Impact of COVID-19 measures on operations and regulatory barriers?
Dear colleagues, With people in a large part of our service region now confined to their homes, it means that our societies and economies even more than ever depend on the Internet. Which has raised questions and concerns regarding the scalability and stability of our networks. Of course, we are doing our best to analyse data from RIS, RIPE Atlas and other sources to see what is going on and determine if there are any major changes related to the increased load or the limited movement of people and workers. Our colleagues from the European Commission, as well as a number of national regulatory agencies, have reached out to us, asking if we see anything different or have noticed any deterioration of Internet connectivity. Some have also inquired about any bottlenecks (particularly regulatory) we or the community are experiencing because of the unprecedented measures taken. As the RIPE NCC, one way we serve the community is to help inform policymakers of developments or concerns in the RIPE community. So in case you experience or expect any bottlenecks in your operations coming from existing regulation or any emergency measures, please feel free to post them here or contact us directly and we can relay those back to the team at the Commission or other relevant regulatory bodies we’re in contact with. Stay safe, Marco Hogewoning External Relations, RIPE NCC
Marco A concern I've heard from multiple operators is around continued access to data centres. Some of the commercial operators are now imposing restrictions on access and these will probably be extended. That could have a severe impact on operations if staff cannot get onsite to access hardware when necessary. Regards Michele -- Mr Michele Neylon Blacknight Solutions Hosting, Colocation & Domains https://www.blacknight.com/ https://blacknight.blog/ http://ceo.hosting/ Intl. +353 (0) 59 9183072 Direct Dial: +353 (0)59 9183090 ------------------------------- Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd, Unit 12A,Barrowside Business Park,Sleaty Road,Graiguecullen,Carlow,R93 X265, Ireland Company No.: 370845 ________________________________________ From: cooperation-wg <cooperation-wg-bounces@ripe.net> on behalf of Marco Hogewoning <marcoh@ripe.net> Sent: Monday 23 March 2020 14:43 To: cooperation-wg Subject: [cooperation-wg] Impact of COVID-19 measures on operations and regulatory barriers? Dear colleagues, With people in a large part of our service region now confined to their homes, it means that our societies and economies even more than ever depend on the Internet. Which has raised questions and concerns regarding the scalability and stability of our networks. Of course, we are doing our best to analyse data from RIS, RIPE Atlas and other sources to see what is going on and determine if there are any major changes related to the increased load or the limited movement of people and workers. Our colleagues from the European Commission, as well as a number of national regulatory agencies, have reached out to us, asking if we see anything different or have noticed any deterioration of Internet connectivity. Some have also inquired about any bottlenecks (particularly regulatory) we or the community are experiencing because of the unprecedented measures taken. As the RIPE NCC, one way we serve the community is to help inform policymakers of developments or concerns in the RIPE community. So in case you experience or expect any bottlenecks in your operations coming from existing regulation or any emergency measures, please feel free to post them here or contact us directly and we can relay those back to the team at the Commission or other relevant regulatory bodies we’re in contact with. Stay safe, Marco Hogewoning External Relations, RIPE NCC
Michele Neylon - Blacknight wrote on 23/03/2020 14:51:
A concern I've heard from multiple operators is around continued access to data centres. Some of the commercial operators are now imposing restrictions on access and these will probably be extended. That could have a severe impact on operations if staff cannot get onsite to access hardware when necessary.
access is a serious issue, but the collapse of the various supply chains is a longer term and potentially much more serious problem with more wide ranging effects. Shutting down chunks of the supply chain is like pulling blocks out of a jenga pile. While politicians have been comforting themselves by only shutting "non-essential" businesses, our supply chains are so complex and so interdependent that there is simply no way to predict what is and what it not essential. This is exacerbated by just-in-time supply-chain management which makes the processes a good deal more fragile than they might otherwise be. But the root problem is misjudgement and misunderstanding about what is and what is not "essential". Is a plastic bead manufacturer in Thailand essential? What about a screw fittings factory in Wuhan? Or cobalt / rare earth mines in Russia or the DRC? Or the local mechanic with his stock of spare tyres for the delivery van with a puncture? If any of these failed, we would end up with a long term downstream ripple effect which could mean that a network switch deployment couldn't be rolled out for a field hospital. As for restarting the global economy in 6 or 12 or 18m time? That will not be easy or simple. Society is actively threatening the supply of nails and this is going to put us at risk of losing the kingdom. Nick
Hi! michele@blacknight.com 2020-03-23 14:51 [+0000]:
A concern I've heard from multiple operators is around continued access to data centres. Some of the commercial operators are now imposing restrictions on access and these will probably be extended. That could have a severe impact on operations if staff cannot get onsite to access hardware when necessary.
This is a concern, yes. While Sweden is Not Yet(TM) at the point of total lock-down of data centres, the issue has been noted and the screws are being tightened. Our National Board for Telecommunication Coordination* is trying to maintain a dialogue with the Swedish regulator (PTS) about this. PTS has been informed about the issue, but they don't _currently_ have tools to mandate the data centre operators to do things. However, the legal situation is in very high flux right now, so PTS will bring the issue to the big mixer, and prepare to support us as far as they can, should the situation become more critical. I guess that is my recommendation to the rest of you: initiate a dialogue with the local regulator, and try to make them understand that this is important, and that the regulator may have to step in and assist the ISP market in keeping the net running. #keep_internet_running! Best regards, /Liman * NTSG, a national crisis coordination group for the telecom sector, run by the regulator (PTS). -- #---------------------------------------------------------------------- # Lars-Johan Liman, M.Sc. ! E-mail: liman@netnod.se # Senior Systems Specialist ! Tel: +46 8 - 562 860 12 # Netnod Internet Exchange, Stockholm ! http://www.netnod.se/ #----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Colleagues, Just to provide you with a brief update, as we also just shared a quick update with the colleagues of DGCONNECT based on our observations this week. So far, we are not aware of any major issues caused by the increased load. You may have seen that some of our colleagues have also been looking at data collected by our Routing Information System and they also conclude that there are no significant changes (https://labs.ripe.net/Members/emileaben/internet-stability-in-times-of-coron... <https://labs.ripe.net/Members/emileaben/internet-stability-in-times-of-corona>). We did point out the issue of site access, as it was mentioned here, and also flagged that issues might arise from disruptions in the supply-chain and global logistics that our industry depend on, also for instance for timely deliver of spare parts. In return, they pointed us to an earlier statement by BEREC,which lays out some of the efforts taken by the national regulatory agencies to monitor the evolution of traffic patterns. The same document also makes reference to the exceptions granted under the Open Internet Regulation with regards to traffic management measures that networks are allowed to take to prevent or mitigate network congestion. The press release can be found here https://berec.europa.eu/eng/document_register/subject_matter/berec/press_rel... <https://berec.europa.eu/eng/document_register/subject_matter/berec/press_releases/9237-press-release-coping-with-the-increased-demand-for-network-connectivity> Regards, Marco Hogewoning RIPE NCC
participants (4)
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Lars-Johan Liman -
Marco Hogewoning -
Michele Neylon - Blacknight -
Nick Hilliard (INEX)