The RIPE Chair Team Reports - July 2023

Call for Proposals for RIPE 87

We are already preparing for the next RIPE meeting: RIPE 87 will take place in Rome, Italy in November 2023. The programme committee selected a new chair after Franziska Lichtblau's term on the PC ended at RIPE 86 - Massimiliano (Max) Stucchi will serve as PC chair for the next term.

Last week the PC issued the call for proposals for RIPE 87. This is earlier than usual and will give you enough time to think about any topics you would like to present or discuss at the next RIPE meeting. We're looking forward to your proposals You can find more information on the RIPE 87 website.

Community communication channels

The topic related to community communication channels that was raised by Leo Vegoda during the Community Plenary at RIPE 86 was continued on the RIPE Mailing list (see a summary here). In the meantime, we thought about this some more and work with the RIPE NCC to document pros and cons of mailing lists, fora, and other communication methods. We are also looking at other communities to see what we can learn from them.

RIPE Governance

One important task of the RIPE Chair Team is to make sure the community has everything it needs to operate and to make decisions. We continue to work on documenting the necessary processes.

NRO NC election process

Before RIPE 86, we published a draft document that describes how to elect candidates for the Number Resource Organization's Number Council (NRO NC). The deadline for comments has now passed. We received a number of comments and suggestions related to the structure of the document but also to the voter eligibility and will incorporate them in the next version of the document.

Principles for RIPE NCC staff participation in the RIPE community

The draft document that lists principles for participation of RIPE NCC staff in the RIPE community has received a lot of support. The Last Call ended on 10 July. We received some comments and are considering these.

This is the only remaining outstanding recommendations by the RIPE Nominating Committee made in their final report in 2020. The process for selecting the next RIPE Chair Team will start in 2024.

RIPE Policy Discussions

There are currently three open policy proposals:

• 2023-01 (Reducing Assignments for IXPs to a /26). The proposal moved to Review Phase. You can follow the discussion on the RIPE Address Policy Working Group mailing list.
• 2023-02 (Minimum size for temporary assignments): The proposal is now in Last Call.
• 2023-03 (Voluntary Transfer lock): The proposal is now in Review Phase. You can find a summary of the discussion here.

You can find an overview of all current policy proposals on the website.

DNS BCP Task Force

At RIPE 86, Shane Kerr, the chair of the DNS Resolver Best Current Practice Task Force, presented the current status of the Task Force to the community. Since then, the Task Force members had regular phone calls and progress was made in various sections of the draft document which will be shared with the community after the summer.

Industry events

EuroDIG 2023: In June, I attended The Dialogue on Internet Governance, EuroDIG, in Tampere, Finland.

It was good to see some RIPE community members participate actively in the event and also in other Internet Governance discussions. I believe we need to follow these discussions very closely and it would be good to see even more involvement by the technical Internet community.

It was curious to hear that the UN now defines three stakeholders in the Internet Governance discussion: governments, the business sector, and civil society which would then also include the technical and the academic communities. This is very different from what was agreed earlier in the discussions leading up to the Internet Governance Forum where the Technical Community was recognised as a separate stakeholder.

You can read more details about the event in this RIPE Labs liveblog.

Internet Fragmentation: On 27 June, I attended a webinar on Internet fragmentation. This was the third in a series - this time the focus being on the technical layer. Olaf Kolkman, Principal at the Internet Society, and Mirja Kühlewind, Chair of the Internet Architecture Board, were the main speakers, but there was a fair amount of discussion and participation by the audience. People identified some developments that clearly lead to fragmentation: sanctions for instance and proposals such as the recent "sender pays" proposal and other regulations that might harm the underlying technical infrastructure. Can we come to an agreement on things we certainly do not want to see fragmented? And related to that, is there a common understanding of what is meant by the "public core" a concept that was created some time ago when talking about the underlying technical infrastructure and Internet resources. In closing, Mirja said that we should be careful with these kind of fixed definitions that might lock us in, because the Internet infrastructure is constantly evolving.

RIPE NCC Executive Board Meeting: As usual, I participated in the RIPE NCC Board meeting that took place on 24 June. I gave an update of recent developments in the RIPE community and informed the Board about their role in the next RIPE Chair Team selection process.

JCSA 2023: On 5 July, Niall attended the annual Open Day (JCSA) of AFNIC's
Scientific Council (JCSA) remotely. The tutorial and presentations covered various aspects of defending against e-mail abuse: use of DNS for mitigation by advertising SPF, DKIM, and DMARC information; the French national platform for reporting SPAM, Signal SPAM; measures used by e-mail service providers to combat abuse, protecting their, and their customer's, reputation. During a round-table discussion on the topic of "Virtual Worlds", the participants spoke about applications of virtual and augmented reality, and the metaverse, for surgery and for the fashion industry, and also about the juridical and ethical challenges which virtual worlds pose for society.

Political Intelligence: In early July, I attended a meeting with the Public Affairs agency that is advising the RIPE NCC on issues related to public policy developments in the EU. I stressed the unique relationship between the RIPE community and the RIPE NCC and offered to tap into the wealth of expertise and experience that lives in the RIPE community.

At the end of July I will be at the IETF 117 Meeting. You can find some more details - especially if you are new to the IETF - in the latest IETF blog post. Maybe I'll see some of you there. But you can also participate remotely.

I wish you all a wonderful summer and you will hear back from me in September.