* Apologies for the formatting of previous message. Dear Colleagues, As reported at the RIPE 36 meeting in Budapest, the RIPE NCC has been going through a difficult period with an ever increasing workload over the last year. As a direct result of this the response time for IP Address requests has increased to longer than what is normally considered acceptable. At RIPE 36 the RIPE NCC reported several short, medium and long-term actions in order to improve the Registration Services. Increasing the resources in the Registration Services, improving efficiency, further automation of processes, increasing the level of expertise and strengthening staff's technical awareness are concrete examples of actions we reported to initiate on both a short and long-term basis. As a short term measure we temporarily increased the staffing level in the Registration Services dramatically by utilising resources drawn throughout the organisation. It was clear that this action had a positive effect on the wait queue which rapidly decreased to a couple of days. As you may have noticed the wait queue has again increased over the last couple of weeks. We are in the process applying the actions mentioned above and are also hiring new staff to cope with the considerable workload. However, it will take quite some time before the new hostmasters are trained and working efficiently. In addition to hiring new staff we are continuing to use the resources in the organisation in a more flexible and efficient manner. We have also asked our colleagues at APNIC for additional resources that they have very kindly agreed to provide. The RIPE NCC will thus have two APNIC hostmasters for a short period this summer who will contribute to the processing of IP Address requests. This will help reduce the current workload while we continue to realise our long-term improvement goals. I intend to further discuss these goals with the May 17 Task Force set up at RIPE 36 and look forward to any input they may have. Please rest assured that we are doing our utmost to reduce the current wait queue and that we are determined to improve the quality of service in the Registration Services. Kind regards, Nurani Nimpuno Registration Services Manager RIPE NCC