Hi, 1)New RIR is not pure European, it may include part of Asia. 2)For _our_ situation the only acceptable variant is that the certain country is served by the RIR if 2/3 (or 4/5, or 5/6 ... - we'll decide) of LIRs in this country wish so. By the way, Andrew Stesin knows about this very well - we decided it on ISP meeting in Moscow where he has been present, that's why I don't understand some of his arguments at all. He wants me to confirm this principle once more ? OK, I do it. Thus I'm quite sure that Ukraine will _not_ be included in the area served by the new RIR. May be Rimas is right and this discussion is about nothing ? Regards, Alexei Platonov P.S. And some more. The first stage - RIPE NCC office. If after a year it'll be only Russia that is served by this office, the project will be either stopped or the status of RIPE NCC office will be fixed without further development. According to Rimas Janusauskas:

On Tue, 10 Feb 1998, Mike Norris wrote:

...

...

IMO, every LIR is free to decide about the RIR they want to be served, and it could happen, that LIRs at the same country will be served by different RIRs.

OK, but what do you feel about the corollary: is a RIR free to choose any LIR that seeks service, or is it constrained to serve only those within a certain (or sometimes uncertain) geographical area? Before answering, remember what the E in RIPE, the A in ARIN and the AP in APNIC stand for.

Regards.

Mike Norris

Thanks Mike, it's a briliant remark!

Excerpt from RIPE-167:

If has been suggested more than once that the coun- tries of the CIS in fact form a separate region from Europe that needed special regional support.

Sounds with no pardon... A huge region is treated as Terra ******* (self censored) Incognita with savage population.

FYI: CIS countries are Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaidjan, Kazakhstan, Kirgyzstan, Uzbekistan,Tadjikistan, Turkmenistan.

There is no denying the fact that part of them are in Europe or very close to it.

IMHO the only difference between two EUROPEAN RIRs is working language (English for RIPE and Russian for RIPN).

If it will be decided that the best solution to serve Russian speaking community is to create separate RIR (istead of employing some Russian speaking hostmasters at RIPE NCC, creating separate list like hostmaster-ru@ripe.net and so on), it seems essential that European LIRs might choose among the 2 European RIRs, but not vice versa, when some _authority_ will decide, that starting from day V. all LIRs in country CC will be served by appropriate RIR.

I hope that authors of the document are on the list and kindly invite them clearify the essence. Othervise we'll continue discussion about nothing.

With best regards,

Rimas Janusauskas

On Wed, 11 Feb 1998, Alexei Platonov wrote:

Hi,

1)New RIR is not pure European, it may include part of Asia. 2)For _our_ situation the only acceptable variant is that the certain country is served by the RIR if 2/3 (or 4/5, or 5/6 ... - we'll decide) of LIRs in this country wish so. By the way, Andrew Stesin knows about this very well - we decided it on ISP meeting in Moscow where he has been present, that's why I don't understand some of his arguments at all. He wants me to confirm this principle once more ? OK, I do it. Thus I'm quite sure that Ukraine will _not_ be included in the area served by the new RIR.

Thank you Alexei, It's a good basis for discussion. Maybe I'll look boring nuisance, but I need to remind: Developments of the last few years however suggest that it is difficult for the RIPE NCC to serve all parts of this area because in practise there exist a number of practical problems. These problems have to do with circumstances caused by: - local language problems - time zone differences - travel difficulties - effort necessary to organise coordination meetings Questions and comments: 1. Why I could not found any explanation what the main diffrence between RIPE NCC and RIPN is? I supposed, that it will be working language, but you neither confirmed nor refuted my suspicion. If working language of new RIR will be English, please describe the problem named "local language problems" in more details. 2. Moscow mean time differs from Amsterdam EET +2h. Do these two hours is a real problem for registries in CIS countries (except Russian East) 3. No complains. Visa requirements, etc.etc.etc. 4. Moscow meeting has proved, that it's not a problem to arrange regional meetings. I think RIPE community will meet your efforts to arrange RIPE meeting somewhere in CIS with understanding. Suggestions: 1. If RIPE community will found establishing of new RIR in CIS(Russia) desirable, do you see any problem, that LIRs will choose between 2 European RIRs? In some countries (including Russia) p[art of LIRs will be served by RIPE NCC and part by RIPN. If RIPN will prove, that their service is on the same or higher level than RIPE NCC is providing, LIRs will turn back to RIPN. 2. Administrative decision for whole country must be considered as inadmissible. At present only some countries could express their average position by LIRs voting. What could we say about _2/3 (or 4/5, or 5/6...)_ LIRs in appropriate country, when we coud not found them at all!!! Situation could became very unstable, if newly established LIR's (for ex. in Kazakhstan it will be enaugh 2 or 3) will decide, that _ALL_ LIRs in their country starting from Day V. might be served by another RIR.

From the other hand, it's not so very important where the LIR is registered (where the admin-c resides).

3. During the first step new RIR must be run under supervision from RIPE NCC, probably in position of GM to achieve the same service level and have the same policy and procedures. Most important is to have RIR really independant and working for whole community. Hope, that your reply could settle down the discussion to more constructive mode. With best regards, Rimas P.S. Sorry to be so slow-minded. Now I understand the keynote idea of Mike Norris: OK, but what do you feel about the corollary: is a RIR free to choose any LIR that seeks service, or is it constrained to serve only those within a certain (or sometimes uncertain) geographical area? Before answering, remember what the E in RIPE, the A in ARIN and the AP in APNIC stand for. Yes, I could confirm, that R in RIPN stands for Russia and is not associated with me anyhow. :) r.

Dear All, Having lurked into this long and IMHO very indecisive discussing, please bear with someone that is on the geographical opposite side of the E in RIPE (Portugal). I tend to agree that the main justification, both in RIPE167 and the discussion in this list, for creating a new RIR, is based on the following main points: a) There are language problems communicating with the existing RIR (RIPE); b) There are time zone differences that make communication difficult; c) There are currency/payment difficulties for local ISPs; d) There are travel difficulties to attend RIPE meetings; Since we live in a country where: 1. There are a lot less English teachers per capita than in the considered region for the new RIR; 2. TZ difference has never been an issue communicating over the Internet even when we had to resort to IANA in California (8 hour TZ difference) a long time ago, and still today for other issues; 3. Burocracy and high bank services costs are high; 4. Travelling to central Europe is both very expensive and time inefficient; 5. Nevertheless, we consider to be much better off, in regard to all these issues, than many other countries also served by RIPE, in other large geographical areas and continents (Africa is paradigmatic). I tend to believe that there is no solid justification for a 1st tier RIR for the aforementioned region: 1. If a prospective RIR client, which from now on I'll generalize as being a LIR-ISP, in that geographical area has a problem with the Internet "lingua franca", English, needed for a relatively easy and well "procedured" dialog with the RIR, then we believe that this ISP is better off not being a LIR-ISP, and get their "IR service" from their upstream transit provider. Unrelated to this issue, I'm inclined to propose that it should be a MANDATORY requirement for any LIR-ISP to have 24 hour English speaking staff available, since in addition to IR issues, there are still so many operational issues that can affect everyone, that having "language problems" can be a potential nightmare when some English-impaired ISP starts BGP announcing your address space over some major backbone, or any similarly disrupting and urgent to resolve issues. 2. TZ difference is a non-issue IMHO. If it is such an important problem maybe the eastern/Asia part of Russia and other FSU countries should get their service from APNIC. And arguments like "we provide service from Moscow to Vladivostok" sound bogus, since I tend to believe that a large ISP that spans Europe and Asia will not have two or more internal departments dealing with "IR" issues. It will have one, and I guess that if it's based in western Russia it will prefer RIPE and if it's based in Eastern Siberia it will prefer APNIC (but if they have two, perhaps they should concentrate their efforts combining those depts, instead of trying to creating one RIR for each department, or turning one the departments into a RIR...) (As a side note, we may have to assign IP addresses to clients in Macao, that is 10 TZ away from Lisbon, or Timor (12 hours) for that matter :-)) 3. Payment difficulties seems like another somewhat bogus, if understandable issue. I believe that today there are very few countries where it is really difficult to make foreign currency payments. And IMHO, the countries in the FSU are not worse of, on the contrary, than most African and a least one big island in the Caribbean. Of course, small "Mom-and-Po shops" will have more difficulty to get this handled, but they will also have a lot more difficulty dealing with tons of other issues than larger companies. So it's a fact of life, and unless one wants a RIR for every "currency zone" in the world, we should all be able to live with it. If there are countries where, because of the local political regime, there is no way to make the RIPE payment, I'm sure the RIPE community will find a imaginative way of getting them service. 4. Travel difficulties are yet another very weak argument in the context of the RIR and Internet in general. The number and the necessity to attend meetings physically is IMHO quite low. a) we have alternative ways of communicating our points of view, sometimes in a more focused way through email, than in live meetings (this email, is of course a notable exception); b) we can raise issues that are relevant to a number of LIRs and have one representative flown in for a live meeting. I'm afraid that again this is a fact of life: dutch ISPs will always have an advantage in this regard while the RIPE-NCC is based in Amsterdam. In fact Amsterdam ISPs are better off than "some little town in the north of Holland" ISPs. In addition I'm afraid that RIPE-NCC and its coordinator(s) have created a trust relationship with LIR's that makes LIRs very comfortable with the way things are handled. All in all I believe that with such a weak justification, creating a precedent would make room for a lot more RIR's: the Iberian RIR, The British Isles RIR, the Scandinavian RIR, The Basque RIR, the Atlantic Islands RIR, the Magreb RIR, the Central African RIR, the Southern African RIR, etc. (To make this even clearer, if RIPN is created, I believe that we will contact our spanish friends and propose an Iberian RIR to be based in Lisbon, because the weather here much better than in Amsterdam, and that is defintely a better justification than any of the aforementioned ones:). Of course, whether we should have competing RIRs for the same region is quite a different issue. However for the time being the "de-facto" monopoly for IR services is well supported by all LIRs I guess, mainly because the quality of RIPE-NCC services probably is still a model for most LIR-ISP even those in competitive environments :-). Just my long 2 cEU --- pedro ramalho carlos Pedro.Carlos@co.ip.pt IP SA tel: +351-1-3166724 Av. Duque de Avila, 23 fax: +351-1-3166701 1000 LISBOA - PORTUGAL PGP Key fingerprint = B7 45 B2 F9 F3 1F 67 19 1F 24 76 67 8D F6 2C B2