RIPE NCC Webinars for the Ukrainian Internet Community

The involvement of the Ukrainian Internet community in the work of both RIPE and the RIPE NCC has grown dramatically over the past few years. There has been an increasing demand to better understand the principles on which RIPE is organised, to get to know the existing technical services and mechanisms, and to learn more about how to defend their interests.

Security awareness

Spreading awareness about Internet security threats and how to defend against them among Ukrainian network operators has been an important activity for the RIPE NCC since the war began. In 2022, for instance, when operators in Ukraine indicated that they were falling victim to a growing number of BGP attacks, the RIPE NCC provided them with online training courses in BGP security.

Earlier this year, the RIPE NCC carried out a full investigation of a public data breach that compromised the security of a number of RIPE NCC Access accounts. With the potential risks that such breaches can pose in mind, and after discussion with representatives of industry associations and the Internet community in general, the decision was made to organise a training course for the Ukrainian community in the form of webinars covering the issues of Local Internet Registry procedures and the proper management of objects in the RIPE Database.

The training course was announced on 6 June, 2024 during the NOGUA event that was held in Lviv and gathered representatives of the telecom industry from all over the country. The course format chosen was the same as the one dedicated to RPKI implementation that we held two years ago.

Language access

For quite a number of specialists in Ukraine, following a webinar in English is not an option. The community itself is making great efforts to improve overall proficiency in English, and with the state paying special attention to the issue, the situation is improving every year. Nevertheless, to make the course accessible to the local community, the material of the webinars was presented in Ukrainian, while standard English slides were shown on the screen.

The training course

On the first day, 35 people attended, and on the second day, 30. The audience was really active both during and after the event, which provided a perfects opportunity to initiate important discussions about the Ukrainian Internet community and the RIPE community as a whole.

Day 1

The first part of the training course, which took place on 12 June, 2024, focused primarily on conceptual aspects. It began by establishing basic concepts and then proceeded to cover topics such as the RIRs and LIRs ecosystem, the responsibilities of Internet Registries, the Policy Development Process, and related issues.

Here is a recording of this part:

During the webinar, participants actively used the Zoom platform chat, with 21 active participants (60% of the total). These are the slides used by the presenter and an anonymised transcript of the conversations that took place:

Day 2

The second part of the training course focused on the structure of the RIPE Database, the nature of the objects there, the methods of manipulating those objects, and the principles of protecting them from unauthorised access.

On the second day, activity in the Zoom chat was lower than on the first, but it still remained fairly high, with 13 participants (43% of the total).

Here is a recording:

And once again, here are the slides and chat:

Future training

During this training course, several times the participants formulated a request for a similar course on IPv6. The RIPE NCC will consider the possibility of organising continuation of the webinar series for the Ukrainian networking community with training courses on IPv6 basics and security.