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Reseaux IP Europeens
Network Coordination Centre
Annual Report
1995
Carol Orange
Document: ripe-139
ABSTRACT
In this report, we provide a summary
of our income, activities and expenditure
during the 1995 calendar year.
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1. Introduction
The RIPE Network Coordination Centre started opera-
tions in April 1992. It supports RIPE activities
that cannot be effectively performed by volunteers
from the participating organisations. Key services
performed by the RIPE NCC include:
o Maintenance of the RIPE Network Management
Database
o Regional Internet Registry
o Domain name system (DNS) coordination
o Repository for network operations software
o Maintenance of the RIPE document store
o Interactive Information Services
At the start of 1995, just over 1 million computers
in Europe and surrounding areas were reachable via
networks coordinated by RIPE. By the close of 1995,
this figure had risen to more than 2.2 million. As
can be seen in Figure 1, this is a continuation of
the exponential growth in RIPE coordinated networks
that has taken place in the early 1990s.
2.5e+06++---------------------------------------------------+
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0++----o***----+--------+-------+--------+-------+----+
End-90 End-91 End-92 End-93 End-94 End-95
Figure 1: RIPE Network Hostcount 1991-1995
The TERENA association provides the formal framework
for the NCC. Funding for the operation of the NCC is
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provided by the Internet service providers in Europe
and surrounding areas.
General information about the NCC, its funding,
organisation and activities can be found in the fol-
lowing documents:
ripe-125 RIPE NCC Activity Plan
ripe-133 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996
ripe-134 RIPE NCC Revenue & Charging 1996
ripe-132 RIPE NCC Contributors Committee, Minutes Sept 1995
In this report, we aim to offer the RIPE community
in general and the RIPE NCC Contributors Committee
in particular a summary of our income, activities
and expenditure during the 1995 calendar year.
2. Summary 1995
As can be seen in Figure 2, the explosive growth in
the number of hosts reachable via RIPE networks has
been paralleled by an explosive growth in the number
of local IRs in the RIPE NCC service area.
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+---o**--+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+--+
Q2/93Q3/93Q4/93Q1/94Q2/94Q3/94Q4/94Q1/95Q2/95Q3/95Q4/95
Figure 2: Local IRs served by the RIPE NCC
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In Table 1 below, we see the number of Internet ser-
vice providers operating a local Internet Registry
increased accordingly from 141 at the start of 1995
to 308 at the year's close.
+-----------------------------------------------+
| Number of Local IRs |
+------------+----------------------------------+
| | Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 |
|Type | 1994 1995 1995 1995 1995 |
+------------+----------------------------------+
|Large | 17 17 19 25 28 |
|Medium | 28 31 35 36 40 |
|Small | 51 84 119 159 196 |
|Enterprise | 14 15 17 15 16 |
|Last Resort | 31 32 32 30 28 |
+------------+----------------------------------+
|TOTAL | 141 179 222 265 308 |
+------------+----------------------------------+
Table 1: Local IR's served by th RIPE NCC
This growth resulted in a tremendous increase in the
RIPE NCC workload, in particular that generated for
registration services. The NCC hostmaster staff was
severely understaffed for the first half of the year
resulting in an ever increasing wait queue for IP
related requests. After hiring and training a number
of new hostmasters in the latter part of the year,
the queue was reduced and finally eliminated near
the close of the year. At the close of 1995, there
were six registration services staff, one of which
worked part time.
Due to the amount of work generated by registration
services, there was little room for significant
progress in technical areas. For example, it was not
possible for the staff to perform Routing Registry
activities nor to start up new technical activities.
Nevertheless, progress was made in automating DNS
reverse delegation procedures, reducing response
times for these requests significantly. Moreover
maintenance and development of the RIPE database
continued without interruption.
Finally, the interactive information services pro-
vided by the NCC were continued. This includes the
maintenance of the RIPE document store. Of course,
these documents together with the complete set of
RFCs, the newest Internet drafts, and numerous other
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useful documents for Internet operations were made
readily available.
3. 1995 Income and Expenditures
As reported above, the number of local IRs in the
service area of the RIPE NCC more than doubled dur-
ing the 1995 calendar year. The increase in activi-
ties was accompanied by associated increases in
income and expenditure.
Income
For services performed in 1995, a total of 986 kECU
was invoiced. Due to some extenuating circum-
stances, 12 kECU were actually invoiced at the start
of 1996. By the end of 1995, we had received 818
kECU of the total invoiced for the year.
Our total cash income in the 1995 calendar year was
977 kECU, 159 kECU of which came from late payments
for services performed in the 1994 calendar year.
Expenditure
The budget for RIPE NCC expenditure for 1995
approved by the NCC contributors in September 1994
was 407kECU. This was increased in June 1995 to
529kECU to enable the NCC to cope with the unex-
pected growth in workload. In Table 2, we summarise
the expenditure in 1995 according to service cate-
gory.
+-----------------------------------------+
| 1995 Budget & Expenditure |
+-----------------------------------------+
| Activity Budget Expense |
+----------------------+------------------+
|Registration Services | 358 326 |
| Other Services | 71 94 |
| Admin & Reporting | 78 78 |
| New Activities | 22 37 |
+----------------------+------------------+
| TOTAL (kECU) | 529 535 |
+----------------------+------------------+
Table 2: Expenditure 1995
At the end of the year, the total expenditure was
535 kECU, within 2% of the budget. However, one can
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see in the table that some services required more
resources than predicted whereas registration ser-
vices required slightly less.
In 1995, significant resources were spent on RIPE
database maintenance activities. Because these
activities fall under "other services", this
resulted in more resources being required for that
area than had been foreseen. Likewise, the
resources required for the development of automatic
tools for reverse delegations were attributed to
"new activities", resulting in more expenditure than
predicted in this area. The result was a reduction
in the resources required for reverse delegation
activities. This accounts for the actual expenses
for registration services being slightly lower than
had had been budgeted in June 1995. Moreover, this
effort resulted in a significant and lasting reduc-
tion in the amount of work required to perform this
particular registration service.
The activities which fall into each category are
summarised below. There are of course sporadic
activities which do not fall neatly into a specific
service category. Depending on the nature of the
activity, the associated expenditure is attributed
to "other services" or "new activities".
Registration Services
The following activities are included in the Regis-
tration Services category:
o IP Assignments
o IP Allocations
o RIPE Database Maintenance (information)
o Local IR Training Courses
o RIPE Database Exchange
o DNS Management (reverse delegations)
o Routing Registry Maintenance (little or no
time in '95)
o PRIDE Tool Maintenance (little or no time in
'95)
o Coordination of local IR's
o Local IR referral services
Other Services
Under the heading Other Services we include activi-
ties such as:
o Database Maintenance (software, technical
support)
o DNS Secondary servers and Quality Control
o RIPE Document Store maintenance
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o Interactive Information Server
Administration and Reporting
This category includes the following activities.
o Customer support
o Billing activities
o Financial planning and control
o Quarterly and annual reports
o RIPE Meeting Support
New Activities
New activities which took place 1995 include:
o Development of automatic checking for reverse
delegation requests.
o Database software developments.
Summary
Note that the income received (818 kECU) in 1995 for
services provided in the same year is 153% of the
expenditures (535 kECU) for that year. This allowed
us to build financial reserves which is essential to
the long term stability of the NCC, and enabled us
to reduce our fees for 1996.
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