RIPE NCC Activity Plan 2005

Table of Contents

1) Vision and Strategy
2) New Activities 2005 
3) Established Activities
4) Unforeseen Activities

1) Vision and Strategy

The RIPE NCC will strengthen the open, bottom-up, consensus driven
policy- making process that has been central to the RIPE community
since its inception. The direction and input of the RIPE community and
the RIPE NCC membership will continue to be followed and translated
into public and membership services. The RIPE NCC will continue to
operate under its principles of openness, transparency, neutrality and
impartiality.

Building on its position as a neutral, credible and authoritative
organisation, the RIPE NCC will develop relations with a growing
community of stakeholders, industry bodies and government
representatives. The RIPE NCC will maintain its outreach efforts to
explain the proven, long-standing industry self-regulatory structures
of the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) and secure continued
support for the existing registry process. Not least, the RIPE NCC
will use the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process to
develop new contacts and communicate the principles of Internet
industry self-regulation to policy makers, both in the public and the
private sector.

In order to achieve this, the RIPE NCC and the other RIRs will focus
efforts through the Number Resource Organization (NRO). The NRO
facilitates RIR co-ordination, provides third parties with a
convenient single contact point to the RIR system and acts as a body
capable of safeguarding the unallocated Internet number resource pool.

The RIPE NCC will proactively encourage ongoing consultation with its
members in order to assess their changing needs. The RIPE NCC will use
feedback received to help make informed decisions and ensure a
consistent quality of service to the membership.
 
RIPE NCC Focus Points

The RIPE NCC is a Membership Association that follows the direction
and input of the RIPE NCC membership when it comes to developing the
activities and services it performs. The RIPE NCC focus points for
2005 continue the work started in 2004, and incorporate the feedback
received from members over the last year. This allows the RIPE NCC to
refine its focus on activities that offer the greatest benefit to RIPE
NCC members and the RIPE community.

As in the previous years one of the main focus points for the RIPE NCC
remains the quality of services it provides to its members and the
Internet community. The core of the RIPE NCC service portfolio offered
to members is the distribution of Internet number resources. The
initial response time to Internet resource requests received is
expected to remain stable at around one working day, consistent with
the level maintained in 2004. Focus in 2005 will move to decreasing
the overall time to completion of number resource requests.

Continuing the focus on membership support in 2004, the RIPE NCC will
give specific attention to establishing a RIPE NCC Member Service
Desk. The aim of the RIPE NCC Member Service Desk is to provide
members with any additional help necessary to resolve queries
involving RIPE NCC Registration Services, the RIPE Database and RIPE
NCC billing procedures. The desk will be available through direct
e-mail and phone contact.

Following from the focus on qualitative and accessible information
supply in 2004, in 2005 the RIPE NCC will give specific focus to
accuracy and consistency of public registration data of Internet
number resources. In addition, the RIPE NCC will use the information
supply infrastructure developed over 2004 to provide simple and
ready-to-use information services.

2) New Activities 2005 

Below is a list of new RIPE NCC activities scheduled for 2005 and
activities that represent a significant change in resource allotment
from 2004.

Information about the budgeted costs for these new activities is
available in the RIPE NCC Budget 2005 at:
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/budget2005.html

RIPE NCC Member Service Desk 

Feedback received from RIPE NCC members has revealed a need to further
improve the communication channels members can use to contact the RIPE
NCC. Recent initiatives have focused on proactively calling members to
resolve issues. These have proved successful, and suggest that direct
contact is an efficient way to assist members.

The aim of the RIPE NCC Member Service Desk is to provide members with
any additional help necessary to resolve queries involving RIPE NCC
Registration Services, RIPE Database and RIPE NCC billing procedures.

The RIPE NCC Member Service Desk will provide a single point of
contact that RIPE NCC members can use to resolve issues that cannot be
resolved satisfactorily by other methods. The RIPE NCC Member Service
Desk aims to improve the ease and efficiency with which members can
interact with the relevant person at the RIPE NCC. The desk will be
available through direct e-mail and phone contact.

The current channels used by members to contact the RIPE NCC will
remain available. The RIPE NCC Member Service Desk is intended to
support members who have issues that cannot be resolved through these
regular channels.

Various interfaces to the RIPE NCC Member Service Desk, such as
jabber, PSTN or VoIP, will be investigated and prepared.

Dependent on feedback from RIPE NCC members, the scope of the RIPE NCC
Member Service Desk may be expanded in the future, with the long term
goal of consolidating the communication channels members can use to
contact the RIPE NCC.

This activity includes the capital expenses of telecommunications
equipment that will be deployed company-wide.

Further Deployment of Mirror Instances of the K-root Name Server 

The RIPE NCC will continue to deploy mirror instances of the K-root
name server. This will further improve the distribution, redundancy
and performance of this crucial service as well as its resilience
against Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. In 2005 the RIPE NCC will
continue deployment of K-root local nodes in the RIPE NCC service
region. The cost for each local node will be covered by the relevant
local community.

The RIPE NCC will also deploy several (2-3) K-root global nodes in
North America and Asia-Pacific. The RIPE NCC will cover most of the
costs of global node deployment.

Improving Data Integrity 

In 2005, the RIPE NCC will focus efforts on improving the accuracy,
integrity and consistency of data related to Internet number
resources. This will include consolidation and cleaning up internal
and external databases. Mechanisms will be established to ensure
higher quality data in the long term, decreasing discrepancies thus
increasing the speed at which requests can be processed. The improved
integrity of data will benefit the Internet community by increasing
the reliability of using registration data in the daily operations of
LIRs and ISPs.

Developing New Training Methods

To adapt the training offered by the RIPE NCC to the differing needs
of the audience, new training methods will be developed, particularly
focusing on additional training strategies.

The intention is to reach a broader audience, particularly those who
are unable to attend RIPE NCC training courses due to geographical,
financial, scheduling or other constraints. Offering more accessible
training will help members to send better-prepared requests to the
RIPE NCC Hostmasters. This aims to ensure a more timely completion of
allocation requests.

In addition, the RIPE NCC will develop new forms of training and
information dissemination to specifically target non-traditional
audiences such as journalists, politicians and administrators. This is
a logical progression of the RIPE NCC's outreach efforts developed
over previous years. The aim is to encourage well-informed decisions
and to win continued support for the existing RIR framework.

Membership Survey

The RIPE NCC will commission an independent member and stakeholder
survey, similar to the survey conducted by KPMG in 2002. Based on the
results of this survey and in close interaction with the members and
stakeholders, the RIPE NCC will continue to improve its operational
quality and organisational structure.

Cross Registry Information Service Protocol (CRISP)

Responding to requests from the community for a standard, uniform
global view of Internet number resources, the RIPE NCC will continue
to participate in the IETF process to develop the Cross Registry
Information Service Protocol. In 2005, the RIPE NCC will provide
server implementation and client tools, while co-ordinating with other
server operators, client tool authors, and service providers to
encourage use.

Deployment of Anti-SPAM Measures and SPAM Abuse Policies

The RIPE NCC will deploy technical facilities to minimise the effect
of SPAM towards the RIPE NCC and the mailing lists it provides for
members and the RIPE community.

3) Established Activities 

Information on the RIPE NCC's established activities (Membership
Services, Co-ordination Activities and Information Services) is
available in the RIPE NCC Activity Planning Support Document at:

http://www.ripe.net/ripe/draft-documents/gm-sep2004/ap2005.html 

4) Unforeseen Activities

These activities are entirely unforeseen at the time of writing the
activity plan or have started recently and are not at the stage where
they can be developed as regular services. A new activity will only be
started after thorough analysis of its need, with a clearly
communicated project plan, deliverables, budget and timeline. A quick,
well-focused reaction to the changing environment and new requirements
of the RIPE NCC members and other stakeholders has always been a
strong point of the RIPE NCC.







































