, of course, Daniella is the executive assistant, you'll see her at the registration desk of this RIPE meeting and around.
The Executive Board. The Executive Board is elected, as I said, by the members. They are here, you'll see them also walking around. Tonight, you'll see them at the welcome reception; you can talk to them. And of course on Wednesday, we have the General Meeting, you can talk to them ‑‑ you can talk to them throughout the week. They are very approachable. They are there also to answer your questions.
This is very important. The support desk and this RIPE meeting, this is the one‑step hub for everything that is related to the RIPE NCC. It's in the coffee area. My colleagues are there to answer any questions you may have to provide any support you may want, please go there, we mean it, please go there, they are ready to help you. Don't be shy!
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Finally, the RIPE NCC General Meeting:
This is a meeting only for RIPE NCC members. This is separate to the RIPE meeting. It requires a separate registration. It takes place at four o'clock on Wednesday. The registration stops at two hours earlier. So please register until Wednesday at two o'clock if you are a member.
You can vote online. If you have any questions, you can either e‑mail your questions to this e‑mail address; Karla, my colleague, please stand up, she is there to answer any questions. Also, I am here to answer any questions about the GM. On this link, you can find the agenda and supporting documents.
And, with that, I will give the floor to my colleague, I have a little treat for you, Angela Dall'Ara is the Policy Officer, she is going to talk about the policy development process. From me, thank you very much. Thank you for having ‑‑ for being here, take the most out of this first RIPE meeting and please enjoy yourselves. Thank you.
(Applause)
ANGELA DALL'ARA: Good morning. We have a RIPE meeting in Rome, so I take the opportunity to greet everybody in my own language. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the newcomers. It's always a pleasure for me to have new people joining our meetings, although I can understand that some newcomers of the meeting are not newcomers in the RIPE community.
I am the Policy Officer in the RIPE NCC. You heard Mirjam and you heard Athina talking about this very important part of the activity of the RIPE community. You are part of the RIPE community and most probably you didn't realise, not all of you, that you are all policymakers. So my first invitation to you is: Pay attention, be careful, look at what is in the policies. If there is something that has to be improved, if there is something that is wrong, if there is something that is annoying that you don't like, that you think it could be done better, please join the mailing list of the Working Group of your interest and start the discussion. This might bring to a new policy proposal, and might bring other people into the discussion to bring their own experience, to bring their own comments, and improve what the RIPE NCC does for you.
Because, as you heard, the RIPE NCC is implementing the policies that are accepted by the RIPE community, so we are here to work for you. We are your secretariat.
The hard work in Working Groups, you know, the community works in Working Groups. The hard work is going to be for the Working Group Chairs to decide if there is consensus on a certain proposal. So if you do not comment, if you don't contribute with your experience, with your concerns and whatever, it's going to be very difficult for them to determine if there is consensus on a policy. Don't be shy. Already, you heard Athina participate. I know it can be intimidating to most on the mailing list, but actually your comments and your contribution is going to be very welcome.
So, what I suggest, first of all, check which are the Working Groups, check what is relevant for your field of work, and look at the past discussions, what has been discussed there, what people think, the way in which they discuss, always following the Code of Conduct, please, be kind to each other, try to be understanding, you know, everybody has their own way to communicate and it's important to have a very rich and full discussion about it, about policy proposals.
By the way, talking about policy proposals, we have one active policy proposal in the Address Policy Working Group that is going to be discussed on Wednesday, and it's regarding the introduction of the status for PA assignment in IPv4 that is already in place for IPv6. It is interesting to note that this proposal brought up another subject for what is the kind of registration that we want for contacts in PA assignments. So there is going to be also a space dedicated to that.
On top of that, in the Address Policy Working Group, you will have a discussion regarding the review of the IPv6 policies. So, if you have ideas, if you have something to bring up to review a policy that is actually getting a bit vintage, like me, a bit old, please participate, say what you think. But I have to remind you, that despite discussion in the RIPE meetings are fundamental to bring up ideas and to know what is going on, what is counting for the consensus determination is what is posted on the mailing lists. Also, because the mailing lists are the, let's say, the only one ‑‑ the unique location where all the comments are recorded and can be found back and that can be checked by the Working Group Chairs to determine consensus. So, even if you have a talk during the meeting, or even if you have talks on other channels, I don't know, telegram or WhatsApp or other places about policy proposals, it is important that you post your comments in the mailing lists.
And if you have questions about policies, how they are applied, how they are compliant with procedures of the RIPE NCC and so on, or otherwise ‑‑ sorry, under some, as we say in Dutch, if the procedures are compliant with policies, please come to me and I am very happy to answer all your questions.
We have also a new forum, and that's why I'm making this specification about the mailing lists. On the forum you will find a lot of topics from technical topics, where you can find help from more experienced participants, you can post your questions and so on. You can also find topics like 'bring your own cheese' at the RIPE meeting or something like that. I was wondering why nobody is bringing your own pasta or something, it's important that if you have comments, that you think are relevant for the discussion on policy proposals from the forum you post them on the mailing list.
And with this, I think you got already a lot of information. I don't want to go on too much. I give back the word to Mirjam for closing the session.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you very much, Angela. And this is it. This ends almost, almost ends the session. Are there any questions from you here in the room or those of you who are online? I see Niall O'Reilly, the Vice‑Chair, is online, so if there is any questions online you can also post them there in the Meetecho. No questions here in the room. Yes, there is a question. Could you come to the microphone, please. Sorry, before you start, what's really important in the community is, you state your name and your affiliation so that we know who is who and that you also get to know each other and you know who is speaking, so thank you.
SPEAKER: Hello. I am Romain from ETH Zurich. So I tried to post my question online but I didn't know whether this would work or not. So...
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I just had a question about the policies from the RIPE NCC. I was wondering if those are somewhat enforceable once they are agreed upon or essentially they are best practices for the community to try and follow?
ANGELA DALL'ARA: So, when there is a proposal, the first thing is to check, first of all, the scope of the proposal, if it's in the scope of the work of the RIPE NCC. Mostly, proposals are regarding the way in which resources, IP addresses and AS numbers are distributed to resources holders, they might be LIRs, members of the RIPE NCC or end users.
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And then sometimes they are related to how to register objects in the RIPE database. The RIPE database group also works in numbered work items and they might have a different process for accepting certain changes. But let's say that the first check that we do together with the proposers and the Working Group Chairs is that the policy is in scope.
Also, it might be, you are right, that the policy is not enforceable. So, for example, it's outside of the possibilities to implement certain changes. That part is going to be mentioned in the impact analysis. So, whenever there is ‑‑ because during the discussion you can have some comments, some changes and so on, and the community would like to have a certain change implemented. Then the RIPE NCC has to say yes, we can do it; no, we can't do it, or to apply that change, we need a certain set of new resources, it can be tools, it can be people, you know, they can also ‑‑ we have a legal impact that is making an assessment of whether the proposal would conflict with law and regulations. So, let's say, a policy, a new policy, of course, ideally, must be enforceable, but it can be that sometimes there is a change that is deemed as getting challenges, you know, being challenged by the possibilities that we have.
I hope I answered your question.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you, Angela. And I think there is an online comment, Niall O'Reilly wanted to add something.
This is a good way to test the system. It's the first session we are having this week.
NIALL O'REILLY: I wonder is there anything Angela would add to that about how the policies, if necessary, can be included in the contract of service that the RIPE NCC has with its members? I don't know, I am asking this question, actually, from a position of ignorance, so I'm not hinting at anything but just wondering.
ATHINA FRAGKOULI: So, the members have to sign the standard service agreement with the RIPE NCC, and one of the obligations the members have when they sign this agreement is the obligation of compliance. And indeed appliance to RIPE policies is included there.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you, Athina. There is another question in the back.
SPEAKER: My name is Daniel Karrenberg, I am one the founders of RIPE and the first and current employee of the RIPE NCC. I just wanted to take a little bit more of a global high‑level view on the question about the policies. What one has to understand about RIPE and the RIPE NCC is that the policies are mainly concerned with what the RIPE NCC does. So it's basically the community saying, very formally to the RIPE NCC, you should do this, you should do that, you should provide this service, do allocations like this.
There is another thing that the RIPE community does and that is making recommendations on, for instance, how to operate and things like that, and obviously those are not enforceable. They are just recommendations made by the whole community and they have some weight, because we all discuss it and come up with it. But you have to be very clear in what the distinction is between the two, and this formal policy development process is intended to give guidance to the RIPE NCC.
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And now to make it even more complicated, as Athina has said, the RIPE NCC is a legal entity, it has a Board. So, even if we make a policy here as a community, the Board may say "we can't implement it". It hasn't happened so much, but you can construct cases where they say well that would be illegal, or would provide viability to us. So, in essence, the policy development process is not for everything. We have stuff that we do as a community, we write documents, recommendations, is one thing. Policy is more like guidance to the RIPE NCC.
I hope that clarifies it somewhat.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thanks for the addition, Daniel. That's useful. That also illustrates the ‑‑ I find, like, brilliant an intricate relationship between the RIPE community and the RIPE NCC and the way it's been set up in the beginning by the community and the way the RIPE NCC still acts as a secretariat but also as to formal entity towards the members.
So, that can be difficult to understand sometimes, who is responsible for what. But this is an opportunity for you to find out during this week. Talk to us and find out a bit more about the history and the way this all fits together.
If there are no more questions from you here in the room or online, we actually have questions for you. I think there is going to be something happening in the background.
This is what's going to happen.
Kahoot quiz!
.
MIRJAM KUHNE: Thank you so much, Gerardo. This was great fun. I hope you enjoyed that and I notice we maybe have to explain some things a bit better the next time because questions didn't get right, but I hope you got a good impression of the RIPE meeting and what the RIPE NCC is and what the RIPE is and who is who and I wish you a wonderful week here at the RIPE meeting. Also, those of you who participate remotely, I hope you can participate actively as much as possible and get a bit of the fun that we are having here in person as well. And now it's lunchtime. There is, as I mentioned earlier, one ‑‑ there are two lunch rooms, but there will be signs, and there is one lunch room that's kind of specifically for you today, where you can have lunch together. There will also be some other community members like some of the RIPE Working Group Chairs, and PC members, so you can get to know some other community members as well.
And after that we'll start, we'll come back here and we'll start with the Opening Plenary and you'll see me again.
(Applause)
.
(Lunch)
LIVE CAPTIONING BY
MARY McKEON, RMR, CRR, CBC
DUBLIN, IRELAND.
