The RIPE Chair Team Reports - October 2025

Countdown to RIPE 91

It's less than two weeks until the RIPE 91 Meeting in Bucharest. You can find a lot useful details online, including information for newcomers, a guide to Bucharest, and the meeting plan.

Speaking of the meeting plan, please note some changes compared to schedules from previous RIPE Meetings: e.g., the Address Policy WG will now meet on Thursday instead of Wednesday. Other than that, while some agendas are still being finalised, I can already see see that we have an exciting week of sessions and talks ahead of us.

As for those of you who'll soon be uploading your presentations, you might notice we're now using a new submission system that not only applies to the plenary (like the old system), but to all RIPE Meeting sessions. This will ultimately make things easier for everyone - including the speakers and participants - but we all still have to get used to it.

You'll also see that we have three interesting BoF sessions lined up on the following topics:

• Updating ICP-2: Discussing the second draft RIR Governance Document
  If this topic is new to you, or you want to get up to speed on ICP-2, tune in to the latest episode from the RIPE Labs podcast to get Andrei Robachevsky's take on the review process.
• Deployment Collaboration around encrypted DNS transport protocols (ADoT/ADoQ)
• Shaping the RIPE NCC’s Strategic Direction

We will also have an interesting DEI session on Tuesday afternoon with a number of presentations by community members as well as a community plenary with a focus on collaboration.

At RIPE 91, we'll have a number of fellows again who will be supported through the RIPE Academic Cooperation Initiative (RACI). This time we will have a poster session which will allow the RACI fellows to show their projects in the hall during the coffee breaks in addition to possibly presenting during one of the sessions.

I would also like to remind you that we continue to provide childcare at RIPE Meetings. You can still register for it.

Sadly, we will have to miss Fearghas McKay, one of our long term community members who recently passed away. Once again, we extend our condolences to Fearghas’s family and friends on behalf of the RIPE community.

Next RIPE Chair Team

Over the last couple of weeks, we have begun the onboarding process with our future vice-chair Anna Wilson. The official transition to the next RIPE Chair Team will take place during the community plenary at the RIPE 91 meeting in Bucharest. In the meantime, Anna has started participating in calls and has been added to the relevant mailing lists.

With the publication of the RIPE NomCom 2025 Final Report, the RIPE Nominating Committee finished its work. Please note a number of recommendations for the RIPE community listed in this report.

Fellowship programme

Over the past few months, we have been revamping the RIPE Fellowship Programme. The programme was launched this week and I'm really looking forward to this new programme and welcoming new participants to the RIPE community. I am very grateful to both the RIPE NCC for providing the funding and all those community members who agreed to coach our new fellows!

Policy update

The policy proposal discussed in the Routing WG - Revocation of Persistently Non-functional Delegated RPKI CAs (2025-02) - is in its concluding phase.

There are a number of ongoing policy proposals under discussion in the Address Policy working group:

• IPv6 Initial Allocations /28 and extension to /28 (2024-02)
• ASN assignment criteria revisited (2025-01)
• Revised IPv6 PI Assignment Policy (2024-01)

You can find all current proposals on the RIPE policy website. Please also note the updated process describing numbered work items (NWIs) that is used primarily in the Database WG.

Industry events

RIPE NCC EB: As usual I participated in the RIPE NCC Executive Board Meeting in September to report back from activities in the RIPE community. The minutes have been published.

Global Gathering: Around the same time, Niall participated in an event called Global Gathering that took place in Portugal. While Niall wasn't primarily attending as RIPE Vice-Chair, he used the opportunity to promote RIPE (and RIPE Atlas in particular) to this community of digital rights activists.

RIPE NCC staff training: We also organised another session for new RIPE NCC staff members where we introduced the RIPE community and the relationship to the RIPE NCC. It was great to have Anna Wilson, the future RIPE Vice-Chair join this session!

CAPIF 4: The fourth iteration of the Central Asia Peering and Interconnection Forum (CAPIF 4) took place in Almaty, Kazakhstan. It was a real pleasure to meet this active community. During the community session I talked about the RIPE community and how it is relates to the RIPE NCC. I also stressed that the CAPIF community is naturally part of the RIPE community and encouraged closer participation.

NLNOG Day 2025: I also attended this year's NLNOG Day in Amsterdam. I really enjoyed the programme and it was a great opportunity to catch up with many RIPE community members.

Europol Conference: Brian Nisbet, co-chair of the RIPE Security working group, participated in the Europol Conference in the Hague where he took part in a RIPE NCC organised roundtable discussion with members of the law enforcement community. The discussion came after some RIPE NCC training that focused on the public tools the RIPE NCC provides that can be used to find out more about IP Addresses and ASNs. During the roundtable, Brian was eager to reinforce the point that law enforcement is as much a part of the RIPE community as any other group and that active engagement is the best way to improve things for all.

Upcoming industry events

ICANN 84: The week after the RIPE 91 Meeting, the ICANN 84 meeting will take place in Dublin. Both Niall and Anna are planning to be there, primarily to support the NRO NC.

IETF 124: Early November, I will attend the IETF 124 Meeting in Montreal, Canada. I am pleased to see that our increased outreach is bearing fruit. Not only do we see an increased number of active IETF participants at RIPE Meetings, there will also be another IETF update session at RIPE 91.

I am looking forward to seeing many of you in Bucharest!