                                  RIPE NCC Quarterly Report Q2, 1996
                                                              Ridley

                ____________________________________________________




                                Reseaux IP Europeens
                            Network Coordination Centre





                                  Quarterly Report

                                Second Quarter 1996






                                    Paul Ridley

                              with contributions from

                                 Daniel Karrenberg
                                    Mirjam Kuhne
                                    Carol Orange

                                 Document: ripe-148

























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    1.  Introduction

                RIPE is a collaborative organisation which consists
                of European Internet service providers. It has been
                functioning since 1989.  Today nearly 3.3 million
                computers in Europe and surrounding areas are reach-
                able via networks coordinated by RIPE.  RIPE aims to
                provide the necessary administrative and technical
                coordination to allow the operation of a seamless
                pan-European IP network.


    The RIPE NCC

                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


                The TERENA association provides the formal framework
                for the NCC. Funding for the operation of the NCC is
                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:

                Doc ID     Title
                --------------------------------------------------------------
                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







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                Further information can be obtained by sending mail
                to <ncc@ripe.net> or contact us at:


                     RIPE Network Coordination Centre
                     Kruislaan 409
                     NL-1098 SJ Amsterdam
                     The Netherlands
                     Phone: +31 20 592 5065
                     Fax: +31 20 592 5090
                     E-Mail: <ncc@ripe.net>
                     http://www.ripe.net


    The Q2-1996 Quarterly

                In this report, we aim to inform the RIPE community
                in general and the RIPE NCC Contributors Committee
                in particular of our activities during the second
                quarter of 1996 and our plans for the next one.

                Due to a resource shortage and a change over of
                positions in the third quarter this quarterly report
                is somewhat delayed in arrival and somewhat reduced
                in content. The Q3-1996 report will however be pro-
                duced on time and will be more complete. We welcome
                any comments and suggestions to further improve the
                usefulness of these reports.

























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    2.  Management Summary

                The European Internet continues to grow at a phenom-
                enal rate.  During Q2-1996 57 new local Internet
                registries started operations.  This growing number
                of local registries proportionately increases our
                workload. During Q2-1996 alone, we manually handled
                9,770 messages and automatically handled 26,913 mes-
                sages that were sent to the RIPE NCC role mailboxes.

                Registration services continued to operate normally,
                albeit with a constant backlog due to factors
                including increased demand and the training of new
                staff.  The two newly hired hostmasters started work
                in Q2-1996 and have immediately settled in and made
                valuable contributions.  We continued gathering
                hostcounts, providing local registry courses and
                information services on the Internet.

                Significant activities during the quarter were among
                others; the publication of ripe-136 the "European
                Internet Registry: IP Address Space Assignment Poli-
                cies and Procedures", which supersedes ripe-104; the
                continued development of the 2.0 release of the
                database software, planned to be released in
                Q3-1996; the implementation of the hierarchical
                authorisation mechanism for the inetnum and domain
                database objects; the launch of the ripe ncc web
                site; the start of the project looking into usage
                based charging models.

                The financial situation is very healthy with more
                than 80% of this year's planned expenditure already
                received in revenue.

                During Q3-1996 significant activities will include;
                pursuance of the stated staffing plan; giving more
                training courses for local Internet registries; pre-
                senting various usage based charging models to the
                contributors;  publication of the 1997 activities
                and expenditure plan; and publication on the ftp
                site of individual allocation statistics.

                Strategically we observe that the Internet continues
                to change too quickly for stringent 12 month plan-
                ning cycles. We will carry on in our efforts to
                adapt more quickly to these changes.

                Considering the rapidly changing environment it sup-
                ports and operates in, the RIPE NCC is healthy and
                functioning well.


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    3.  Core services

                In this section, we describe the activities in NCC
                core services which were carried out during Q2-1996.


    3.1.  Role Mailbox Traffic

                The NCC handles requests and queries almost exclu-
                sively by electronic mail.  A number of role mail-
                boxes are used for this purpose.  These mailboxes
                are regularly serviced by the appropriate NCC per-
                sonnel or automated procedures.  Personal mailboxes
                are rarely used for request handling.  While
                <ncc@ripe.net> serves as a catch-all for all sorts
                of queries and requests, the other mailboxes are
                intended for specific types of requests.  A full
                description of the following mailboxes can be found
                in the Q1-1996 report (ripe-135):

                     <ncc@ripe.net>

                     <hotmaster@ripe.net>

                     <auto-inaddr@ripe.net>

                     <inaddr@ripe.net>

                     <inaddr@ripe.net>

                     <auto-dbm@ripe.net>

                     <ripe-dbm@ripe.net>

                     <auto-dbm@ripe.net>


                In addition to those listed above we have a number
                of role mailboxes dealing with meeting and course
                registrations.

                In the table below you find counts of the number of
                messages being received by the various role mail-
                boxes during Q2-1996.









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         +--------------------------------------+
         |Role Mailbox Activity Q2-1996         |
         +--------------------------------------+
         |Mailbox                      Messages |
         +--------------------------------------+
         |ncc                              3338 |
         |billing                           977 |
         |hostmaster                       3233 |
         |inaddr                           1339 |
         |ripe-dbm                          883 |
         |auto-inaddr                      2209 |
         |auto-dbm                        24704 |
         +--------------------------------------+



                A total of 9770 messages were sent to the manual
                mailboxes in Q2-1996, and the messages sent to auto-
                matic mailboxes totaled 26913. As may be expected,
                of the manual mailboxes, by far the most messages
                are sent to <hostmaster@ripe.net> and
                <ncc@ripe.net>.

                On average, there are 150 messages sent to the man-
                ual role mailboxes each working day, most of which
                originate from NCC customers.  Meanwhile, an average
                of 414 messages are sent to the automatic mailboxes
                each day.



    3.2.  Registration Services

                During Q2-1996 seven staff members were involved in
                Registration Services, namely: Paula Caslav, John
                Crain, Mirjam Kuehne, Nick Reid, Els Willems, Lee
                Wilmot.

                Paula Caslav and Lee Wilmot started in April to
                replace Soodabeh Eshgi and Hatice Kuey who left
                their posts at the RIPE NCC during Q1-1996.

                More details on the status of affairs in Registra-
                tion Services in mid-April, 1996 can be found in:

                     ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/presentations/ripe-
                     m24-mir-RS-REPORT.ps.gz


    3.2.1.  Hostcount

                One of the services provided by the RIPE NCC is the
                regular hostcount report which tracks the growth of
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                the Internet in Europe and surrounding areas.  Here
                we present a brief summary of our recent findings.
                In the following graph, we demonstrate the exponen-
                tial growth in the number of hosts connected to the
                Internet in Europe over the last five years.


                The number of hosts connected to the Internet in
                Europe continued to grow during Q2-1996, as illus-
                trated in the graph below.



                Some of the anomalies in the hostcount statistics
                are caused by connectivity problems. Others are
                caused by neglect of DNS zone maintenance. In both
                cases, the data is usually corrected in later months
                with the growth following its general exponential
                behaviour.

                The hostcount is based on the number of hosts
                counted in 53 DNS Top Level Domains (TLD's). The
                complete set of TLD's contributing to the statistics
                shown here are listed in Appendix A.

                Historically, the majority of the hostcount statis-
                tics have been gathered remotely by the RIPE NCC.
                Due to network overhead, and the anomalies which
                occur due to connectivity problems, an effort is
                underway to have hostcounts performed locally per
                TLD and to compile the results at the NCC. At the
                end of Q2-1996, local counts are performed in 23
                TLDs, 2 more than at the end of Q1-1996. The RIPE
                NCC still performs 30 hostcounts remotely, so this
                effort will continue for the foreseeable future.


    3.2.2.  Number of Local IRs

                In Q1-1996 the growth in new registries increased by
                more than 30 percent.  This trend continued through-
                out Q2-1996. We still saw almost 20 new registries
                each month.

                In the table below, we show the number of registries
                of varying types and sizes for each quarter in 1995
                and for Q1-1996 and Q2-1996, along with the pro-
                jected numbers for the remaining quarters in 1996.
                The projection we made in the first quarter of 1996
                showed a stabilisation of the the growth rate to
                about 18 new registries a month. These projections
                were it seems too conservative. The same growth pat-
                tern can be seen in Q2-1996 and is expected to
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                continue for the remaining quarters of 1996.  This
                would then lead to almost 600 registries at the
                close of 1996, nearly twice as many as at the close
                of 1995.



    +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
    |                        Number of Local IRs                         |
    +------------+-----------------------------------------+-------------+
    |Type        |                OBSERVED                 |  PROJECTED  |
    |            |   Q1     Q2     Q3     Q4     Q1     Q2 |   Q3     Q4 |
    |            | 1995   1995   1995   1995   1996   1996 | 1996   1996 |
    +------------+-----------------------------------------+-------------+
    |Large       |   17     19     25     28     32     34 |   37     41 |
    |Medium      |   31     35     36     40     49     53 |   60     65 |
    |Small       |   84    119    159    196    246    308 |  376    451 |
    |Enterprise  |   15     17     15     16     19     26 |   31     37 |
    |Last Resort |   32     32     30     28     22     13 |    6      0 |
    +------------+-----------------------------------------+-------------+
    |TOTAL       |  179    222    265    308    368    434 |  510    594 |
    +------------+-----------------------------------------+-------------+






    3.2.3.  Registration Services Usage Statistics

    Hostmaster Workload

                To give an indication of the workload in the host-
                master arena throughout the quarter, one can view
                the following graph in which we show the number of
                incoming messages to <hostmaster@ripe.net> per day
                during Q2-1996.

                In the next graph we show the number of new requests
                opened per day in the hostmaster mailbox. Note that
                this is lower than the number of messages as many
                messages may be sent back and forth regarding a sin-
                gle request.










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                Finally, we show the level of the hostmaster wait
                queue during Q2-1996.  This is a daily count of the
                of requests which are opened but not yet assigned to
                a specific hostmaster for processing.


                The wait queue is a good measure of the responsive-
                ness of the service.  It is clear that current
                staffing in Registration Services is just sufficient
                to handle the load, but insufficient to provide pre-
                dictable service in the face of unexpected shortages
                and increasing demand.

                In the course of Q2-1996, we have continued to track
                the Registration Services workload, and started col-
                lecting information about the nature and frequency
                of different types of requests being submitted. This
                workload data was collated and a short report was
                presented by an MBA student as part of his study in
                a usage based charging model. Thereby we were able
                to quantify how much work we perform in different
                areas, to identify the most effective task areas for
                further automation, and draw staffing conclusions.
                This short report can be found at Appendix B.



    3.2.4.  Policies and Procedure Documentation

                An updated version of ripe-104 the "European Inter-
                net Registry: IP Address Space Assignment Proce-
                dures" was published as ripe-136 "European Internet
                Registry: Policies and Procedures". Also the "Euro-
                pean IP Address Space Request Form" (ripe-137) and
                the accompanying "Supporting Notes for the European
                IP Address Space Request Form" (ripe-138) have been
                updated and obsolete ripe-128 and ripe-129.


    3.2.5.  Last Resort Registries

                It has been decided by the Contributors Committee to
                only provide service to contributing Local Reg-
                istries. This means that most Last Resort registries
                will have to be closed if they don't decide to con-
                tinue their service and contribute to the RIPE NCC.
                At the end of Q2-1996 2 LIR's have comitted to con-
                tinue their service and another 10 have been closed.
                The remaining 15 Last Resort registries do not
                receive service anymore and an effort will be made
                to formally close them as soon as possible. This
                involves updating the records on all sites and often
                the return of address space and reverse delgation.
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    3.3.  Services for New Registries

                As detailed in Section 3.2.2, 57 new local IRs
                started operations during Q2-1996. To assure these
                new local IRs understand and operate according to
                the policies agreed to by the RIPE community, we
                provide them with extra support in the startup
                phase.

                Our support for new registries falls into two pri-
                mary categories, namely individual help in opening
                the registry, and the local IR training courses.


    3.3.1.  Help with Local IR Startup

                The process of setting up new registries is handled
                by the RIPE NCC billing department. It involves some
                administrative steps including the signing of a for-
                mal agreement. In this phase, we try to assure each
                new registry gains access to basic information on IP
                address space allocation and assignment procedures.

                Organisations that consider becoming a local IR usu-
                ally send questions concerning the usefulness of
                setting up a registry and the consequences it has
                for them. Questions are received on the kind of ser-
                vice the RIPE NCC offers, formal agreements, IP
                address space allocation policies and Internet rout-
                ing issues.

                Whenever these organisations come to the RIPE NCC,
                the billing department tries to address their ques-
                tions and to introduce those asking to the standard
                documentation that new registries should be aware
                of.


    3.3.2.  Local IR Training Program

                During Q2-1996, we delivered 3 Training Courses for
                Local IRs, namely:


         Q2-1996 Trainings
         ------------------------------
         May 10, 1996        Budapest
         May 20, 1996        Amsterdam
         June 7, 1996        Stockholm


                We allow a maximum of 15 persons to attend each
                course, and all three of the above were filled. To
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                measure the effectiveness of our training course, we
                ask all persons attending to fill in an evaluation
                form.  The results show our courses to be perceived
                well and considered useful.

                Because of the rapid increase in the number of local
                IRs, our courses fill up very quickly upon being
                announced.  We thus recognise the need to increase
                the frequency of these courses.


    3.4.  The RIPE Network Management Database

                One of the key services provided by the RIPE NCC is
                the maintenance of the RIPE database software. In
                this section we report on progress made in this area
                during Q2-1996, as well as a number of interesting
                database statistics gathered on June 30, 1996.


    3.4.1.  Recent Progress

                During Q2-1996, development continued in the prepa-
                ration of the 2.0 release of the database software,
                planned for Q3-1996.

                The most important work which took place during the
                second quarter was the implementation of the hierar-
                chical authorisation mechanism for the inetnum and
                domain database objects.























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    3.4.2.  Usage statistics

                In the following table we show the number of entries
                for the different objects maintained in the RIPE
                database at the end of Q2-1996.



         RIPE Database Object             Number
         ----------------------------------------
         as-macro                             85
         aut-num                             802
         community                             7
         domain                            41761
         dom-prefix                            6
         inetnum                           52047
         inet-rtr                             99
         limerick                             10
         mntner                              646
         person                            76347
         route                             12948
         ----------------------------------------
         TOTAL                            184758




                During Q2-1996, 2,721,150 queries were received by
                the NCC whois server.


    3.5.  RIPE Meetings

                RIPE meetings are held three times a year.  Tradi-
                tionally two are held in Amsterdam and one is hosted
                by an organisation elsewhere in Europe. The meeting
                consists of working group sessions that focus on
                specific topics, and a plenary session with general
                presentations. RIPE meetings are open to everyone
                interested in them.


    3.5.1.  RIPE-24

                The 24rd RIPE meeting was held April 22nd-24th 1996
                in Berlin. There were 130 attendees.  The minutes of
                the meeting are available from

                     ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/minutes/ripe-m-24.txt
                     ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/minutes/ripe-m-24.ps

                A number of RIPE NCC staff members made presenta-
                tions at the meeting.  The transparencies used in
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                the presentations can be found in:

                     ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/presentations/ripe-
                     m24-david-DB-REPORT.ps.gz
                     ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/presentations/ripe-
                     m24-mir-RS-REPORT.ps.gz


    3.5.2.  RIPE-25

                Preparations are underway for the 25th RIPE meeting
                to be held September 23rd-25th 1996 in Amsterdam.
                Up-to-date information can be found at the URL

                     ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/Next-Meeting/






































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    4.  RIPE NCC Staffing

                As planned in Q1-1996 two new hostmasters, Paula
                Caslav and Lee Wilmot, started work in this quarter.
                Since these hiring were direct replacements for the
                two hostmasters who left in Q1-1996 they do not
                effect operations at the RIPE NCC. A detailed organ-
                isational structure was published in the Q1-1996
                report (ripe-135) and remains unchanged.


    4.1.  NCC Staff Planning

                The staffing plans outlined in the Q1-1996 report
                were pursued in quarter 2 but without a great deal
                of success in finding suitable candidates. In quar-
                ter 3 different avenues will be pursued and the
                tempo will be upped in a determined effort to
                achieve the laid down plans.


































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    5.  Financial Summary

                This financial summary will follow the format pre-
                sented in the quarter 1 report. At present we are
                restricted by the data that can be gathered from our
                administrative system but once this is revised more
                detail and depth of reporting will be possible and
                will be carried out. It should also be noted that if
                comparisons are made between this quarterly report
                and the TERENA half yearly report then apparent dis-
                crepancies will be found. In truth there are no dis-
                crepancies but only differences in reporting proce-
                dures. This quarterly report follows the RIPE NCC
                tradition of reporting with the assumption that the
                period end is the end of the financial year, whereas
                TERENA reports assume that the period end is the end
                of the respective quarter. This difference will man-
                ifest itself by TERENA only reporting the income
                received for those services already given whereas
                this report includes income received for services
                yet to come in the financial year.


    5.1.  Quarter Summary:  Q2-1996

                At the start of Q2-1996, there were a total of 368
                local Internet registries in the RIPE NCC service
                area. Now there are 421, and given that another four
                last resort registries have closed shop during this
                time, we've had a total of 57 new local IRs starting
                operations during Q2-1996.

                The expenditure budget for 1996 approved by the RIPE
                NCC contributors committee in September 1995 is 916
                kECU. At the end of Q2-1996 a total of kECU 385 had
                been expended, equated to 42% of the budget. It is
                to be expected that expenditure in the first half of
                the year will be less than the second half since the
                planned expansion will cost proportionately more
                money. It should be noted though that the computer
                and travel expenditure was slightly higher than
                forecast and these individual budgets may need to be
                amended in Q3-1996.

                At the end of Q2-1996, had commitments for 904 kECU
                of revenue, which is 99% of the expenditure budget.
                At this point kECU 761 has been received. Therefore,
                83% of the currently planned yearly expenditure has
                been received in the second quarter. This all
                results in the NCC having a very healthy liquidity
                situation.

                A project was also started in Q2-1996 to look at the
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                possibilities of a usage based charging system. This
                project is being performed by two MBA students. The
                results of this report will be ready by the begin-
                ning of Q3-1996 and will form the based of the 1997
                revenue and charging document.

                If the growth in the number of IRs continues at its
                present pace, our income for services performed in
                1996 will exceed 1500 kECU and thus be 60% above
                currently planned expenditure.  Of course this
                increase in demand will also require additional
                resources.  Should this trend continue in Q3-1996 we
                will compile a revised budget to cope with it.








































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    6.  Q3-1996


    6.1.  Efforts and Expectations


    Local IR Training


                Without exception all local IR courses are immedi-
                ately filled up.  To try and better cater for this
                high demand we are increasing the number of sched-
                uled courses in Q3-1996 to six. These are listed in
                the table below.


    Q3-1996 Trainings
    ---------------------------------
    July 8, 1996           Milan
    July 19, 1996          Geneva
    August 9, 1996         Amsterdam
    August 30, 1996        Prague
    September 16, 1996     Vienna
    September 28, 1996     Amsterdam



                If possible, additional trainings in Q3-1996 will be
                scheduled.

                As always, we are happy if a local IR offers to host
                a course.  However due to the high demand, we have
                decided to make an effort to hold courses frequently
                whether or not we have a host. To make it easy for
                people to attend these courses, most will be held at
                or near major airports in Europe.

                The courses for Q4-1996 will be announced to the
                local IR mailing list as usual.


    RIPE Database Developments

                We will continue a concerted effort to complete ver-
                sion 2.0 of the database software, and will release
                the software during Q3-1996. After the release
                future RIPE database developments will be assessed
                and prioritised.

    Documentation

                Both the "1997 Activities and Expenditure Plan" and
                the "1997 Revenue and Charging Model" will be
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                completed in Q3-1996. These documents will then be
                presented to the contributors, at the contributors
                meeting on 11 September 1996, for their approval.
                The "Revenue and Charging Model" will contain sev-
                eral possibilities from which the contributors will
                have to choose the most suitable.

    Allocation Statistics

                In response to a request made in Q1-1996 we will, in
                Q3-1996, publish a list of individual allocation
                statistics. This will be published on the ripe ftp
                site.

    Staff Hiring

                During Q3-1996 we hope, in accordance with the
                staffing plan, to hire four new staff members, with
                the following job titles:

                     o 2 Hostmasters (to keep registration services
                     running smoothly)
                     o Network Engineer (to help in the effort to
                     automate services)
                     o Manager - Systems and Software (to lead
                     automation and systems activities)



























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    Appendix A: Hostcount TLD's

                The set of DNS Top Level Domains contributing to the
                hostcount statistics described in Section 3.1.1 are:


                al: Albania                                       am: Armenia
                at: Austria                                       az: Azerbaijan
                be: Belgium                                       bg: Bulgaria
                by: Belarus                                       ch: Switzerlan
                cy: Cyprus                                        cz: Czech Republic
                de: Germany                                       dk: Denmark
                dz: Algeria                                       ee: Estonia
                eg: Egypt                                         es: Spain
                fi: Finland                                      fo: Faroe Islands
                fr: France                                       gb: United Kingdom
                ge: Georgia                                      gr: Greece
                hr: Kroatia                                      hu: Hungary
                ie: Ireland                                      il: Isreal
                is: Iceland                                      it: Italy
                li: Liechtenstein                                lt: Lithuania
                lu: Luxemburg                                    lv: Latvia
                ma: Morocco                                      md: Republic of Moldova
                mk: The Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia    mt: Malta
                nl: The Netherlands                              no: Norway
                pl: Poland                                       pt: Portugal
                ro: Romania                                      ru: Russian Federation
                se: Sweden                                       si: Slovenia
                sk: Slovakia (Slovak Republic)                   sm: San Marino
                su: The Former Soviet Union                      tn: Tunesia
                tr: Turkey                                       ua: Ukraine
                uk: United Kingdom                               va: Holy See (Vatican City State)
                yu: Yugoslavia




















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    Appendix B: Registration Services Project


                During the Q2-1996 an MBA student started conducting
                a study into a usage based pricing system for RIPE
                NCC. As a part of this study the activities and work
                practices of the Registration Services department
                were analysed. The results of this analysis give a
                valuable insight into the percentage of time spent
                on various activities and show the relationship
                between Registration Services' present workload and
                capacity. Based upon these new insights we have been
                able to draw three points for future operations.

                Whenever messages come into <hostmaster@ripe.net>
                they are categorised according to which of the
                eleven possible activities they relate. Therefore
                the number of times that a certain activity is done
                per day can be readily seen. A part of the study was
                to determine the average time that it took to com-
                plete each individual activity through the use of
                activity flowcharting. By combining this average
                time data with the activity frequency data it was
                possible to ascertain how much time should have been
                spent, per day, dealing with the messages that came
                into Hostmaster. It was noteworthy that Assignment
                Window Exceeded requests are by a sizeable margin
                the most time consuming activity performed. IN-ADDR
                also occupies a large amount of the working hours.

                Obviously no week is exactly the same as the previ-
                ous one, thus in order to gain a more in-depth look
                at the weekly workload of Registration Services,
                information was gathered concerning the number of
                hours per week that were totally dedicated to these
                eleven activities.
                 From this information it was concluded that at the
                beginning of the second quarter the average number
                of hours per week that needed to be spent on the
                eleven activities was 80, but at the end of the
                quarter it has risen sharply to an average of 110
                hours.  With present staffing levels for the depart-
                ment of one manager and 4.6 fte hostmasters it is
                possible to dedicate an average of 85 hours per week
                to eleven core activities. An average fte hostmaster
                will dedicate 18.5 hours per week to these activi-
                ties. From figure (capacity chart) it can be readily
                seen that with the rare odd exception the department
                has been receiving a workload that is in excess of
                its present 85 hour capacity. This growing gap
                between workload and capacity has led to the
                inevitable increase in wait time that the requests
                are experiencing.  The present shortfall between
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                ripe-148.txt                                 Page 20
                                  RIPE NCC Quarterly Report Q2, 1996
                                                              Ridley

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                workload and capacity is 25 hours per week which is
                equivalent to 1.4 fte employees.

                From the information provided by this study into the
                Registration Services department we have arrived at
                three ways of improving service and cutting costs.
                Firstly the activity flowcharting that was carried
                out has added more insight into the operational flow
                and has further highlighted areas that would benefit
                from a higher degree of
                 automation. Therefore based upon the extra insight
                we plan to refine our automation program. Secondly
                since the Assignment Window Exceeded activity occu-
                pies such a large amount of work time we are looking
                at ways to minimise this. Thirdly since it has been
                shown that there is a definite discrepancy between
                the present workload and capacity of the registra-
                tion department we need to hire two extra fte host-
                masters. This would allow the increasing wait times
                to be attacked, thus improving service. As growth of
                RIPE NCC continues, and the workload proportionally
                increases, the situation of the Registration Ser-
                vices department with regard to staffing will have
                to be kept under review.





























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