Dear Colleagues, Thank you for the feedback you have provided to the email announcement of RIPE NCC New Activities for 2005 (sent 12 July 2004). I have provided a response to the queries brought forward in the text below.

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Please find attached a list of new RIPE NCC activities scheduled for 2005 and activities that represent a significant change in resource allotment from 2004.

In all sections, can you indicate if the cost includes all components such as manpower, hardware, software, etc.?

Yes. In all cases the full cost such as manpower, hardware, software, etc. are included, and are based on capital expenditure as opposed to yearly depreciation.

1) RIPE NCC Member Service Desk If today RIPE NCC members contact either a Hostmaster or the RIPE DBM or some other person, either via email or phone, won't the level of tickets be reduced for those staff? I ask since it would appear to me that existing staff can be merely reassigned to handle this new function with 2-3 PCs, and therefore I don't understand why the financial impact should be significant.

Yes, in principle this service is designed to decrease the load of relevant help queries sent to Hostmaster and RIPE DBM. The financial impact was calculated to include one new FTE plus hardware/software. Other staff needed would re-assigned as you state. A significant amount of the cost brought forward is to cover a new PABX needed to run such a service. It is important to note that this item includes the full capital expenditure of the switch, although it will benefit the entire organisation.

2) Further Deployment of Mirror Instances of the K-root Nameserver

Why does K root have to pay for this if F root does it all for free: http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/ops/f-root/sites.php

For stability reasons the operation of K global nodes are fully funded by the RIPE NCC. K local nodes are sponsored by the local community. For both classes of nodes the RIPE NCC retains full operational responsibility and control. The global nodes form the core of K-root availability and service. Two of those are currently operational in Europe and two more are planned, most likely one will be deployed in North America and one in Asia. For these nodes long-term operational stability is the primary concern. Long-term contractual arrangements for all operational aspects including facilities management and connectivity are essential to achieve this. Thus for the global nodes all capital and operating expenses are budgeted. In our judgement the expenses budgeted are reasonable to provide the stability of K-root service that is in the interest of the RIPE NCC membership. Should sponsorship opportunities arise that do not compromise the stability goals set out above we will of course pursue them in order to minimise the burden on the RIPE NCC membership. Other root server operators use different ways of deployment and cost recovery. Such diversity is good, because diversity increases the strength of the root server system.

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3) Improving Data Integrity

Will this include some method to cleanup/identify abuse contacts for spam, attack mitigation etc ? What about some abuse-c tag for the database ?

This issue is currently being discussed in the DB Working Group. We see this as part of the ongoing maintenance and development of the Database and therefore have not listed this as a new activity.

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7) Deployment of Anti-SPAM Measures and SPAM Abuse Policies

The RIPE NCC will deploy technical facilities to minimise the effect of SPAM and SPAM abuse towards the RIPE NCC and the mailing lists it provides for members and the RIPE community.

The abuse-c database work might as well be done under this heading, or it might be under its own heading, but as far as I understand, it's not listed anywhere here ?

If RIPE has for some reason choosen to abstain from abuse coordination issues, can you point me into some direction which *does* correlate IP to contact information, hopefully under a global scale ?

Which is the reason for RIPE to keep away from this ?

We have not actively decided "to keep away from it", rather we have not seen strong demand for the RIPE NCC to become active in this area. I hope that I have answered your questions sufficiently and look forward to any further discussion. kind regards, Axel Pawlik