RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg RIPE NCC Document: ripe-133 See also: ripe-125, ripe-132, ripe-134 Scope This memorandum describes the RIPE NCC activities and associated expenditure for the year 1996. The companion document "RIPE NCC Revenue & Charging 1996" (ripe-134) describes ways to generate the nec- essary revenue. The "RIPE NCC Activity Plan" (ripe-125) defines the activities of the RIPE NCC desired by the RIPE com- munity. Based on this activity plan the RIPE NCC has drafted this document which was subsequently amended according to the decisions of the NCC Con- tributors Committee as per point 3.2 of the commit- tee's terms of reference. For details about those decisions see the minutes of the Spetember 1995 meeting of the committee (ripe-132). TERENA has subseuently approved the expenditure budget as pro- posed. 1. Workload & Challenges The bulk of resources expended by the RIPE NCC is proportional to the number of local Internet Reg- istries which in turn is mostly equivalent to the number of serious Internet service providers. Con- sequently any estimate of the resources needed has to start from a prediction of the number of local registries. This number has been growing steadily ever since the NCC has started operations. Recently the growth rate has considerably increased. In Q1/95, after the introduction of the current charging scheme, a sharp increase in the number of local IRs was observed. This trend continued in Q2/95 and still continues to this day. For details see the report on the 1995 revenue situation. ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 1 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ The table below gives an overview of the observed and expected number of registries: +------------+-----------------+-----------------------------------+ | | Observed | Expected | |Registries | Q4 Q1 Q2 | Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 | | | 94 95 95 | 95 95 96 96 96 96 | +------------+-----------------+-----------------------------------+ | Large ISP | 17 17 19 | 20 22 24 26 28 30 | | Medium ISP | 28 31 35 | 38 42 46 50 54 58 | | Small ISP | 51 84 119 | 153 188 222 256 290 324 | | Enterprise | 14 15 17 | 18 20 22 24 26 28 | |Last Resort | 31 32 32 | 32 32 3 3 3 3 | | | | | | TOTAL | 141 179 222 | 261 304 317 359 401 443 | +------------+-----------------+-----------------------------------+ The figure below illustrates that we expect the total number of registries is expected to grow lin- earily during 1996: 500++---------------------------------------------------+ | | | | 450++ *A | | ** | 400++ *A* | | ** | | *A* | 350++ ** | | ** | 300++ A****A | | ** | | ** | 250++ *A | | *** | | *A* | 200++ ** | | *A* | 150++ ** | | A* | | | 100++----+----+----+-----+----+----+-----+----+----+----+ Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 The irregularity between Q4.95 and Q1/96 is caused by the expected closure of almost all "Last Resort" registries. Since these registries did not con- tribute to funding in the past, this development has no effect on the expected revenue. Otherwise the almost linear prediction looks very simple at first ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 2 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ glance. Some other indicators predict more than linear growth while others predict slightly less than linear growth. These numbers represent the best possible estimates the RIPE NCC is able pro- duce. We now have mechanisms in place to detect deviations from expected figures very quickly and take necessary actions. Challenges Given the increased growth rates and the current staffing situation there are two main challenges for the year 1996 are o Consolidation of Registration Services o Re-Start of Other Activities. Registration services are the most critical services the NCC provides. They are critical both in terms of response time and quality. Quality is mainly measured in the degree of fairness and transparency of decisions as well as the support of the local IRs, the customers. With the high growth rate of requests and the increasing number of players, registration services are undergoing a major transition and will continue this process through much of 1996. The major aspects of this are similar to the issues currently faced by ISPs: Increasing Division of Work During 1996 we will reach a total of 9 persons spending the majority of their time on regis- tration services, compared to three persons at this stage. This necessitates a total revision of how this work is organised. Hierarchical Organisation We will introduce a much clearer division of senior vs junior and second-line vs first-line support. Dedicated Person per Customer The first-line support persons will have their own set of customers, so that each customer ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 3 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ normally deals with only one person at the NCC. Request Tracking The flow of requests among this many people necessitates other queueing and tracking mecha- nisms than electronic mailboxes. Several request tracking (trouble ticketing) systems have been evaluated. Ticketing and message lookup by ticket number is already implemented. Request tracking will be added as soon as prac- tical. Resource Accounting Together with request tracking we will get much more detailed insight in how resources are being used in registration services. We will develop these data to detect problems and fur- ther optimise registration services. We will also investigate how this can be used for charging purposes. Documentation and Training With the increasing number of customers, train- ing and documentation are increasingly impor- tant. We have already started specific train- ing courses about registration services for both new and established customers. This will continue together with improvements in documen- tation. Due to the high growth rate in registration services and critical staffing situation the other NCC activ- ities have been suffering badly. Some of these activities are quite important to the European Internet community and have to be continued or even intensified. Furthermore it is important that the NCC keeps doing other work than registration ser- vices in order to keep highly qualified people interested to work here. Therefore other activities have to be (re-) started during 1996 with enough resources to produce useful results. ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 4 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ 2. 1996 Activities & Expenditure The table below gives an overview of the activities and the associated expenditure. The following sec- tions will detail all activities according to the "RIPE NCC Activity Plan" ripe-125. +----------------------+------------------------------------+ | | 1995 | | | revised % 1996 % delta | +----------------------+------------------------------------+ | | | |Registration Services | 358 68 556 61 198 | | Other Services | 71 13 162 18 91 | | Admin & Reporting | 78 15 138 15 60 | | New Activities | 22 4 60 6 38 | | | | +----------------------+------------------------------------+ | TOTAL (kECU) | 529 100 916 100 387 | +----------------------+------------------------------------+ Registration Services The "Registration Services" budget line represents the basic NCC activities related to the NCC being a Regional Internet Registry, such as handling of incoming requests for address space, assignment and allocation of the address space and the coordination with organisations such as other regional Internet registries and IANA. Also included in this budget line are the activities related to the support and the training required to secure a proper start out of new registries, which will eventually lead to a reduction of the load on the RIPE-NCC. In relation to ripe-125 these are 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, 3.8, and half of 4.1. The high absolute growth in "Registration Services" represents more personnel being hired for these activities as well as some external contracts to produce documentation and training material. Note that the majority of the increase due to the catch- up programme being performed in the second half of 1995 as per the revised expenditure plan reported elsewhere. This increases the budget line in 1996 because the salaries are budgeted for only part of the year in 1995. Real growth in personnel in 1996 thus is less than it may appear at first sight. I do not propose linear growth with workload. Assum- ing unchanged workload growth patterns 1996 will ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 5 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ see a consolidation followed by very modest growth in 1997. At the same time note that the relative size of "Registration Services" decreases slightly in relation to the other activities. Other Activities The "Other Activities" line encompasses all activi- ties which are not part of the other three cate- gories. These are the technical activities not related to registration services or new activities. In particular the maintenance of the Routing Reg- istry as well as other tools developed at the RIPE-NCC, such as PRIDE, the update of the Database management tools, and the maintenance of RIPE related documents and meetings organisation. For details see the following sections. This budget line increases significantly in absolute terms. These activities have been neglected during the past resource shortages. Those in the most dire need of attention will be progressed again. The budget line also increases slightly relatively to the others. This does not so much reflect a change in policy but rather the fact that not enough resources were available in the previous period, causing a shift towards "Registration Services". Administration and Reporting The "Administration & Reporting" budget line repre- sents activities 6.1-6.4 of the activity plan, as well as the formal procedures concerned with billing and invoicing. This lines increases in absolute terms because the resources necessary for regular reporting will be available again. Also the effort involved in charg- ing and billing has turned out to be considerable even with the current relatively simple charging model. Note: The constant relative size of this category is slightly misleading because of a budgeting change. In 1995 this category was bearing the full cost of NCC computer system administra- tion. This cost is now being divided over all activities because the systems are obviously ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 6 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ not being used just for "Administration & Reporting". It is important to note that this figure assumes a charging scheme for 1996 which is very simple. More involved charging schemes will add significantly to the resources necessary in this category. New Activities The "New Activities" line represents the participa- tion in special projects approved by the RIPE commu- nity and the NCC contributors, as defined in the RIPE-NCC activity plan (4.4). The currently planned activities are related to IPv6 tracking and testing. This represents roughly 50% of the planned expenditure. The remaining 50% are reserved for necessary activities arising during 1996. Note that this is less than one third of the ceiling set by ripe-125. Support for New Registries The expenditure proposed on activities specifically for new registries is ECU 172k all of which is in the "Registration Services" category. Reserves Although building reserves is not expenditure, the buildup of prudent reserves should continue in 1996. This is necessary because TERENA has to avoid lia- bility for NCC operations as much as possible. As the size of the NCC and the commercial and strategic impact of its services increase, liabilities and the need for stability increase as well. Employment related liabilities are estimated at ECU 380k. A more careful liability analysis will be done during 1996. ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 7 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ Summary The proposed set of activities strikes a balance between what is desired by the community and what can be achieved by the NCC considering the necessary growth, while maintaining a reasonable level of cost at the same time. The main challenges for 1996 are re-structuring and consolidation of registration services as well as re-start of other important activities. The total increase in expenditure compared to the revised 1995 budget is 73% while the number of cus- tomers rises by 55% at the same time. The high total growth is a consequence of the catch-up opera- tion in progress and mainly due to the additional staff hired during 1995. Their salaries show in 1996 for the first whole business year. Assuming no major changes in workload by the end of 1996 the RIPE NCC will have reached a stable state producing a high level of standard services while still being capable of starting new activities as needed in the changing Internet environment. Fur- ther growth of the NCC is expected to be moderate in 1997 and beyond. ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 8 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ Activities in Detail The remaining sections of this document detail the planned activities according to the "RIPE NCC Activ- ity Plan" (ripe-125). The numbering scheme corre- sponds to ripe-125 and significant parts of the activity descriptions have been included. Some of them have been amended slightly. The table below summarises the correspondance of activities and budget lines: +----------------------+-----------------------------+ | Budget Line | Activities | +----------------------+-----------------------------+ |Registration Services | 3.1,3.2,3.4,3.8,4.1(50%) | | Other Services | 4.1(50%) + all others | | Admin & Reporting | 6.1-6.4 + billing&invoicing | | New Activities | 4.4 | +----------------------+-----------------------------+ ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 9 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ 3. Technical - Coordination Activities 3.1. Internet Registry for Europe The RIPE NCC will provide Internet number registra- tion services for Europe and the surrounding area. It acts as a Regional Internet Registry. The RIPE NCC performs this function in close cooperation and coordination with a. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) b. Other Regional Internet Registries. c. Local Internet Registries This activity includes providing the necessary DNS services for functions like address to name mapping (in-addr.arpa). In exceptional cases the NCC can act as the Registry of last resort for European organisations. This activity will be resourced sufficiently to achieve the high service level available tradition- ally with the goal of processing fully documented address space allocation and assignment requests within a maximum of two working days. The personnel resources available at full deployment will total some 200 hours per week. In addition to that this activity includes the main- tenance of local IR training material and the deliv- ery of courses for new and established local IRs. Some of this work, such as technical writing, will be contracted out. ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 10 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ 3.2. Maintain a database of European IP networks and their man- agement information. The database maintained contains several classes of objects. These objects are described in detail in ripe-13 and later revisions. The NCC will be responsible for the database entries; this includes a. collection of database entries b. checking of individual entries c. checking of consistency and integrity of the database. Quarterly reports on changes in the contents of the database will be produced, together with statistics about the number of database entries. This activity will have its resources increased suf- ficiently to resume the necessary maintenance work (b and c above). It will be executed by registra- tion services staff and thus form a buffer activity which can be expanded and contracted according to the immediate needs of activity 3.1. 3.3. Distribution of the database. Secondary copies of the database can be installed at other sites upon request. It is the responsibility of the NCC to keep track of such secondaries. The RIPE NCC will provide assistance to local registries in setting up secondary database servers. An up to date record of secondary sites will be maintained on line. The database availability is currently excellent. This activity is not urgently needed. No resources are allocated for it. However, should the need arise it can be started up quickly because the nec- essary technology will be enhanced in activity 4.1 and used by activity 3.4. ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 11 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ 3.4. Coordination of database exchange with other organisa- tions. The NCC will coordinate and execute the exchange of database information with NCC's outside Europe. The result will be that for the end user of the database one uniform set of global information will be avail- able. This activity has seen almost no progress other than in the Routing Registry part of the database where little resources are needed to exchange information. In other areas of the database there was no progress at all in 1995. In 1996 this will be started again with emphasis on registration data exchange with the InterNIC. The possibilities of RWhois and whois++ will be explored. The activity has 12 engineer- hours per week allocated. 3.5. Keep a record of operational contact points. This will consist of a list of NOC's and responsible people that will be used as a reference list for the individual NOC's to be used in case of network related incidents, including security incidents. Individual NOC's will be able to subscribe to a weekly update service. The database and self-maintained (majordomo) mailing lists at the NCC have proven sufficient for this activity. No resources are allocated in 1996. 3.6. Placement of name servers and backup servers in Europe, and beyond. On a regular basis the interworking between the DNS name servers in Europe, and their connections to name servers outside Europe, must be checked. Detected errors and inconsistencies must be reported. Corrective actions must be followed in case of severe problems. The result will be a con- sistent set of name servers. This activity has not consumed resources in 1995. No resources will be allocated for 1996. However, the RIPE NCC will continue to monitor the DNS and react to requests from RIPE if necessary and if resources are available. ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 12 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ 3.7. Referral Service. The RIPE NCC will perform a Referral Service for Internet Service providers. The NCC will do this in a fair and impartial way. The service is only available to service providers contributing to RIPE NCC funding. This activity has 4 hours/week of administrative staff time allocated to it, which is sufficient given the high degree of automation used for this activity. 3.8. Coordination with Local Registries. The RIPE NCC will keep close contact with Local Reg- istries in Europe. The RIPE NCC will assist such registries in setting up and maintaining their ser- vices. This activity may include presentations on the work of the RIPE NCC for broader audiences, such as relevant conferences and workshops. It may also include coordinated development of common tools. The first part of this activity is indistinguishable from activity 3.1. Nominal resources will be allo- cated to the second part. 3.9. Routing Registry Maintenance The RIPE NCC will maintain the RIPE Routing Registry according to the relevant RIPE documents. It will encourage European service providers to use the RR and support them in doing so. The NCC will actively work with service providers to minimise gaps in cov- erage. It will provide training and report on the status of the registry. The NCC will coordinate with other RRs to achieve Internet wide RR coverage. The RIPE NCC will identify and propose needed exten- sions to the RR. This activity will be stepped up significantly in 1996 to 20 hours/week of engineering time. This is expected to be sufficient to do significant work in extending coverage and awareness as well as keeping the quality of registered data at a high level. ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 13 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ 3.10. PRIDE Tool Maintenance The RIPE NCC will maintain the Routing Registry Tools developed by the PRIDE project. This activity does not cover development of new tools or signifi- cant new features. The RIPE NCC will identify and propose needed extensions to the tools. While this activity is highly desirable, it is impossible to do significant work on this in the current situation. It is expected that others such as the US Routing Arbiter project will take the lead in this activity. 12 hours/week engineering time should be sufficient to track and influence other activities. Once the NCC stabilises in 1996 sepa- rate funds could be raised to step up this activity. ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 14 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ 4. Technical - Development Activities 4.1. Database management tools. Tools for management of the database and their main- tenance are an important work item for the NCC. The result will be the availability of a consistent database. This activity is important to the functioning of the NCC and will be done with 20 hours/week engineering time. A prioritised work plan has been presented to the RIPE DB working group. This plan will be exe- cuted with the current priority items being com- pleted in 1996. 4.2. Database querying tools. Development and maintenance of the whois utility. The result will be a program, available from a file server, that permits remote interrogation of the database. Tools are available. Only nominal effort is fore- seen for maintenance in this area. No new develop- ments. 4.3. DNS quality control tools. Utilities for quality control of the interworking of the DNS name servers will be developed and main- tained. The result will be a set of software and documentation, available from a server. Both tools and regular output of them are available. Only nominal effort is foreseen for maintenance in this area. No new developments. ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 15 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ 4.4. Special projects. The RIPE NCC can participate in special projects that have been approved by at least the RIPE commu- nity. The nature of the participation can be admin- istrative, managerial or technical. The total amount of NCC participation should not exceed 20% of the NCC resources. Results of the special projects will be publicly available. 24 hours/week engineering time will be allocated for this. The currently planned activities are related to IPv6 tracking and testing. This represents roughly 50% of the planned resources. The remaining 50% are reserved for necessary activities arising during 1996. ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 16 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ 5. Administrative - RIPE Activity Support 5.1. Keeping the RIPE document store. The NCC will keep RIPE documents on line and easily accessible to the RIPE community. Copies of other document stores relevant to the RIPE community, such as the repository of RFCs, will equally be provided. Modern document retrieval utilities will be installed and maintained to facilitate access to the document store. This activity has received almost no attention in 1995, resulting in the need for better maintainabil- ity as well as for revision of the server software and re-homing to a newer platform. Significant staff time and some external consultancy will be used to make the document store more useful and eas- ier to navigate. The main emphasis will be on use- ful information for NCC customers and will concen- trate on access via WWW. 5.2. Technical and secretarial support for studies undertaken by RIPE. The NCC will provide technical and clerical support for RIPE studies and working groups in order to enhance continuity and coordination of the work between RIPE meetings. No resources will be allocated to this activity in 1996 5.3. Organisational support for RIPE meetings. RIPE meeting attendance is expected to be on the order of 80 persons, meeting three times a year. The NCC will provide clerical support to organise these meetings in order to keep them productive. The current level of resources is about 6 hours/week of staff time which will be maintained in 1996. Most of this time goes into organisation of the one meeting outside Amsterdam while the meetings in Ams- terdam take comparatively little resources. ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 17 RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1996 Daniel Karrenberg ____________________________________________________ 6. Administrative - Reporting 6.1. Quarterly Activity Reports Quarterly reports on all activities will be produced for the RIPE participating organisations and the RIPE NCC funding organisations. This activity has had almost no resources allocated in 1995 due to the staff shortage. Keeping opera- tions going is considered more important than reporting. In 1996 sufficient resources will be allocated to resume formal quarterly reporting. 6.2. Quarterly Problem Reports Quarterly reports on outstanding problems will be produced for the RIPE participating organisations and the RIPE NCC funding organisations. See above. 6.3. RIPE Meeting Reports The NCC reports on its ongoing work and outstanding problems also to each RIPE meeting. These meetings currently take place three times a year. These reports have been delivered even in 1995. Sufficient resources will be allocated to continue them in 1996. 6.4. Annual Reports The NCC will produce annual reports. The annual report will contain a summary of the activities and an overview of the financial situa- tion. Sufficient resources will be allocated to prepare the 1996 annual report. ____________________________________________________ ripe-133.txt Page 18