RIPE NCC Services Working Group Agenda

Date:     Thursday, 5 May 2005

Time:     16:00 - 17:00

Room:     Plenary Room

A. Administrative Matters

    * Welcome

    * Select a Scribe

    * Distribute Participants List

    * Finalise Agenda

    * Approve Minutes: http://www.ripe.net/ripe/wg/ncc-services/r49-minutes.html

B. Report from the RIPE NCC - Axel Pawlik

Axel noted that the reporting on the RIPE NCC would not be repeated in the General Meeting, scheduled to take place at 17:00.

Registration Services

Training

Engineering

New Projects

Coordination

Communications

Membership Relations

External Relations

There were no questions.

C. New LIR Survey - Results and Feedback - Paul Rendek (RIPE NCC)

There were no questions.

D. A New Version of the Hostcount

RIPE NCC

Timur requests feedback on the value of this service.

Questions:

Kurtis asks how many are using this whois data?  Counts...yes, a few people using this data.

Anyone has any comments about proposed changes?

+/- 49 mins...

Lars-Johan Liman (Netnod): 

Are you going to use this host query all over?

Timur:  Yes.

Lars-Johan Liman - Netnod:  Because I noticed some problems with some transfers.  So it should be configured to provide one answer instead of many answers.... so this is about the zone transfer format.

Timur:  Thank you for this.  We are going to review all the projects and maybe will modify the hostcount programme itself and maybe we should do a DNS as a backend which may be better.

Peter:  I want to respond on the remark made by the previous gentleman

The host programme is showing its age and the sad fact is that the author has passed away a couple of years ago and the program itself has been orphaned.  There are some problems in dealing with the new style referrals.  It would be useful to have that located at a well-known place, one of which could be the RIPE NCC.  And I would be willing to contribute.  As before I didn't do the coding, but it would be useful to develop that not only for the host count, but for DNS debugging as well.

Timur:  Well, we promised to provide a DIY kit.  We will come with a replacement on modified version of software.  And your input would be much appreciated.

Souissi Mohsen - AFNIC:  I browsed through the site and randomly did some cctld's to find out about things.  I was pleasantly surprised that there are detail on every cctld.

But i am quite worried about the relevance of these figures.  For example the zone count.  if these figures are to be used somewhere maybe there is a column missing - the estimate of error.  is there mathematical way to estimate that.  And do a disclaimer for people using these figures?

Timur:  Well, there is a disclaimer there,

Souissi Mohsen - AFNIC: Because the figures are, in some parts, very far from the reality

Timur:  We understand that, so that's why we are not claiming that it's something really precise.

Souissi Mohsen - AFNIC:  Thank you anyway.

Rob Blokzijl:  BTW the first hostcount counted 7200 hosts.  But that was never published.

Comment:  I was one of the few who raised their hand when you asked whether people were using it or whether it is useful.  I think its extremely useful because it is one of the few long term efforts to measure something of the internet in a consistent way.  It is more of a trans measurement than absolutely numbers.  I would like to see some sort of continuation of this and I think its important that potential users understand what it is .  What it is that you measure, what the conditions are and yes, its difficult to give error estimates, but people should use it as one of the few reliable trend figures.  You can see trends in many publications, but most are based on nothing and if you take any given moment in time, you have a rich choice of various trends, like the internet is not growing anymore or the internet is exploding  but at least this measures something that is definied and is not a hostcount as the name suggests, but you are measuring someting in a consistent way for many years, so you can draw some conclustions and I think that is the value.

Person from Vienna:  I wholly support this project and I am very pleased to see that there is further work being done on this.  i would just like to ask if, for the reverse dns counts may lirs volunteer to reform the divulged counts in the same way that some of us volunteerd to perfom forward counts for the country codes?

Timnur:  That's perfect.  We would like to see a participation.  Thanks a lot.

Bruce Campbell:  with what you said about the accuracy - if you see the graph on the screen there is a section that says zones blocked etc.  that is the closest that you will get to seeing this is how inaccurate the figures are, because for every zone where we got a block, we have a completely unknown number of hosts that we couldn't count, which is why we started collecting the reverse count because its much easier to ennumerate through the reverse zones and not necessarily forward.  the downside is that people generally don't populate the reverse zones.  so if you have reverse zones, its putting them in dns is good.  its yet another trend.  its purely a trend thing with no relation to realiity. 

Timur:  Thank you

Peter Kock - denic (one of the starting points into hostzone and long time support and i appreciate the effort and would like to see it continue).  I appreciate your new considerations of acceptable use and really, there is no acceptable use.  the raw data is no longer shipped, which is  probably one of the pre-conditions for the cctld registries to continue support for this project.  This is really important and we should talk about that.

Timur:  Thank you.

Out of time, so no open microphone.

Y. Open Microphone

Z. AOB