March 2022 - ripe-list - mailman.ripe.net

statement on infrastructure governance sanctions regime
by Niels ten Oever 10 Mar '22

10 Mar '22

Dear all, With a diverse group of actors we made a statement on what we think an internet infrastructure governance sanctions regime should look like. Looking forward to discuss it with you. Statement: https://www.pch.net/resources/Papers/Multistakeholder-Imposition-of-Interne… [PDF] Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/nielstenoever/status/1501821745631797249 Press: https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2022/03/10/internet_russia_sanctions/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/10/internet-russia-sancti… https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-technology-business-europe-890976… Plain text version of the statement: Thursday, March 10, 2022 The Hague Multistakeholder Imposition of Internet Sanctions Executive Summary The invasion of Ukraine poses a new challenge for multistakeholder Internet infrastructure governance. In this statement, we discuss possible sanctions and their ramifications, lay out principles that we believe should guide Internet sanctions, and propose a multistakeholder governance mechanism to facilitate decision-making and implementation. Introduction The Internet is in its thirtieth year of transition from national to multistakeholder governance. As we encounter pivotal moments, we must decide as a community whether Internet self-governance has matured sufficiently to address such newly encountered issue. Governments have imposed sanctions throughout history, but the global Internet governance community has not yet established a process dedicated to this task. We believe it is now incumbent upon the Internet community to deliberate and make decisions in the face of humanitarian crises. We may not responsibly dismiss such crises without consideration, nor with consideration only for the self-interest of our community’s own direct constituents; instead, maturity of governance requires that self- interests be weighed in the balance with broader moral and societal considerations. This document is the beginning of a global Internet governance conversation about the appropriate scope of sanctions, the feasibility of sanctions within the realm of our collective responsibility, and our moral imperative to minimize detrimental consequences. Principles for Internet Infrastructure Governance Sanctions We, the undersigned, agree to the following principles: - Disconnecting the population of a country from the Internet is a disproportionate and inappropriate sanction, since it hampers their access to the very information that might lead them to withdraw support for acts of war and leaves them with access to only the information their own government chooses to furnish. - The effectiveness of sanctions should be evaluated relative to predefined goals. Ineffective sanctions waste effort and willpower and convey neither unity nor conviction. - Sanctions should be focused and precise. They should minimize the chance of unintended consequences or collateral damage. Disproportionate or over-broad sanctions risk fundamentally alienating populations. - Military and propaganda agencies and their information infrastructure are potential targets of sanctions. - The Internet, due to its transnational nature and consensus-driven multistakeholder system of governance, currently does not easily lend itself to the imposition of sanctions in national conflicts. - It is inappropriate and counterproductive for governments to attempt to compel Internet governance mechanisms to impose sanctions outside of the community’s multistakeholder decision-making process. - There are nonetheless appropriate, effective, and specific sanctions the Internet governance community may wish to consider in its deliberative processes. Recommendations We believe it is the responsibility of the global Internet governance community to weigh the costs and risks of sanctions against the moral imperatives that call us to action in defense of society, and we must address this governance problem now and in the future. We believe the time is right for the formation of a new, minimal, multistakeholder mechanism, similar in scale to NSP-Sec or Outages, which after due process and consensus would publish sanctioned IP addresses and domain names in the form of public data feeds in standard forms (BGP and RPZ), to be consumed by any organization that chooses to subscribe to the principles and their outcome. This process should use clearly documented procedures to assess violations of international norms in an open, multistakeholder, and consensus-driven process, taking into account the principles of non-overreach and effectiveness in making its determinations. This system mirrors existing systems used by network operators to block spam, malware, and DDoS attacks, so it requires no new technology and minimal work to implement. We call upon our colleagues to participate in a multistakeholder deliberation using the mechanism outlined above, to decide whether the IP addresses and domain names of the Russian military and its propaganda organs should be sanctioned, and to lay the groundwork for timely decisions of similar gravity and urgency in the future. Signed, Bart Groothuis, Member of the European Parliament, Netherlands Bill Woodcock, Executive Director, Packet Clearing House Ihab Osman, Non-Executive Director, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers Mike Roberts, founding President and CEO, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers Jeff Moss, President, DEFCON Niels ten Oever, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Amsterdam Marina Kaljurand, Member of the European Parliament, Estonia, former ambassador to Russia and the United States Eva Kaili, Member of the European Parliament, Greece Runa Sandvik, security researcher Kurt Opsahl, Electronic Frontier Foundation (affiliation for identification purposes only) John Levine, President, CAUCE North America Virendra Rode, founder and contributor, Outages.ORG Stephen D. Crocker, Edgemoor Research Institute Job Snijders, board member, RIPE NCC, PeeringDB, and Route Server Support Foundation Moez Chakchouk, Director of Policy, PCH, former ADG/CI UNESCO and former Tunisian minister Doug Madory, Director of Internet Analysis, Kentik Ondrej Filip, CEO, CZ.NIC and Chairman, European Internet Exchange Association Greg Rattray, Founder, Next Peak and former cybersecurity advisor to ICANN Serge Droz, in personal capacity, Director FIRST Mark Tinka, board member, FranceIX Dmitry Kohmanyuk, CEO, Hostmaster Ltd. Timothy Denton, Chairman, Internet Society, Canada Chapter Barry Greene Perry E. Metzger, Managing Member, Metzger, Dowdeswell & Co. LLC Roelof Meijer, CEO, SIDN Svitlana Matviyenko, Associate Director, Digital Democracies Institute, Simon Fraser University Rabbi Rob Thomas, CEO, Team Cymru Harald Summa, CEO, DE-CIX Chris Gibson, in personal capacity, CEO FIRST Tom Killalea The Internet Archive Philip Reiner, CEO, Institute for Security and Technology Megan Stifel, Chief Security Officer, Institute for Security and Technology Bart Stidham, CEO, NAND Rudolf van der Berg, Programme Manager, Stratix Consulting _____________________________________________________________________________ Annex: Technical Discussion of Internet Governance Sanction Measures This statement is occasioned by the letter Andrii Nabok (Андрій Набок) of the Ukranian Ministry of Digital Transformation addressed to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on the morning of Monday, February 28, 2022.[1] ICANN [2] and RIPE [3] replied to Mr. Nabok’s letter directly, in the narrowest possible terms, and in the negative. In this annex, we discuss the technical specifics of each of the proposed sanctions, as well as of other possible Internet sanctions which we suggest are more effective, more precise, and carry fewer risks and lower costs. Analysis of Ukraine’s Request We respect Mr. Nabok’s professional expertise and his inclusion of Ukraine’s Internet community in the drafting of his letter in the full spirit of the multistakeholder principles by which the Internet is governed, and we express our deepest sympathies for the indescribable trauma Ukraine is experiencing as a result of Russia’s invasion, which we condemn without reservation. Mr. Nabok’s letter requests the imposition of four Internet governance sanctions against Russia, namely: - Permanent or temporary revocation of the country code top-level domains “.ru”, “.рф” and “.su”. - Revocation of SSL certificates associated with those domains. - Disablement of DNS root servers situated within the Russian Federation. - Withdrawal of the right to use IPv4 and IPv6 addresses by Russian networks. We commend Mr. Nabok and the Ukrainian people and government for responding to bloodshed with diplomacy and seeking deescalatory sanctions. Internet governance sanctions must, however, be selected and implemented carefully, in order to achieve the greatest effect and to avoid unanticipated consequences. In the attached appendix, we discuss each of the proposed sanctions, as well as others we consider more effective, with lower costs and risks of unintended consequences. Revocation of country-code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) Every ISO-3166 Alpha-2 two-letter abbreviation of a national name is reserved for the use of the Internet community of that nation as a “country-code Top Level Domain,” or “ccTLD.” This reservation is made expressly for the Internet community of the nation and not the government of the nation. Geographic, political, and sociocultural allocations of “internationalized” top-level domains (such as “.рф” to the Russian Federation, or “.укр” to Ukraine) are made in parallel with the ISO-3166 mechanism. The primary users of any ccTLD are its civilian constituents, who may be distributed globally and may be united by linguistic or cultural identity rather than nationality or national identity. Removal of a ccTLD from the root zone of the domain name system (the sanction suggested by the letter) would make it very difficult for anyone, globally, within Russia or without, to contact users of the affected domains, a group that consists almost entirely of Russian- speaking civilians. At the same time, it would have relatively little effect upon Russian military networks, which are unlikely to rely upon DNS servers outside their own control. We therefore conclude that the revocation, whether temporary or permanent, of a ccTLD is not an effective sanction because it disproportionately harms civilians; specifically, it is ineffective against any government that has taken cyber-defense preparatory measures to alleviate dependence upon foreign nameservers for domain name resolution. In addition, any country against which this sanction was applied would likely immediately set up an “alternate root,” competing with the one administered by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, using any of a number of trivial means. If one country did so, others would likely follow suit, leading to an exodus from the consensus Internet that allows general interconnection. Revocation of certificates associated with domain names At least two kinds of cryptographic certificates and signatures are potential mechanisms for sanction, and we discuss each independently. First, revocation of SSL certificates, as mentioned in Mr. Nabok’s letter: SSL (“Secure Socket Layer”), which has been succeeded by TLS (“Transport Layer Security”), is a certification mechanism principally used to authenticate and encrypt connections from web browsers to web servers. Such certificates are used in online commerce and banking, among other less visible roles. Certificates are issued by Certificate Authorities (“CAs”), of which there are approximately 700 in existence, [4] a significant number of them are controlled, directly or indirectly, by national governments or intelligence agencies. Any one of these organizations may issue a certificate to anyone, certifying that they are the authentic administrator of any domain. [5] The revocation of certificates associated with governmental or military domains is not an effective sanction, because the targeted government is likely already using a Certificate Authority under its own control, and if it is not it can easily cause any CA under its influence to issue a replacement certificate. The revocation of certificates associated with private subdomains (for instance, redcross.ru, citibank.ru) would render communications between these organizations and their constituencies insecure and vulnerable to cybercrime until they were able to get new certificates issued; decreasing law and order and rendering a civilian population more vulnerable to crime is not an effective sanction. Alternatively, adding existing certificates for propaganda outlets to Certificate Revocation Lists or using Online Certificate Status Protocol (OSCP) to flag them as revoked would warn casual users such websites are problematic and require them to take explicit action to proceed beyond the warning. These techniques are, however, limited: they must generally be done by the same CA that issued the original certificate, which may not be outside the influence of the sanctioned government. We thus believe this to be an effective sanction in the cases where it is possible to invoke: it is specific, easily centrally implemented and rolled back, and has little chance of unintended broader consequences. Revocation of DNSSEC signatures on DNS delegations The cryptographic signatures used to authenticate domain names are known as DNSSEC, or DNS Security Extension signatures. Clients can evaluate the veracity of the mappings between domain names and IP addresses, which is what allows them to find and connect to resources on the Internet, by cryptographically validating the DNSSEC signature associated with a domain name. If a top-level domain were removed from the DNS root, the DNSSEC signature that validates the delegation of that domain would consequently be removed as well. DNS clients or resolvers still in possession of the old information could continue to reach the websites or email addresses identified by a domain, but they would be unable to validate that they had arrived at the right place. The DNSSEC signature validating the delegation of a top-level domain could also be removed while leaving the delegation itself in place. DNSSEC signatures prevent criminals from performing “man-in-the-middle” attacks, impersonating the website of a retail bank, for instance, to capture the user’s authentication information and empty their accounts. Military and high-security networks may use technical mechanisms to ensure that lack of a DNSSEC delegation above a signature under their control, in the DNS hierarchy, will not interfere with their resolution. Regular Internet users, however, either will be confronted with error messages indicating that their bank’s website is an impostor or will not be notified if an attacker stands between them and their bank. Removing the DNSSEC signature validating the delegation of a national top-level domain, whether in association with the removal of the delegation or not, may have little or no effect upon military and other high-security networks, but it would decrease law and order and make ordinary people much more susceptible to cybercrime. Tampering with DNSSEC signatures is thus not an effective sanction. Disablement of DNS root servers Root nameservers are simply those nameservers that hold a static copy of the DNS “root zone,” which is, by its very nature, public information. Essentially any nameserver may be made a root nameserver, simply by telling it to retrieve and cache copies of the DNS root zone. Disabling specific root nameservers has no effect, since they are, by design, not uniquely privileged or in possession of unique information. Disabling all root nameservers is not feasible since it would disable the Internet for everyone, and anyone could, and would, establish new ones. Disabling root nameservers thus has no utility as a sanction. Withdrawal of the right to use Internet Protocol addresses Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, the numeric identifiers by which Internet devices find each other, are allocated by the five Regional Internet Registries that together constitute the Number Resource Organization (NRO). Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE) is the Regional Internet Registry for Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Central Asia, with responsibility for allocating IP addresses to Russian entities. It is within RIPE’s power, if directed to do so by its member organizations through its multistakeholder governance process, to create policy that would effectively withdraw the allocations of IP addresses it has made to Russian organizations. This situation bears some similarities to the governance of domain names, yet it also contains crucial differences. ICANN’s authority extends no further into the DNS hierarchy than the root level, so actions taken by ICANN inherently affect entire top-level domains unitarily, without the possibility of “surgical” actions upon one subdomain and not another. By contrast, the Regional Internet Registries can affect policy on a per-organization (or even finer) basis. Yet rescinding an IP address allocation does not prevent its previous holder from continuing to use it. Indeed, “IP address hijacking” is a relatively commonplace problem on the Internet. Therefore, although it can be precisely targeted, simply rescinding the right to use an IP address allocation is not, by itself, an effective sanction. Note that this process of IP address revocation and RPKI attestation revocation would be a normal consequence of an address recipient (such as the Russian military) failing to pay annual registration fees to its Regional Internet Registry, something that may in fact come to pass as a consequence of financial and banking sanctions. But such a process might take years. Another negative consequence of revoking IP address allocations is that revoked addresses will likely be allocated to a different recipient subsequently, who will then find themselves competing with the original holder for their use. Manipulation of routing security attestations A potential sanction not explicitly requested in Mr. Nabok’s letter is the manipulation of routing security attestations to produce the effect of a partial or complete disconnection from the Internet of specific networks, such as those of the Russian military or propaganda agencies. As with domain names, technical mechanisms exist to cryptographically verify the legitimacy of use of IP addresses. Routing Policy Specification Language (RPSL) and Routing Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) are the two primary such mechanisms. To be used for communication on the Internet, IP addresses must be “announced” through the routing system, and the routers of the larger and better-secured networks utilize these two mechanisms to ensure that invalid routes are not used by their routers. Smaller and less-secured networks do not typically implement these mechanisms. A manipulation of RPSL and RPKI records in centralized registries would flow through to all networks employing these common routing security mechanisms, some of which would then automatically stop routing traffic to and from the specified networks, without affecting other “adjacent” civilian networks or being subject to trivial “work- arounds.” The manipulation of RPSL and RPKI routing security attestations could be an effective sanction measure, because it appears precise, easily and quickly implemented and reversed, and reasonably effective. However, the appropriation of preexisting routing security mechanisms for use in sanctions, likely unexpected by the participating networks, could conflict with the business or regulatory requirements of those networks, and, crucially, could risk the withdrawal of networks from the system entirely. Such an exodus would both make this potential sanction less effective in the future and have the far greater cost of eroding cybersecurity for the Internet as a whole, the purpose for which the routing security systems were built in the first place. This thus constitutes an unacceptable risk. Other Internet-associated, non-technical sanctions Other sanctions related to the Internet’s operation and governance may be worth considering. These include, for example, the disallowance of sanctioned personnel from participation in Internet governance, policymaking, or standardization proceedings. Such nontechnical measures are outside the scope of this document. Blocklisting Network operators and DNS resolver operators already make use of multistakeholder-governed lists, similar to the way financial lenders use credit scoring agencies, to determine what IP addresses to route and pass traffic between, and what domain names to resolve. This is the mechanism by which persistent spammers and address hijackers are excluded from the network, and by which Internet users are protected from malware and phishing attacks. The technical mechanisms by which such blocking information is passed are mature, robust, instantaneous, and globally standardized. Information related to IP addresses and Autonomous System Numbers is mostly carried over BGP feeds, while information related to domain names is mostly carried over RPZ feeds. Both mechanisms are implemented by essentially all large operators globally. Blocklisting IP addresses and Autonomous System Numbers has all of the advantages of address block revocation or manipulation of routing security attestations, without the drawbacks. It allows network operators to block both the acceptance of routes and the passage of traffic, each or both of which may be appropriate in different situations and in response to different threats. Blocklisting of domain names allows full precision and specificity, which is the problem that precludes action by ICANN. The system is opt-in, voluntary, consensual, and bottom-up, all values the Internet governance community holds dear. Yet, at the same time, it has achieved broad adoption. We conclude that the well-established methods of blocklisting provide the best mechanism for sanctioning both IP routes and traffic and domain names, and that this mechanism, if implemented normally by subscribing entities, has no significant costs or risks. Our conclusion is that blocklisting of IP addresses, Autonomous Systems, and domain names upon which the multistakeholder community can establish consensus is effective and carries no inherent danger of being over-broad. Once decided upon, it is easily invoked—and equally easily rolled back once the problem is resolved. Most important, it carries no significant costs or risks and is aligned with the Internet’s multistakeholder governance values and principles. References: [1] https://eump.org/media/2022/Goran-Marby.pdf [2] https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/marby-to-fedorov-02mar… [3] https://www.ripe.net/publications/news/announcements/ripe-ncc-executive-boa… [4] https://www.eff.org/files/defconssliverse.pdf [5] https://www.techrepublic.com/article/compromised-certificate-authorities-ho… Best, Niels -- Niels ten Oever, PhD Postdoctoral Researcher - Media Studies Department - University of Amsterdam Affiliated Faculty - Digital Democracy Insitute - Simon Fraser University Research Fellow - Centre for Internet and Human Rights - European University Viadrina Associated Scholar - Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade - Fundação Getúlio Vargas W: https://nielstenoever.net E: mail(a)nielstenoever.net T: @nielstenoever P/S/WA: +31629051853 PGP: 2458 0B70 5C4A FD8A 9488 643A 0ED8 3F3A 468A C8B3 Read my latest article on Internet infrastructure governance in Globalizations here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2021.1953221

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Appeal of the European Network Engineers
by Daniel Karrenberg 10 Mar '22

10 Mar '22

Keep the Internet Open ====================== Appeal of the European Network Engineers ---------------------------------------- We have worked hard to keep the Internet available in Europe and surrounding areas during the Covid pandemic. The Internet infrastructure is essential for the safety, security and well-being of all people living here. Due to the growing international tensions in this part of the world we hear calls to deliberately harm interconnections and the functioning of the network. We realise that the Internet is being used for purposes that many of us deplore. However this cannot be a reason to harm the infrastructure itself and prevent the good and often essential things that depend on it. We urge everyone to consider this carefully and not only refrain from harming the operation and interconnection but to actively work to keep the Internet running and maintain interconnections with all parts of our region. In particular we call on all governments and everyone involved with the governance of the Internet to do everything they can to enable us to keep the Internet infrastructure operational throughout the RIPE region. We will do our part as well as we can. <Signatures> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The purpose of this appeal is to influence everyone considering actions that would make it harder for us to keep the Internet running. In particular it is intended to provide guidance and support to Internet governance bodies like the RIPE NCC. It will only work if many individuals sign up to it publicly. Individuals considered close to the current conflicts will have special weight here! You can sign this appeal by mailing a signature line of the form Name, Place, Countrycode to <sign(a)keepitopen.net>. Please add a very short statement why you consider yourself a network engineer. Choose the place that best describes who you are; you do not have to be there right now. We will only publish the signature line and nothing else. We will delete your e-mail messages as soon as they are processed. Signatures will start to be published when we have collected at least 256 originating from throughout the region. We will start publicising this appeal once we have at least 1024 signatures. [Please spread the word.](https://keepitopen.net) Thank you for your support! Daniel Karrenberg, Roermond, NL

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New on RIPE Labs: The RIPE Chair Team Reports - February 2022
by Alun Davies 07 Mar '22

07 Mar '22

Dear colleagues, The RIPE Chair Team shares updates on events and developments that have been taking place across the RIPE community this February. Read more on RIPE Labs: https://labs.ripe.net/author/mirjam_kuhne/the-ripe-chair-team-reports-febru… Kind regards, Alun Davies RIPE Labs Editor RIPE NCC

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RIPE Community session on proposed revised PDP - Minutes and draft version 2
by Mirjam Kuehne 06 Mar '22

06 Mar '22

Dear colleagues, On 26 January we held an online meeting to gather feedback about the revised Policy Development Process (PDP). The recordings, minutes and slides can be found here: https://www.ripe.net/participate/ripe/ripe-community-plenary/minutes/revise… Below you can find a short summary of the main points discussed at the meeting. Based on this feedback we adjusted the draft document and created a new red-lined version: https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-documents/other-documents/polic… Please review the changes carefully and provide any additional feedback before 16 March 2022. Kind regards, Mirjam Kühne ============ Meeting Summary: The overall sentiment was to rely on community consensus and common sense as much as possible and to keep formalism at a minimum. 1. Author and Ownership of the Document There was general agreement to make a distinction between the author and owner of the PDP: the community should be listed as owner of the PDP and the RIPE Chair as the author of the document. [1] 2. Scope of the Document There was agreement to shorten the introduction of the document to clarify that the PDP only refers to policy. There was also agreement to keep the section about values and principles. 3. Changes to PDP Most people agreed that the scope of the Policy Development Process should be limited to creating policy. It should not be used to change the PDP itself or other RIPE governance documents. It was suggested however to carefully manage the change process including clear deadlines and announcements to ensure proper community consensus building. 4. Re-introducing Informal Discussion Step There was strong agreement to re-introduce this step and that gathering support prior to a formal proposal is crucial. 5. Appeals Procedure – Process, Deadlines, Recusals There was general agreement to have a well defined appeals procedure with clear deadlines and a certain level of formalism. Some people suggested to create a separate appeals body. Others felt that it will be difficult to find people and that the WG chairs tend to have experience with the PDP. 6. Editorial Changes There was no disagreement about the suggested editorial changes. --- [1] There was a question if the RIPE Vice Chair should also be listed. However, ripe-714 provides the option for the RIPE Chair to delegate to others, e.g. a Vice Chair.

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Offer of help for Ukrainian providers. Please help us share this message widely.
by Simon Besteman 03 Mar '22

03 Mar '22

To whom it may concern, please help us share this message widely among the Ukrainian internet community. The Dutch Cloud Community offers technical assistance to the Ukrainian hosting and cloud industry to help them continue their operations during the attack on their nation. The hosters and cloud providers from the Netherlands acknowledge the extreme hardship of our Ukrainian colleagues. As a community, we passionately believe in a free and open internet, and we want to offer our help to keep the Ukrainian internet safely up and running during these dark hours. Effective immediately, Ukrainian hosting and cloud companies, local and national governments and IT companies are invited to submit requests for assistance through the email address: ukraine(a)dutchcloudcommunity.nl Our members collectively are offering a variety of services at no cost for the requester: backups, virtual servers, hosting of websites, mail services, DDOS protection, IPv4 space, Discord services, datacenter services and a range of other services. Just contact us and we’ll coordinate the requests among the Dutch companies that have offered to help. Important to know: we will offer our services to the best of our ability, but we can and will not assist you in setting up offensive activities. For instance, do not ask us to coordinate DDOS attacks or hacking of sites. We will not allow any spam / scanning activities or hosting of malware or other criminal activities and will act upon this if noticed. We want to help you keep your businesses operating, and we want to help information flow freely. Incoming requests will be evaluated on technical and safety requirements, and then spread among the participating companies in our community. We invite you to contact us and submit your requests for assistance, we are ready to start working to help you with your operation. A reminder of the email address we have created: ukraine(a)dutchcloudcommunity.nl. Do not hesitate to submit requests, however large or small. On behalf of the Dutch Cloud and Hosting community, wishing you all the best at this difficult time in your country’s history Simon Besteman Director Dutch Cloud Community

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RIPE NCC Executive Board Resolution on Provision of Critical Services
by Christian Kaufmann 03 Mar '22

03 Mar '22

Dear members, At its meeting yesterday, the RIPE NCC Executive Board approved the following resolution: The RIPE NCC provides critical services to its membership spread across a diverse geographical and political region. The Executive Board of the RIPE NCC believes that the means to communicate should not be affected by domestic political disputes, international conflicts or war. This includes the provision of correctly registered Internet numbering resources. The Executive Board of the RIPE NCC is committed to taking all lawful steps available to ensure that the RIPE NCC can provide undisrupted services to all members across our service region and the global Internet community. The RIPE NCC will publicly document all its efforts to ensure that the registry is not negatively affected by laws, regulations or political developments. —- It is crucial that the RIPE NCC remains neutral and does not take positions with regard to domestic political disputes, international conflicts or war. This guarantees equal treatment for all those responsible for providing Internet services. This is a fundamental reason why the RIPE NCC has been able to maintain its operations in the way it has for the past three decades. It also means that the information and data provided by the RIPE NCC can be trusted as authoritative and free from bias or political influence. Failure to adhere to this approach would jeopardise the very model that has been key to the development of the Internet in our service region. The Executive Board also expresses solidarity with those operators who have the difficult task of maintaining Internet access to assist the people suffering from the terrible effects of armed conflicts and war. Kind regards, Christian Kaufmann Chairman of the RIPE NCC Executive Board

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Register now for RIPE 84!
by RIPE NCC Event Team 02 Mar '22

02 Mar '22

Dear colleagues, We are happy to let you know that registration for RIPE 84 is now open! This RIPE Meeting will take place in a hybrid format in which online and onsite participants can interact with each other using a common platform. Berlin is set to be another exciting host city https://ripe84.ripe.net/register/ RIPE 84 will take place at the InterContinental Berlin from 16 – 20 May 2022: https://ripe84.ripe.net/venue/meeting-venue/ ------------- Ticket Options ------------- Week ticket: EUR 350 Day ticket: EUR 125 Student (week) ticket: EUR 50 Online Attendance: Free! Are you a new LIR? If so, did you know that you have two free tickets to a RIPE Meeting? If you haven’t used them yet, make sure you do for RIPE 84. Find more information at: https://www.ripe.net/participate/member-support/become-a-member/free-ticket… ------------- Accommodation ------------- The InterContinental Berlin is offering RIPE 84 attendees discounted room rates. You can book your accommodation at: https://ripe84.ripe.net/venue/accommodation/ Please note that there are also several other hotels nearby. ------------- Call for Presentations ------------- The RIPE Programme Committee (PC) is seeking presentation proposals from the RIPE community for the plenary sessions, BoFs (Birds of a Feather sessions), workshops, tutorials, and lightning talks at RIPE 84. Find out how to submit a proposal at: https://ripe84.ripe.net/cfp/ Proposals must be submitted using the meeting submission system and no later than 20 March. Proposals submitted after this date will be considered on a space-available basis. ------------- Call for Sponsors ------------- Supporting a RIPE Meeting through sponsorship gives your organisation fantastic exposure in the global Internet community. We offer a range of options aimed to suit organisations of all sizes: https://ripe84.ripe.net/sponsors/become-a-sponsor/ ------------------- RIPE Labs Competition ------------------- RIPE Labs is offering you a free ticket, travel and accommodation to RIPE 84! Submit your article sharing your work and insights about the past, present and future state of the internet for a chance to join us at RIPE 84 in Berlin. You can find out more about the competition and how to enter here: https://labs.ripe.net/author/alun_davies/the-ripe-labs-article-competition/ ---- More information on RIPE 84 can be found at: https://ripe84.ripe.net/ We look forward to seeing you in Berlin or online! For updates about the meeting, follow us on Twitter: @ripemeeting, #RIPE84 Kind regards, RIPE Meetings Organisation Team

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New on RIPE Labs: IPv4 Allocations - Is Fairness Still the Goal
by Alun Davies 02 Mar '22

02 Mar '22

Dear colleagues, An interesting discussion took place last December on whether current policies and procedures for the allocation and transfer of IPv4 resources in the RIPE NCC service region are in line with the original policy intent. To help lend clarity on the issue, Angela Dell’Ara (RIPE NCC Policy Officer) gives an overview of the relevant changes that have come into effect since the RIPE NCC started distributing the last /8 we received from IANA: https://labs.ripe.net/author/angela_dallara/ipv4-allocations-is-fairness-st… Kind regards, Alun Davies RIPE Labs Editor RIPE NCC

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