1998 RIPE NCC Annual General Meeting
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RIPE NCC Annual General Meeting
October 15th 1998.
Minutes
Scribe: Alissar Nabali
Document: ripe-171
ABSTRACT
Traditionally these minutes reflect
the detailed discussions for the benefit
of those unable to attend the meeting.
Those interested in a very short summary
may want to refer to the Appendix listing
the decisions.
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List of Participants RIPE NCC AGM 1998
1 Carsten Schiefner TCP/IP GmbH
2 Christian Carstensen dev/consulting GmbH
3 Daniel Karrenberg RIPE NCC
4 Darko Bulat K2.net d.o.o.
5 Dave Morton Cybernet AG
6 Denesh Bhabuta Demon Internet Limited
7 Erik Lohr IBM Global Services
8 Francesco Pugliese WIND Telecomunicazioni S.p.A.
9 Frode Greisen Ebone Inc.
10 Hans Niklasson Tele2 / SWIPnet
11 Hans Petter Holen SOL System AS
12 Ingo Luetkebohle dev/consulting GmbH
13 Irena Bacak K2.net d.o.o.
14 James Aldridge EUnet Communications ServicesBV
15 John Crain RIPE NCC
16 Kees Neggers SURFnet b.v.
17 Kees van Draanen RIPE NCC
18 Keith Mitchell LINX
19 Krume Dolnenec Open Society Institute Macedonia
20 Lajos Balint HUNGARNET
21 Luca dell'Agnello INFN CNAF
22 Michael Froehlich ECRC Network Services GmbH
23 Mike Norris HEAnet Limited
24 Mirjam Kuehne RIPE NCC
25 Ouedraogo Idrissa ONATEL
26 Pontus Ekman pi.se AB
27 Rainer Lillge IS Internet Services GmbH & CO
28 Rob Bron IBM Global Services
29 Siegfried Langenbach Computer Service Langenbach
30 Stephen Burley UUNET WorldCom
31 Tom Forster mbt Online KG
32 Wilfried Woeber Vienna University - ACOnet
33 Wim Vink RIPE NCC Board Member
34 Winfried Motzkus dev/consulting GmbH
35 Yiannos Pitas University of Cyprus
RIPE NCC Legal Representatives:
Joyce Westerop
Florence Van Rossum
Agenda AGM 1998
1. Welcome, Preliminaries, Fixing of Agenda
2. Operational Report by NCC Management
3. Interim Financial Report
4. Postponing 1999 General Meeting
5. Activity Plan and Budget for 1999
6. Charging Scheme
7. Report from the Executive Board
8. Board Elections
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1. Welcome, Preliminaries, Fixing of Agenda
Keith Mitchell, chairman of the RIPE NCC exec-
utive Board, and as such statutory chair of the
meeting, welcomed all attendees and introduced the
Executive Board members.
The Chair proposed to review the proposed agenda and
asked participants to propose amendments or query
agenda items. No amendments or questions were
raised and the agenda was fixed.
2. Operational Report by RIPE NCC Management
Mirjam Kuehne, RIPE NCC Head of External Services,
provided an overview of operations and services cov-
ering period October 1997 through to October 1998.
The presentation can be found at
http://www.ripe.net/meetings/contrib/agm1998/oper-report/
Discussions from the presentation were as follows:
Yiannos Pitas asked if there would be a Web inter-
face for the reverse (in-addr.arpa) delegation.
Daniel Karrenberg answered that in accordance with
input from the RIPE local-IR working group the
first Web interface will be for the IP address space
request form. The first step of this will be a form
that helps to generate a correct request form which
will then be sent to the NCC via e-mail in the nor-
mal way. The form will help with syntax checking the
input. Further steps will be to allow direct submis-
sions of requests from web forms. This needs study
of authorisation and authentication methods.
Wilfried Woeber stated that the RIPE NCC is not in
the business of directly dealing with the DNS regis-
tration, and that the RIPE NCC is not the authority
responsible for DNS name registration.
Siegfried Langenbach asked about the hardware type
used to run the current RIPE Database.
Daniel Karrenberg replied stating that the hardware
equipment used is a Sun Enterprise 450 multiproces-
sor. One of the specifications of the re-implementa-
tion of the RIPE Database is that it should be
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threaded, the main reason being that the NCC expects
to have a PGP key based authentication in the near
future i.e. we have to crunch numbers which suggests
threading and a multi-processor platform. This is
remarkably similar to requirements for the re-imple-
mentation of BIND.
3. Interim Financial Report
As the RIPE NCC association is currently in its
first year of operation, no formal audited financial
report was available yet. An informal report about
the financial status including current estimates for
the 1998 results was presented by the Financial Con-
troller Kees van Draanen.
The presentation can be found at:
http://www.ripe.net/meetings/contrib/agm1998/fin-report/
Stephen Burley asked what provisions have been made
from contributions towards the operating costs of
the IANA in 1998. Daniel Karrenberg stated that 40
kECU has been allocated in the budget for 1998, how-
ever, the funds have not been requested and thus
have not been issued to the IANA to date. He also
stated that the 1999 budget as proposed contains a
provision of 150 kECU for the RIPE NCC contribution
towards IANA operating costs.
4. Postponing 1999 General Meeting
According to article 14.2 of the statutes, a general
meeting must be held to approve the annual report
within the first 6 months after the conclusion of
the financial year unless the general meeting
extends this period. Traditionally, the RIPE NCC
has held meetings in the autumn to discuss the
activity plan and budget for the following year and
as a result agrees on a charging scheme for that
period. As there are no special circumstances fore-
seen with regards to financial issues, two general
meetings were seen as excessive. The RIPE NCC Execu-
tive Board proposed the following resolution:
The general meeting decides to extend the
period for adoption of the annual report
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1998 as mentioned in article 14.2 of the
statutes to 15 November 1999. The board
shall send the annual report to the mem-
bers as soon as the books have been
audited and the final report of the audi-
tors has been received."
The motion was passed unanimously.
5. Activity Plan and Budget for 1999
The RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1999 Document
can be found on the RIPE NCC Web site at:
http://www.ripe.net/docs/ripe-186.html
Daniel Karrenberg provided a short overview of the
RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditures 1999 document
highlighting the changes for this year's activities,
and the budget for 1999. The NCC expects a growth of
33% in the number of registries for 1999. The RIPE
NCC is planning to increase focus on reliability and
quality. The presentation can be found on the RIPE
NCC Web site at
http://www.ripe.net/meetings/contrib/agm1998/activity-1999/
The meeting Chair announced that the general meeting
unanimously adopted the RIPE NCC Activity Plan and
Budget for the 1999 operation period.
Discussions resulting from the presentation were as follows:
Kees Neggers asked if the revised RIPE Database will
be year 2000 compliant? Daniel Karrenberg answered
that this was one of the requirements.
Yiannos Pitas inquired whether there are added costs
for y2000 checks in the 1999 budget? Daniel Karren-
berg replied no, this is part of general software
maintenance budget line. The software we are using
is either developed and maintained in-house or
bought as a commodity including maintenance and
updates. We use Unix as an operating system for
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most purposes.
Lajos Balint asked where the 33% percent growth
originates from? Daniel Karrenberg: It comes from
the growth of membership,from the constant number of
one new member registry per calendar day which we
have observed for more than 18 months now. We also
expect to close a number of registries in Q4/98
because they will have reached the final stage of
our debt collecting procedure. This is going to
affect a maximum of 125 registries.
Yiannos Pitas asked if we take address space back
when closing? Daniel Karrenberg answered only unas-
signed (i.e. unused) address space, we don't want to
hurt the end users. The last stage is to notify
them, that their membership has ceased and that
means they cannot assign address space any more. All
unassigned address space that has been allocated by
RIPE NCC will revert to the RIPE NCC.
A question was raised about the relatively high
attrition rate in the U.K: do you see the same
effect on other countries? Daniel Karrenberg com-
mented that this may be attrition or may be payment
morale. It is hard for the NCC to distinguish at
this point. Keith Mitchell added that NOMINET is
also observing debtors problems. Daniel Karrenberg
said the question rephrased is: "Why are we confi-
dent to get 365 new members in 1999?" It's because
he has been signing a contract every day for 2
years. He does not see this changing nor any reason
to change our estimate to higher or lower. We will
be in trouble if we estimate lower, but if we esti-
mate too high and we see that during the year its
actually lowering, we can easily correct by slowing
the growth of the NCC. As long as one is growing
then he is in a comfortable position to adjust.
At this point the motion "The general meeting adopts
the activity plan and budget for 1999." was passed
unanimously.
6. Charging Scheme:
Daniel Karrenberg presented the proposed 1999 Charg-
ing Scheme to the participants. The charging scheme
is available as document ripe-187. The presentation
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can be found on:
http://www.ripe.net/meetings/contrib/agm1998/charging-1999/
Mike Norris inquired about what happens with reg-
istries who change size category who have been vol-
untary with the higher category last year?
Daniel Karrenberg replied that the calculation is
based on the minimum size category expected on
November 1st 1998. We have not seen many upgrades
over the last year, so I think this is a realistic
expectation. A certain paradigm shift here in this
sense is that the NCC is regarded more as a service
organization and not so much as was in the past as a
club for which you voluntary want to give a bigger
contribution. We have budgeted accordingly by
assuming that no-body upgrades.
Question by Lajos Balint: "Were there any comments
to the substance of the documents as published?"
Daniel Karrenberg answered that he had received no
substantive comments.
Siegfried Langenbach: There were different numbers
in the presentation: 33% growth in membership, 37%
growth in operating expenditure, 8% growth in mem-
bership fees. How is this determined?
Daniel Karrenberg: This is a multi-step process: The
basis is an estimation of membership growth as dis-
cussed earlier. Then operating expenditure is
determined by allocating resources to different
activities based on the requirements and an estimate
of growth in demand. Then we devise a fee structure
that meets the operating costs. There are a number
of factors influencing this: one is inflation,
another is that in the past we had relatively more
income from the start-up fees because we were rela-
tively growing more.
Question: "Is it legal for the members to pass the
cost of RIPE NCC to their customers?" Answer: Obvi-
ously the RIPE NCC membership fees are a part of the
costs for a member to do business. It is outside the
scope of the NCC to determine how these costs are
recovered. However it is not allowed to charge for
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address space per se, while it is OK to charge for
registration services. Document ripe-161 explains
this.
Darko Bulat stated that, some organizations sell
address space. Mirjam Kuehne commented that if the
RIPE NCC hears about this it will investigate and
take the necessary action.
The board proposes to continue the successful charg-
ing scheme used over the last years.
The resolution "The general meeting decides to con-
tinue using the current charging scheme and adopted
the 1999 fee schedule." was passed unanimously.
7. Report from the Executive Board
Keith Mitchell reported verbally on the work of the
board to date, and recent developments on the new
IANA. He also stated the formal position of the RIPE
NCC with regards to the new IANA.
- The formal board composition is that Wim Vink
is treasurer and Wilfried Woeber the secretary.
- Much of the Board's initial effort was on the
incorporation of RIPE NCC Association as a
legal entity, both in terms of setting the
Association and setting up the personnel fund.
The work was completed on schedule before the
31st of December 97, and the Board is grateful
to Paul Ridley who did much of this work and
has since left the NCC. The RIPE NCC now enjoys
status and recognition of an independent, sta-
ble and representative legal entity.
- The bad debt situation needed and needs work,
and as a result of advice provided by the
board, additional staff dedicated to resolving
it have been appointed and progress made.
- The Board has devoted attention to the question
of the relationship between RIPE NCC, CENTR and
RIPE. Although they work closely together they
are separate bodies, and there is a lot of con-
fusion in how they are perceived. Both are
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working with the Board to communicate their
relationship to the Internet community and to
the outside world.
- The biggest area of Board activity has been in
the internet governance/administration debate
over the structure of the new IANA.
One of the issues for the RIPE NCC community is that
this debate has been mainly driven by naming inter-
ests, particularly by generic top level domain
stake-holders, and the private monopoly of NSI.
NSI's contract with the US government expired a week
ago, and much of the new IANA process has been
driven by concerns over NSI becoming a de-facto pri-
vate monopoly after this.
A lot of interests and constituencies that were hav-
ing concerns about the process, like the intellec-
tual property lobby, internet trade Associations,
various other bodies, have wanted to have their say,
and we have had to deal with many new bodies in dis-
cussions.
There was RIPE and RIPE NCC representation at all
the major meetings that were held as a result of the
US Government White Paper, in particular the INET98
Conference in Geneva and the European Commission's
Panel of Participants' meeting in Brussels. We
deliberately avoided the Washington IFWP meeting
because we did not want to be associated with bias
towards NSI that was perceived to be an element of
that meeting.
One of the main concerns that we have is the whole
process being driven because of the naming element,
despite IANA having existing responsibilities not
just in terms of being root of the name space and
the number space, but also of being source of proto-
col identifiers and editing Internet Standards docu-
ments.
It is very clear to us that there was a danger of
the organizations that run the number space being
completely crowded out and a lot of the work that we
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had to do was to make people realize that RIPE NCC
is here, it represents a large number of Internet
registries, and that we are here to stay, we are not
to be crowded out.
As of early September, we got optimistic when ver-
sion 3 of the IANA bylaws, which was drafted after
all the discussions and forums, appeared to address
our concerns. There were then closed negotiations
between NSI, IANA and the US government, shortly
before the RIPE31 meeting in Edinburgh.
At that point came version 4 of the bylaws which we
were very concerned about. The changes from version
3 we were most concerned about included the fact
that the new IANA should be "blank check" bound by
any future agreement between the USA government and
NSI.
On the basis of this and one or 2 other provisions
that we were not happy about, we made quite strong
statements effectively and so did RIPE and RIPE
CENTR. Various other bodies made representations -
the result of these are version 5 of the IANA
bylaws. We are in general happy with these but there
are some outstanding open issues.
It was surprising to see the names proposed for the
9 interim "at-large" members of the new IANA board
as they are not on the whole well-known, only 2 are
related to the Internet and 3 from Europe. It may be
intentional to take people that are not involved in
previous discussions. Version 5 of the bylaws allo-
cates 3 seats to each Supporting Organisation out of
a total of 19. Another area of contention is whether
the new IANA and/or its supporting organisations
should be required to be membership organisations
open to anyone.
In summary Version 5 is relatively sensible pro-
posal, and more work is needed together with other
RIR's to set up the Address Supporting Organization.
We need to think about who from Europe should be on
the ASO board.
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8. Board Elections
The terms of Wim Vink and Wilfried Woeber expire on
November 12th 1998. The general meeting may elect
two executive board members to succeed them. Candi-
dates can be nominated according to article 7.2 of
the RIPE NCC statutes.
Frode Greisen asked formally whether article 16 of
the statutes was applied carefully when preparing
the voting slips, especially 16.4 and 16.5. Keith
Mitchell assured him that this has been applied.
Dave Morton, Mike Norris, Wim Vink and Wilfried Woe-
ber were nominated. In the first seat voting (Slip
A), Mike Norris received 19 votes , Dave Morton 7 ,
Wim Vink 5, and Wilfried Woeber 7.
A second vote was taken as the statutes require a
majority of votes cast for election (Art 17.4). In
the second round (Slip B), Mike Norris received 26,
Dave Morton 5, and Wilfried Woeber 7.
Mike Norris was elected to the board.
The remaining candidates decided to run for the sec-
ond seat. In the first vote ( Slip C) Dave Morton
received 7, Wim Vink 14 and Wilfied Woeber 17.
In the second round of voting (Slip D) Dave Morton
received 4, Wim Vink received 21 and Wilfried Woeber
received 13.
Wim Vink was elected to the board.
The meeting unanimously thanked Wilfried Woeber for
his service on the board and expressed the hope that
his contributions will continue as the RIPE DB WG
chairperson.
Keith Mitchell thanked the members for the confi-
dence in the EB the Executive Board for their com-
mitment and good work.
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9. Closing
With no further business to discuss, the meeting was
formally closed.
APPENDIX: Decisions of the Meeting
The general meeting decides to extend the period for
adoption of the annual report 1998 as mentioned in
article 14.2 of the statutes to 15 November 1999.
The board shall send the annual report to the mem-
bers as soon as the books have been audited and the
final report of the auditors has been received."
The general meeting adopts the activity plan and
budget for 1999 (ripe-186).
The general meeting decides to continue using the
current charging scheme and adopted the 1999
(ripe-187) fee schedule.
Executive Board Elections:
Mike Norris was elected to the board.
Wim Vink was elected to the board.
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