RIPE 20, Amsterdam January 25-27th, 1995 Chairman : Mike Norris 2nd draft - Local IR working group minutes 1. Introduction Mike Norris, the chairman welcomed the participants to the Local IR meeting. Anne Lord volunteered as scribe to take the minutes. The group met twice, for 1.5 hours each meeting. Proposed alterations to the agenda are below: - start with items 1, 2 and 3 on the agenda - follow item 3 with item 12. (will be reported as per scheduled agenda order) 2.1 RIPE 19 minutes There were no changes to the minutes as previously circulated. 2.2 RIPE 19 actions 18.3 done : Geert Jan de Groot Investigate monthly publication of error files on reverse zone files, similar to the host count error files. 19.2 closed : Mike Norris At the 20th meeting to raise the training of local IR's as a topic for discussion. 19.3 open : Daniel Karrenberg To make an inventory document of the problems associated with charging for address space. 19.4 closed : Daniel Karrenberg To recirculate draft proposal on use of private address space for VSE's not connecting to the Internet. Circulate proposal to the WG mailing list. 19.5 closed : RIPE NCC To organise a meeting between regional registries, with representatives from the RIPE local - IR working group. 19.6 closed : Geert Jan To document new attribute "status" proposed to describe whether a network is delegated, reserved or assigned. 19.7 open : RIPE NCC Circulate revised ripe-115 to the local-ir mailing list for comments. 19.8 open : Daniel Karrenberg To prepare specification for the format of the list of service providers. 3. Reports from Regional Registries There was an open invitation to all local registries to contribute under this agenda item. 3.1 Kim Hubbard - InterNIC Kim Hubbard reported on the IP registry activities of the InterNIC, giving also some background information about how their operation is organised. Overview statistics: - 3 staff handle 3000 - 4000 requests per month. - Each staff member handles approx 20-30 telephone calls per working day. - They handle approximately 5000/month allocations and assignments to ISP's. - 2000/month single and small block assignments. - Class B assignments are running at 20/month. This has been quite stable for some time. Address Justifications requested: class B's - min 10% utilisation expected - subnet mask plans - network diagrams class C's - CIDR blocks to ISP's gradual increase in allocations "handholding" procedure will be initiated in the future. - subnetting plans - host/subnet counts The procedure of referring small ISP's to larger ones for address space will change. Additional Services by IP Numbers Group - shared WHOIS project approximately 2000 reassignments/month - inverse address registration approximately 500 delegations/month - AS number allocation approximately 60/month currently not a lot of justification is required by requestors Current Issues facing the InterNIC - rfc1597/1627 policy on encourage its usage or not - single low host requests - "portable" addresses - ISP allocation guidelines - ISP's want to see these in writing - registry guidelines - the InterNIC is working with other Regional Registries in this area to coordinate and streamline efforts A copy of the presentation can be found in the presentations directory: ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/presentations/xxxxxx kim nagged 3.2 RIPE NCC Report - Daniel Karrenberg The slides of Daniels presentation were part of the RIPE NCC Report which was presented in the plenary session, which are available from ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/presentations/xxxxx nag dfk Overall the statistics shown in the report reflect the expected linear growth of the Internet with respect to DNS, the number of local IR's, It is expected that there will be around 240 local IR's by the end of 1995. The current breakdown is as follows: Enterprise Registry: 14 Last Resort Registry: 31 Provider Registry: 103 of which: 17 are large 29 are medium 57 are small It is clear that the growth curve of the number of new local registries in increasing. The new registries require more and more support and guidance and are a significant load factor on the RIPE NCC. However, the up side is that they should provide more income in the long term. The number of incoming messages to hostmaster is increasing and is now averaging around 37 messages a day. The workload and growth is such that this now accounts for more than 50% of staff time, leaving very little time for other needed activities. The staff situation is improving - now 4.5 FTE's, but is not enough to cope with the pace of growth. With reference to the invoicing for 1994, some erroneous bills have been sent for which Daniel apologised. In terms of activities over the last quarter, the RIPE NCC is just "keeping up". A better billing mechanism has been implemented, new classless db is running well, there has been internal reorganisation and new staff have to be trained. In the questions that followed, Daniel made it clear that the workload of the registry work was such that it had become clear that there was a need for a ticketing system that integrated with mail was needed. On this there was a request to the participants for input - Mark Kosters of the InterNIC has developed an in-house tool that might be useful although it is still under development. There was a question concerning the criteria for local registries: whether they were still the same as those stated in ripe-104. In response, Daniel noted that because of the very high number of new local registriess, the procedures for management of the address space with respect to the local registries has been tightened. Basically now, all new registries follow a "handholding" procedure with an assignment window of 0 which increments to larger amounts over time. Ripe-104 will be revised to reflect this. There was also a question regarding the newer "Enterprise Registries" and who qualifies in this respect. Enterprise Registries are those which coordinate the address space deployment for an organisation. One of the criteria to determine "eligibility" is the existence of a large corportate networking division within that Enterprise. It was felt that written guidelines were needed in this respect and that these should go into the next revision of ripe-104. 3.3 Local Registries Report Wilfried Woeber, had previously circulated to the list some questions concerning the policy on reallocation of address space in the light of an ACOnet customer who reallocated addresses. This is quite clearly undesirable. Wilfried said that he would put a clear message in the ACOnet application form in an attempt to prevent this, and urged other local registries to do likewise. 4. Charging in 1995 The charging model for 1995 is fixed. It was agreed at the RIPE contributors meeting held on September 21st, 1994. The workplan for 1995 and the expenditure budget of 407,000 ECU were presented at the meeting and both were unanimously accepted. The current status of the budget is that 30% of the planned expenditure has not yet been raised for 1995. During 1995, paying registries will receive a service level above non-paying registries. As from February 1st registries that have committed in writing will get a priority service. To speed up paperwork, the RIPE NCC will accept a committment to pay from a registry as though it is a formal agreement. This is only until February 28th, 1995. There were a number of comments and questions from the audience regarding the financial status of the RIPE NCC and the billing arrangements. Funders were encouraged to use the <billing@ripe.net> if they had any queries. There was a question concerning unfair competition from service providers who are not funding the RIPE NCC and therefore do not have the same financial committments. Daniel commented that he cannot determine who is and who is not a service provider, nor who is or who is not a registry. He can only control the service level they receive. 5. Future charging models Daniel Karrenberg reported on the current thinking for future changes to the funding model. The NCC Contributors Committee have discussed and approve a system of usage based charging in 1996. For this to be in place from 1996 onwards, it is vital that the discussions begin soon. Critical decisions need to be made regarding the metrics to be used, the percentage basis of the "usage" based fee. Input is sought from the local registries themselves and the discussion on the local-ir@ripe.net mailing list should begin between now and the next RIPE meeting in Rome. Concern was expressed that public bodies and government funded IP services will need to know their expected costs ahead of the financial year. 6. Training Given the overhead that the new registries are now putting on the RIPE NCC, it is clear that is now a need for some registry "induction" or training to take place. It was agreed at the contributors last year in September, that the start up fee would be used to provide some of the resources for this activity. The proposed medium for the training is the WWW. All local registries are asked to provide any material if they have in-house material themselves that is applicable. Action: Mike Norris To send mail to the list asking for input on the content of the training material. It was agreed that the focus of the training would not be "how to be a service provider" but on the functions of a local registry, especially with respect to RIPE interaction. 7. Revision of ripe-104 Very Small Enterprises - VSE's Previously circulated to the mailing list was a document by Daniel Karrenberg describing a proposed method of handling requests from VSE's whose address space assignment utilisation rates are very low. There was no feedback to the document so the discussions have died. Briefly, the document proposed the following : - if no outside connectivity and low host numbers, dont assign unique address space. - when VSE's do connect, ISP's are recommended to use dynamic address space assignment. Wilfried Woeber commented that the ideas presented in the paper sounded sensible, but he was concerned that he lacked a thorough understanding of the technical implications. It was agreed that an "applications document" was needed to accompany this proposal and to circulate the draft of this document to the list. Action: Daniel Karrenberg To draft outline "applciations document" to support the proposed plan on how to deal with address space requests from VSE's Action: Mike Norris To recirculate to the local-ir@ripe.net mailing list the document on VSE's as drafted by Daniel Karrenberg. Slow start of registries - Assignment Window In the next revision of this document, there will be a description of the "handholding" procedures and the sliding window mechanism which is now applied to all new registries. Daniel Karrenberg announced that a number of registries, in the past, have assigned excessive amounts of address space to their own organisations. This practice clearly does not follow the procedures for address space assignment and is not in the interests of conserving address space. After some discussion it was agreed that local IR's will themselves have a self-assignment window, with a threshold of either 4 or 8 class C`s which they can assign to themselves without review. Anything higher than this, must be submitted to the RIPE NCC for review. Daniel expressed a preference for a window of 4 class C's. Future of Last Resort Local IR's Last Resort IR's are not currently being charged for RIPE NCC services, because they provide valuable support function to the RIPE NCC. In the future, 2 options present themselves: o last resort IR's charge for their services like any other ISP and multiple ISP's may co-exist. They could be called "provider independant" registries o The distinction between last resort and other registries will disappear as all will be providing a chargeable service. This brings up the issue of the "ownership" of address space. The discussion of portable address space within the IANA is currently very topical. The IANA says that *unless* a contractual arrangement with the customer is made, by the ISP, the customer retains the right to take the address space with them if they change ISP. To try to negate this trend, ISP's could make a charge for out-of-block routing announcements. The customer is faced with the choice of a price/ renumbering trade-off. 8. Revision of European IP network number form (ripe-124) - There was a request that the supporting text for the admin-c: contact person asks that the contact person is available at the site of the network. 9. Global Coordination Daniel Karrenberg reported that both the InterNIC and the AP-NIC procedures with respect to address space assignments are in line with the RIPE NCC. However, the IANA does still make large assignments (which the InterNIC has to carry out). It is felt by all Regional Registries that rfc1466 is in need of revision. On Friday 27th January, 1995, a meeting has been scheduled between all the Regional Registries to discuss and align policies as well as draft a revision of rfc1466. Action: Mike Norris To circulate to the local-ir@ripe.net mailing list a summary of the meeting between the Regional Registries. 10. Reverse domains This is reported previously by Geert Jan de Groot under 18.3 11. Tools - Geert Jan reported that 70% of the reverse domain delegation requests contain errors in their set up and are returned to the sender. The French NIC is developing a tool (Christophe Chaillot) which does some error checking. The tool will be distributed once it is finished. - Daniel Karrenberg asked the audience how many people were using the stt tool developed at the RIPE NCC. No-one admitted to using it. 12. Database issues 12.1 RIPE handles Geert Jan gave a short presentation on the use of RIPE handles and how they can be generated using the tool that he has developed. The tool uses finger to find the first free handle in the RIPE database. Action: Geert Jan de Groot: to summarise the RIPE handle tool and to distribute to the local-ir@ripe.net mailing list. 12.2 Use of "person" object The use of the person object was clarified. The admin-c: contact should be a person and the tech-c: contact can be a NOC. 13. AOB Billing There is a directory ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/new-registry which contains all the billing relevant documentation. Daniel Karrenberg asked everyone to note that the format of some of the information in this directory has changed recently. Part of the registry database maintained by the RIPE NCC has "billing information". Please note that if you are a member of the EU, you should quote your VAT number otherwise you will be charged +17.5% extra. If you have any doubts about the billing data we hold about your organisation please dont hesitate to check with <billing@ripe.net> to ensure that our data is correct and up to date.