RIPE 73 kicked-off in a wet and rainy Madrid with 491 attendees checked in. In the morning, there were two tutorials (network automation and RIPE Database tips and tricks), followed by a newcomers session to help RIPE Meeting first-timers get up to speed on all things RIPE and the RIPE NCC.
After the welcome remarks from the RIPE Chair and the hosts of the meeting, the Opening Plenary focused on analysis. Jordi Palet Martinez shared the results of his worldwide survey of IPv6 deployment. He was followed by Philip Richter, a RACI recipient, who presented on the results of his study using BitTorrent data to uncover the prevalence of Carrier Grade NAT deployments. Shane Kerr ended the session with a lightning talk that looked at the diversity of gender at RIPE Meetings. He asked if the RIPE Meetings should be doing more to beat the industry average for female participation.
The next session started with a presentation from the RIPE NCC’s Athina Fragkouli who highlighted how RIPE has repeatedly been held up as an example of an accountable and effective community in Internet governance circles. However, she cautioned that RIPE couldn’t rest on its laurels. Ioana Livadariu, another RACI candidate, presented on IPv4 transfer markets – concluding that they were growing in size, that most blocks being transferred were legacy, and that the market seemed to be serving its intended purpose (buyers tended to “use” the address space).
The session was then wrapped-up with three lightning talks. Geoff Huston prompted attendees to think about deploying elliptic curve cryptography to improve the security of Internet transactions such as banking. He said this enabled people to take full responsibility for security rather than relying on other parties. Vasileios Glotsas then gave a quick presentation to inform the community about PERISCOPE and asked for feedback. Finally, Roy Arends from ICANN presented on the upcoming rollover of the Root Zone DNSSEC Key Signing Key.
This was followed by the Best Current Operational Practices (BCOP) Task Force session.
And with that, the first day of RIPE 73 came to a close. A planned social gave attendees a chance to meet with the RIPE NCC Executive Board and this was followed by the RIPE 73 Welcome Social.
