As part of the European Digital Strategy, the European Commission announced in June a Digital Services Act package to strengthen the Single Market for digital services and foster innovation and competitiveness of the European online environment. The revised package will “impact network operators, cloud and hosting providers, top-level domain registries and registrars”, among others.
The RIPE NCC and the Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries (CENTR) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) alongside the 2017 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Geneva.
The agreement formalises the existing relationship between the RIPE NCC and CENTR, which is the European association of country-code top level domain (ccTLD) registries. In the agreement, both parties pledged to collaborate on Internet coordination activities in the European region.
More specifically, CENTR agreed to invite RIPE NCC staff to its General Assemblies and to participate within its Technical Working Group, while the RIPE NCC agreed to invite CENTR staff to its Roundtable Meetings. Both parties agreed to update and involve one another on activities of mutual interest, and also agreed to promote the use of IPv6 among their respective memberships.
The RIPE NCC and CENTR will also continue to jointly organise trainings and promote capacity building in Europe, with a specific focus on providing training to European policy-makers and other stakeholders.
âThe IGF is a great occasion to solidify our relationship with CENTR,â said Axel Pawlik, Managing Director of the RIPE NCC. âOur two organisations have a long history of working together on issues concerning the European Internet. In fact, CENTR first began as a project within the RIPE community. This MoU is really about formalising our existing relationship and providing a transparent framework for future cooperation.â
Peter Van Roste, General Manager of CENTR, said: âIn todayâs environment, collaboration between the numbers and naming communities is essential. Our organisations play a crucial role in the technical layer of the internet ecosystem and by syncronising our efforts, we strengthen our contribution to the European internet community.”
The RIPE NCC and CENTR have a shared history that goes back more than 20 years. The signing of this MoU is a great opportunity to look back; some of these early beginnings is outlined in an article published on RIPE Labs.
This CENTR news release was sourced from:
https://centr.org/news/news/ripe-ncc-and-centr-sign-mou-at-igf-2017.html
The application for the .gay gTLD by community group Dot Gay LLC has once again been rejected because… they arenât gay enough. But it appears that commercial groups wanting to operate the gTLD will be OK. The bid by Dot Gay was rejected because âits application did not cover a sufficient number of gay peopleâ, an appeal was won and itâs been rejected again a year later.
The result was the same and the reason, Kieren McCarthy writes, was âthe evaluation team decided the application did not sufficiently cover a community. But this time the reason was the complete opposite â that it was trying to cover too many gay people.â
Itâs a bizarre and tortuous journey for Dot Gay and points to the application system being loaded against community groups and in favour of those with the money and resourced.
The Australian government has got involved in the new gTLD application for .food, being âamong those asking ICANN deny a request to make .food a âclosed genericâ gTLD,â according to Domain Incite.
âEight people have filed comments opposing Lifestyle Domainâs application for Specification 13 status for its .food registry contract, which would allow the company to keep all .food domains for itself,â the report says.
The ICANN meeting has come and gone, and there have been a few roundups of what happened in recent days.
Don Hollander wrote an article on Universal Acceptance discussions at the 54th meeting held in Dublin for Centr. Universal Acceptance, Hollander writes, is âthe idea that all domain names will work equally well in all applicationsâ and he notes it âmade material progress during the ICANN54 meeting in Dublin.â
FairWinds Partners, a consultancy and lobby group, published their ICANN 54 Review while APNICâs Paul Wilson wrote his Reflections on ICANN 54.
RIPE published their review of the meeting, ICANN 54: Addressing the Accountability Question, and Milton Mueller wrote âTransition is a noun, not a verb: Thoughts on the Dublin ICANN meetingâ where he noted âthe Dublin meeting was not a train wreck. That much we can say. My assessment of ICANN 54 is not, to put it mildly, as chirpy as that of the Internet Society CEO, but it is more objective and nuanced. Insofar as progress on the transition is concerned, the deliberations among the CCWG, the GAC and the ICANN board averted a rupture that would have jeopardized the transition. But it did so primarily by caving in to the board-promulgated fears of creating a membership, and by side-stepping contentious issues. There are still a lot of loose ends.â
The IE Domain Registry (IEDR) has published some research noting that âover a third (37%) of Irish SMEs still do not have a website or any online presence whatsoever.â The research also found â91% of Irish SMEs cannot process sales online and 54% do not have websites optimised for mobile browsing, were outlined this morning at the launch of Irelandâs first ever âInternet Dayâ at the CHQ Building.â
The RIPE NCC is pleased to announce the launch of the RIPE NCC Academy, a virtual learning environment that allows you to take courses and obtain certificates online.
The first course available is the RIPE Database Expert Course.
You can sign in to the RIPE NCC Academy with your RIPE NCC Access account (if you donât already have one, you can easily create one when accessing the site). The RIPE NCC Academy is available to everyone, free of charge.
Participants will have 90 days to complete a course from the moment they start it, and will earn a certificate if they achieve a score of 70% or better, which will remain valid for three years. Those who are confident about the material can skip ahead to the evaluations in order to earn a certificate without first completing the course work.
In the coming months, weâll make more courses available via the RIPE NCC Academy, so stay tuned. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at academy@ripe.net.
This RIPE news release was sourced from:
www.ripe.net/internet-coordination/news/about-ripe-ncc-and-ripe/launching-the-ripe-ncc-academy
The RIPE NCC and CENTR, the European country code top-level domain (TLD) organisation, held a meeting on Wednesday, 1 October 2014, in Brussels, Belgium, for governments and regulators to discuss issues of relevance to both the RIPE and CENTR communities.
The meeting was part of the CENTR General Assembly and was held adjacent to a meeting of the European Commission High Level Group on Internet Governance, attracting approximately 100 representatives from governments, industry and the Internet technical community.
Dominating the agenda was a discussion of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) oversight transition process that is currently ongoing. Paul Rendek, RIPE NCC Director of External Relations, participated in a panel with Nominetâs Martin Boyle and Afnicâs Mathieu Weill, chaired by Peter Vergote, Chairman of the CENTR Board of Directors. This panel addressed the discussion process currently underway in the RIPE and TLD communities regarding both the IANA stewardship and ICANN accountability.
The RIPE NCC presentation described the relationship between the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) and IANA, the model of regional Internet number policy development, efforts to document the RIRsâ accountability to their stakeholders, the discussion of IANA stewardship in the RIPE community, and some of the key principles that have emerged from that discussion. These principles include a preference for minimal operational change and to build on existing structures and processes to formalise the RIR communitiesâ role as stewards of global Internet number registration.
The panel was followed by vibrant discussion, with many governments and other attendees contributing. Many expressed concern about the timeline leading up to the expiration of the current contract in September 2015, and the challenge of reaching an agreement on a proposal for future IANA oversight upon which all affected communities can agree.
RIPE NCC Chief Scientist Daniel Karrenberg was among those who stressed the importance of early and effective communication between all parties to assure the best chance of a widely accepted outcome to the process. Several governments also suggested the possibility of a neutral third-party assuming the oversight role currently held by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Others noted that such an arrangement would be contrary to preferences already expressed in the RIR and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) communities.
The meeting also included discussion of upcoming Internet governance events, particularly the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Plenipotentiary 2014 (PP14). Chris Buckridge presented on the RIPE NCC’s priorities going into this event, and the focus on providing expert technical advice to ITU Member States, particularly when discussions touch on issues such as IP address registration, allocation and policy-making.
Presentation slides delivered by the RIPE NCC are available online.
The next RIPE NCC Roundtable Meeting for Governments and Regulators will be held in early 2015, with details to be announced closer to the event itself.
This RIPE announcement was sourced from:
www.ripe.net/internet-coordination/news/about-ripe-ncc-and-ripe/ripe-ncc-and-centr-hold-joint-meeting-with-governments
[news release] The Number Resource Organization (NRO) is celebrating its first decade as the coordinating body for the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). Formalized through a Memorandum of Understanding on 24 October 2003, the NRO was created by the four existing RIRs at the time: APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC, and the RIPE NCC, and later AFRINIC in 2005. The NRO was established to protect the unallocated Internet number resource pool, promote and protect the bottom-up policy development process for regional and global address management, and act as a focal point for Internet community input into the RIR system.
During the last ten years the NRO collaborated with a wide range of stakeholders to ensure the future growth and continued stability of the Internet, in particular, emphasizing the global transition to IPv6. The NRO is committed to continuing this cooperation and engages with intergovernmental associations and civil society groups in the interest of Internet development. As a key supporter of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and the multistakeholder model of Internet governance, the NRO recently participated in the IGF 2013 in Bali, organizing two workshops and contributing to a number of forums.
As the Internet has grown and evolved, so has the NRO. Following a September strategic retreat in Montevideo, Uruguay, the NRO Executive Council (EC) announced the following Vision and Mission to guide the NROâs activities:
The Vision is:
âTo be the flagship and global leader for collaborative Internet number resource management as a central element of an open, stable, and secure Internet.â
The Mission is:
âTo actively contribute to an open, stable, and secure Internet, through:
âThe Vision and Mission represents the NROâs continued commitment to work towards improving multistakeholder Internet cooperation,â said Paul Wilson, NRO EC Chair. âAs the Internet continues to evolve and become a critical tool for communication and commerce at a national and global level, itâs vital that the Internet coordination community work with governments and other stakeholders as equal stewards for an Internet in the public trust.â
This NRO news release was sourced from:
www.nro.net/news/celebrating-ten-years-of-the-nro
The leaders of organizations responsible for coordination of the Internet technical infrastructure globally have met in Montevideo, Uruguay, to consider current issues affecting the future of the Internet.
The Internet and World Wide Web have brought major benefits in social and economic development worldwide. Both have been built and governed in the public interest through unique mechanisms for global multistakeholder Internet cooperation, which have been intrinsic to their success. The leaders discussed the clear need to continually strengthen and evolve these mechanisms, in truly substantial ways, to be able to address emerging issues faced by stakeholders in the Internet.
In this sense:
Adiel A. Akplogan, CEO
African Network Information Center (AFRINIC)
John Curran, CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)
Paul Wilson, Director General
Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC)
Russ Housley, Chair
Internet Architecture Board (IAB)
Fadi Chehadé, President and CEO
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
Jari Arkko, Chair
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Lynn St. Amour, President and CEO
Internet Society (ISOC)
Raúl EcheberrÃa, CEO
Latin America and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC)
Axel Pawlik, Managing Director
Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC)
Jeff Jaffe, CEO
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
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This announcement was sourced from the ICANN web site at:
www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-07oct13-en.htm
On Friday 14 September, 2012, the RIPE NCC, the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia, distributed the last blocks of IPv4 address space from the available pool.This means that we are now distributing IPv4 address space to Local Internet Registries (LIRs) from the last /8 according tosection 5.6 of “IPv4 Address Allocation and Assignment Policies for the RIPE NCC Service Region”.This section states that an LIR may receive one /22 allocation (1,024 IPv4 addresses), even if they can justify a larger allocation. This /22 allocation will only be made to LIRs if they have already received an IPv6 allocation from an upstream LIR or the RIPE NCC. No new IPv4 Provider Independent (PI) space will be assigned.It is now imperative that all stakeholders deploy IPv6 on their networks to ensure the continuity of their online operations and the future growth of the Internet.More information on IPv6 and its deployment, advice from experts and
where to get trainingMore information on reaching the last /8This RIPE NCC announcement was sourced from:
www.ripe.net/internet-coordination/news/ripe-ncc-begins-to-allocate-ipv4-address-space-from-the-last-8
RIPE NCC has announced they have now entered phase one of approaching to reach the last /8.
RIPE explains that this means that:
The Available IPv4 Pool Graph will be updated daily as of Wednesday, 5 September. This graph is online at:
www.ripe.net/internet-coordination/ipv4-exhaustion/ipv4-available-pool-graph
More information about reaching the last /8 can be found at:
www.ripe.net/internet-coordination/ipv4-exhaustion/last-8-phases
[news release] As reported in previous announcements, the RIPE NCC will go to court in the Netherlands on 29 November 2012 to seek clarification on the procedure taken by the Dutch police on 8 November 2011 when it presented the RIPE NCC with a police order to “lock” registrations in the RIPE Database.
For background on this story, see: Summons of the RIPE NCC Against the State of the Netherlands.
After receiving independent legal advice that the police order had no sufficient legal grounds to force the RIPE NCC to execute the order, the RIPE NCC unlocked the blocks of IPv4 address space on 10 January 2012. We’d like to give you an update on the current situation.
Two of the four address blocks included in the police order (93.188.160.0/21 and 85.255.112/20) were reallocated after the contractual relationship with the member holding the address space was terminated. The member’s account was closed and the space was deregistered according to ripe-541, “Closure of LIR and Deregistration of Internet Number Resources”. The address space was quarantined for six weeks before being returned to the RIPE NCC’s available pool of IPv4 address space. It was then randomly reallocated to a new resource holder according to normal allocation procedures.
As the RIPE NCC nears IPv4 exhaustion, it will reduce the quarantine period of returned address space accordingly to ensure that there is no more IPv4 address space available before the last /8 is reached. The RIPE NCC recognises that this shortened quarantine could lead to routability problems and offers its members assistance to reduce this.
More information about the RIPE NCC’s Resource Quality Assistance.
This RIPE announcement was sourced from:
www.ripe.net/internet-coordination/news/clarification-on-reallocated-ipv4-address-space-related-to-dutch-police-order