Dear colleague, I would like to inform you about some recent developments at te NCC. Request Tracking and Ticketing We are now implementing another phase of the RIPE NCC request tracking system in order to cope better with the ever increasing numebr of requests. The only change directly visible to you will be that every message to hostmaster concerning a ticketised request will be acknowledged within 24 hours. Thus not only new reauests will be acknowledged but also messages concerning ongoing requests. We realise that this will produce mixed reactions ranging from "That is exactly what I wanted all the time" to "Please do not clutter my mailbox with superfluous acknowledgements". We have chosen to implement this now because of hard to trace problems when ticket numbers were inadvertently exchanged or multiple new requests were sent to us with a previous ticket attached. This change will also ensure that each message sent to <hostmaster@ripe.net> is read and assessed by a junior hosmaster within 24 hours. In the next pase of the request tracking system there will be possibilities to customise the acknowledgement process according to the preferences of individual registries. New Staff As already announced Nick Reid has joined the NCC staff as as a junior hostmaster on August 28th. Nick joins us from Leeds Metropolitan University. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. Regards Daniel Karrenberg RIPE NCC Manager