The RIPE Labs Podcast

The White House recently announced plans to boost Internet routing security in the US through better RPKI coverage. So how does RPKI help secure BGP? How easy is it to boost coverage on a national level? And what's the future potential of the infrastructure? Our guest Tim Bruijnzeels shares his views.

Tim is Principal Software Engineer for RPKI at the RIPE NCC and has worked in standards development and software implementation around RPKI for well over a decade. He talked to us about where RPKI is at today, how governments can and have aided its adoption, and how work being done on ASPA and BGPsec promise a more secure future for the Internet.

Show notes:

02:40 - The Dublin IETF meeting back in 2008.

03:17 - Tim has contributed to a number of RFCs over the years.

03:40 - NLnet Labs develops free, liberally licensed, open-source software for DNS and BGP routing.

03:50 - Krill is a free, open source RPKI Certificate Authority developed by NLnet Labs that lets you run delegated RPKI under one or multiple RIRs.

07:24 - You can read more on how the Internet routes around damage on RIPE Labs.

10:47 - Get more information on how to manage ROAs through the RPKI Dashboard.

11:36 - Check out the RIPE NCC's Routing Information Service (RIS).

12:17 - Alex Band's article on the launch of the RIPE NCC Resource Certification Service back in 2011.

13:51 - There are a number of RPKI validators to choose from, including Routinator from NLnet Labs.

17:32 - Here's a nice explainer article on ASPA.

22:07 - Plans to support ASPA and BGPsec router certificates in RIPE NCC Quarterly Planning.

24:42 - Press Release: White House Office of the National Cyber Director Releases Roadmap to Enhance Internet Routing Security.

26:47 - More on Dutch government measures for ensuring RPKI coverage.

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Being at the core of the Internet places the DNS under a lot of pressure. New forms of DNS abuse emerge each year, disputes over domain names persist, and all the while, the Internet just keeps getting bigger. Mikhail Anisimov from ICANN talks about the coordinated effort involved in meeting these challenges and shares his views on DNS in Central Asia.

As one of the organisations at the core of the Internet that works to coordinate the supply of Internet numbers and domain names, ICANN plays a vital role in helping to support and develop the DNS. Our guest Mikhail has been ICANN’s Stakeholder Engagement Senior Manager for Eastern Europe and Central Asia since 2020, so we thought who better to talk to about DNS, DNSSEC, and its ongoing development in Central Asia.

Show notes:

02:18 - Wikipedia entry on DNS

03:30 - You can learn lots about ICANN on their website

04:10 – There’s a list of all the root DNS servers and their operators on the IANA website. The RIPE NCC operates K-root.

05:12 – Statdns has this useful list of DNS related RFCs

08:40 – New gTLD program

09:10 – FAQ on the next round of the new gTLD

15:30 - The 8th Central Asian Internet Governance Forum took place on 21-22 June 2024.

15:51 – ICANN’s Domain Name Security Threat Information Collection and Reporting (DNSTICR) project

16:02 - …and the broader Domain Abuse Activity Reporting (DAAR) project

19:07 - Calling Time on DNSSEC by Geoff Huston

22:19 – Dan Kaminsky in the Internet Hall of Fame

28:00 – ICANN page on DNSSEC

33:21 – The next Central Asia Peering and Interconnection Forum, CAPIF 3, takes place in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, from 24-25 September 2024.

40:42 – Read Chris Buckridge’s Fragmentation: Still the Internet's Big Bad here on RIPE Labs.

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For many, the Internet is essentially a black box. We connect with endpoints to send and receive data, but we have little insight into what happens in between. Dr Paola Grosso talks about how the CATRIN project seeks to provide more visibility and control so we can make more responsible decisions on how we traverse the Internet.

Show notes:

02:17 – Paola’s UvA profile

04:21 – CATRIN project homepage

04:44 – UPIN project announcement

06:00 – Partners in the CATRIN project are listed at the bottom of the project homepage

09:29 – The ‘main paper’ on the responsible Internet that we talk about is the article in the Journal of Network and Systems Management. There’s also a series of posts about CATRIN on the SIDN Labs blog.

24:12 – See more on the Waag’s role in CATRIN

26:05 – Read up on the latest developments in MANRS.

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In this episode of the RIPE Labs podcast, three Internet pioneers talk about how they helped grow the Internet out of its early infancy, back when its purpose - and much of the excitement around its development - lay in the promise of connecting researchers from around the world.

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Show notes:

00:03:22 - Daniel Karrenberg about the EUnet, the first pan-European Internet Service Provider (ISP)

00:11:18 - Dennis Jennings about his first encounter with networking and the birth EARN

00:17:40 - Daniele Bovio on the first international routing tables received via EARN and BITNET

00:22:48 - Daniel Karrenberg on Email gateways, email being the one application that worked across all networks

00:27:06 - The first transatlantic interconnection Daniel operated

00:29:18 - Dennis shares how he built NSFNET

00:32:05 - Dennis on why he decided to use TCP/IP protocol on NSFNET

00:35:39 - Daniel about the birth of RIPE and the need to coordinate IP addresses

00:41:02 - Dennis on designing the national general-purpose network of networks beyond supercomputers and its business model

00:48:29 - Daniele on EBONE, a pan-European Internet backbone

00:56:48 - Daniele on his work at America Online (AOL) and leasing transatlantic capacity

01:12:09 - EARN Panel at SEE 12

01:12:26 - the RIPE Community today

01:14:00 - Dennis Jennings shares top 3 important moments in the Internet history that he has personally overseen

01:21:00 - Daniele Bovio shares top 3 important moments in the Internet history that he has personally overseen

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Internet users, the companies who sell us our devices, and governments are all caught up in the struggle to protect our privacy. In this episode, Bert Hubert explains how outsourcing and other market forces determine the flow of control over online data and why we need to understand the consequences.

Show notes:

01:00 - PowerDNS

01:04 - I highly recommend Bert’s excellent blog berthub.eu!!

02:42 - Bert on joining TIB (oversight board for the Dutch intelligence and security services)

02:58 - Bert on leaving TIB

03:30 - Reverse Engineering the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine

03:40 - George Orwell’s Why I Write

05:31 - RIPE NCC’s response to the NIS2 directive

10:00 - Bert talking about End to End Encryption for the European Internet Forum at the European Parliament

14:27 - Trinity college research on scale of data sharing from Android devices

32:31 - More on the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) on RIPE Labs here and here

34:00 - Incidentally, Bert was co-author of RFC 5452

34:50 - Bert and Corrine Cath on SIDN’s decision to outsource some of its services to AWS (in Dutch)

41:10 - Read about recent developments with the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

48:00 - Bert on climate change (again, highly recommended!)

54:30 - Business for geeks at NLNOG

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Starlink's megaconstellations deliver broadband Internet to customers around the globe. But while the tech promises to democratise Internet access, it's not always clear how existing protocols and regulations apply beyond the clouds. In this episode, Geoff Huston talks about the future of low-orbit Internet.

Show notes:

02:20 - APNIC Labs Starlink measurements and Geoff’s podcast on LEOs and TCP

08:50 - Geostationary orbit

09:48 - Project Iridium

14:40 - Starlink

29:50 - See more from Geoff on measuring Starlink performance from his talk at RIPE 87

35:45 - Research on Starlink using RIPE Atlas

44:30 - Atmospheric nuclear testing in the 60s

45:00 - NORAD Database of satellites

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The Internet is hardly foolproof in its design, and whether by accident or on purpose, the people who use and operate it sometimes don't do things they should or do do things they shouldn't. Qasim Lone talks about strange goings on he's investigated and how RIPE Atlas can help researchers in the field.

01:00 - RIPE Atlas

01:53 - SLAC

02:59 - Read Qasim on Why SAV is Still a Problem

04:37 - Other research from Qasim and colleagues on SAV

06:02 - RFCs 2827 and 3704 describe SAV implementation

06:35 - IPv4 lease time article

07:48 - The DNS Root Manipulation article

09:10 - Manu Bretelle's email to DNS-operations mailing list

18:17 - Qasim on 240/4

23:15 - RFC 3330 describes specialised IPv4 address blocks assigned by IANA

29:00 - Listen to our episode on bias in Internet measurements

36:30 - SEE 12 takes place in Athens this April

37:45 - ...and CAPIF 3 is coming up this September!

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Quantum technologies promise all kinds of fascinating possibilities, but they also come with risks. In this episode of the RIPE Labs podcast, André Grilo, founder and CEO of QuantumNova, talks about why we need to start investing in post-quantum cryptography to protect ourselves against post-quantum threats.

01:17 - QuantumNova

05:08 - Shor’s algorithm

11:07 - Post-quantum cryptography

14:02 - NIST selected 4 post-quantum security algorithms

16:00 - EU’s programme to support companies to transition to post-quantum

23:26 - Quantum repeaters to overcome overcome entanglement distribution over long distances

25:10 - Quantum Internet Hackathon

29:28 - AI and Quantum

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Understanding outages and shutdowns and how the Internet as a whole came to be vulnerable to, and also resilient against, these kinds of events requires more than a snapshot of the current state affairs. In this episode, Jim Cowie talks about how historical measurement data can help us acquire a better understanding of the Internet.

01:40 - There's a nice, short introduction to Jim and his background right here.

03:11 - RIPE RIS

04:50 - Jim on the 2011 outage in Egypt

07:05 - Jim has since confirmed that the Renesys team was indeed using RIS BGP data since September 2001, though Routeviews remains another invaluable source of BGP data.

12:35 - Jim's presentation at CAPIF1

13:42 - Resilience of the Internet in Ukraine on RIPE Labs

15:30 - Jim on the Rogers Outage over on the Pulse blog

21:43 - Doug Madory on Cuba and the Geopolitics of Submarine Cables

31:30 - GEODE on the RIPE Labs podcast

33:30 - RIPE Atlas

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Anastasiya Pak talks to Professor Wim Vanderbauwhede - lead of the Low Carbon and Sustainable Computing activity at the School of Computing Science of the University of Glasgow - about the carbon footprint of the ICT industry, misleading narratives around digitalisation, and why the notion of frugal computing is needed to move forward.

05:49 – The split of ICT emissions - 54% home, 19% data centres, 27% networks - is taken from the "Carbon impact of video streaming" white paper by the Carbon Trust, 2021.

07:13 – Problems with the claims about emission avoidance through digitalisation are discussed in "Digital Rebound – Why Digitalization Will Not Redeem Us Our Environmental Sins", Vlad C. Coroamă and Friedemann Mattern, 2019.

26:00 - The limited potential for offsetting of emission through biomass is discussed in "There aren’t enough trees in the world to offset society’s carbon emissions – and there never will be", Bonnie Waring, 2023.

34:37 – Wim discusses the notion of Frugal Computing in more detail in in his position paper "Frugal computing – On the need for low-carbon and sustainable computing and the path towards zero-carbon computing". A more academic version is available here.

37:09 - The potential for efficiency gains through better software is discussed in "There’s plenty of room at the Top: What will drive computer performance after Moore’s law?", Charles E. Leiserson et al.

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Mapping the dialectical relationship between the Internet and rivalries of power and influence across territories calls on expertise from a variety of disciplines. On the RIPE Labs Podcast, Louis Pétiniaud discusses how he and colleagues at GEODE are investigating the geopolitical Internet.

01:14 - The GEODE website where you can also find a list of researchers at the GEODE center   

01:24 – Here's the most recent article from the GEODE team on RIPE Labs (runner up in the RIPE Labs article competition for RIPE 86)

01:29 – Louis’ presentation at RIPE 86 (video; slides)

01:48 – RIPE Atlas and RIPE RIS

07:23 – Article by Louis and colleagues on mapping the routes of the Internet in Eastern Ukraine

09:53 – Article Louis co-authored on digital routes and borders in the Middle East

14:12 – You can see the visualisations referred to in Louis’s slides from RIPE 86

18:08 – ITU infrastructure connectivity map

21: 54 – Emile Aben, Romain Fontugne, Ksenia Ermoshina on the Internet in Crimea

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What it means to serve as a RIPE NCC Executive Board member has changed dramatically in the twelve years since Christian Kaufmann first took on the role. Gone are the days of quick board meetings over an afternoon cup of coffee. Now – with recent years having seen organisational change, the pandemic, sanctions regulations, and war - the board is increasingly called upon to make decisions that impact not only the future of the RIPE NCC, but people's access to the Internet in countries across the organisation's service region.

In this episode, Anastasiya Pak talks to Christian Kaufmann - who stepped down from the board at RIPE 86 - to find out how he first got involved, what changes he's seen since then, and what it takes to serve on the board today.

01:15 – Watch Christian’s presentation at RIPE 86 where he talks about his time on the board and his decision to step down 

05:47 – RIPE NCC Strategy 2022-2026 and RIPE NCC Activity Plan and Budget 2022

06:40 – Axel Pawlik stepped down as RIPE NCC Managing Director in 2019

07:32 – Read more about how sanctions affect the RIPE NCC along with lots of other articles about sanctions on RIPE Labs

08:40 – The RIPE NCC Executive Board approved a resolution on provision of critical services at its meeting on 28 February 2022

11:08 – Hans Petter Holen took on the role of Managing Director of the RIPE NCC on 1 May 2020

11:43 – Ondřej Filip became the new RIPE NCC Executive Board Chair in September 2022

12:36 – RIPE NCC membership mailing lists

13:10 – At the time of publishing, you can still take the RIPE NCC survey 2023

14:35 – RIPE NCC Executive Board functions and expectations

18:54 – RIPE Atlas

20:45 – Sponsor RIPE Atlas

22:08 – Christian joined the ICANN Board of Directors in 2022

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In this episode of the RIPE Labs podcast, we talk about how the war has changed the way the Internet community in Ukraine works, the pressure companies and individuals are under to keep this absolutely vital resource running, and the practices that have been adopted to make sure people stay connected.

16:32 - Voluntary transfer lock policy proposal

20:40 - BCOP TF session at RIPE 86

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BGP is the Internet's de facto routing protocol - but it's also one with many vulnerabilities and is only deeply understood by a relatively small fraction of people. Delving into the threats posed by misconfigurations and prefix hijacks, Lefteris Manassakis looks at the history and evolution of BGP and discusses the importance of mitigation, monitoring and detection as provided by ARTEMIS and CodeBGP.

00:51 - ARTEMIS is a system that enables network operators to monitor, detect and mitigate the effects of BGP prefix hijacking events. Read up on ARTEMIS on RIPE Labs or read other blog posts and academic papers on the ARTEMIS website.

01:00 - Code BGP

01:07 - Lefteris presenting on CodeBGP at RIPE 85

04:10 - An example of other research from Lefteris and Fontas.

04:42 - BGP version 1 in RFC 1105

04:50 - BGP version 4 in RFC 4271

07:21 - A profile on Christos Papadimitriou

08:18 - OSPF

16:22 - The ARTEMIS paper

17:11 - Stable Internet Routing Without Global Coordination by Lixin Gao and Jennifer Rexford

19:22 - RFC 7908

21:40 - Rogers outage

26:38 - Sharon Goldberg and others on the use of maxlength in RPKI.

27:57 - RFC 9319

34:00 - RIPE NCC Community Projects Fund

35:00 - The Code BGP team

41:10 - RIS Live

48:33 - MANRS and Code BGP

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Economic sanctions have a very clear but complicated impact on people's access to the global Internet. In this episode, I talk to Dr Farzaneh Badiei from Digital Medusa about how sanctions obstruct access to the Internet.

01:25 - Read this article from Chris Buckridge announcing the independent research project on sanctions to be carried out by Digital Medusa.

01:50 - Full recording of the session at RIPE 85.

02:30 - Go check out Digital Medusa.

02:50 - More from Farzaneh on sanctions and related issues on RIPE Labs.

03:20 - Article on the .ir ccTLD case from 2014.

07:25 - You can read more about how sanctions affect the RIPE NCC in this article from Athina Fragkouli.

15:56 - Freedom Online Coalition

17:52 - RIPE Cooperation Working Group

18:14 - The IGF workshop on sanctions that Farzaneh refers to took place at IGF 2022 in Ethiopia on 30 November.

18:42 - See this article for the sanctions timeline.

18:57 - See the earlier RIPE Labs podcast episode with Kieren McCarthy on Revitalising Internet Governance.

20:25 - Again, see this article from Athina Fragkouli for more on the Dutch MFA's confirmation that IP resources are understood to be economic resources as defined in EU sanctions regulations.

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Geolocation providers usually focus on locating end user devices at the edge of the Internet. But what about the machines that make up the infrastructure in the middle? In this episode, I talk to Chris Amin about RIPE IPmap - an API developed by the RIPE NCC to do geolocate core Internet infrastructure.

The idea behind RIPE IPmap actually goes way back. Emile Aben first presented on it at RIPE 67 in 2013 and there’s an article on RIPE Labs from around the same time. You can see its development over time in this article from Jasper den Hertog and this article from Massimo Candela written during their time at the RIPE NCC.

Go check out RIPE IPmap!

01:08 - RIPE Atlas

09:20 - For those wondering, why two thirds the speed of light?

11:25 - More on PTR records

13:49 - Article on Hoiho authored by Matthew Luckie and colleagues

15:57 - PeeringDB

18:40 - RIPE Atlas probe map

25:45 - RIPE IPmap landing page and the API

28:04 - GeoNames and Natural Earth

34:10 - RIPE IPmap Active Geolocation: Mechanism and Performance Evaluation

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Although the state of the Internet in Central Asia is in some ways diverse across the region, certain shared geographical, political, and technical factors create unique challenges for local Internet communities. Ahead of the first Central Asia Peering and Interconnection Forum (CAPIF 1), we caught up with Shavkat Sabirov to talk about digitalisation in the region and the need to form a Central Asian Internet community.

Shavkat Sabirov is President of the non-profit Association of legal entities The Internet Association of Kazakhstan. He has broad knowledge and experience in Internet Governance and Cybersecurity, the ICT field and Internet business. Shavkat is a member of NCUC ICANN, a consultant at the OSCE and the NGO branch of the UN ECOSOC, and a host of such events as the previous Regional Meeting of the RIPE NCC in Almaty. He is also a member of the Public Council of the Ministry of Information and Social Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan, a member of the ICT Committee of the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs of the Republic of Kazakhstan "Atameken", where he acts as an expert in the security studies, digital technologies and cyberspace.

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01:46 – About Central Asia

05:07 – Central Asia Country Report and digitalisation in Central Asia

09:42 – Digital gap during the COVID-19 outbreak

12:01 – The role of the government in accelerating digitalisation

13:21 – Presentation by Halil Ibrahim on how to cover remote villages with the Internet

15:37 –The Interconnected Region panel and national telecom operators

26:14 – CAPIF 1

28:57 – Deployment of IPv6 in Central Asia

33:05 – UNESCO’s Internet ROAM-X Indicators Project

Interested in the Central Asian Internet community? Read this article about the RIPE NCC Days Tashkent and register for CAPIF 1.

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At start of the 90s, a small group of people came together to make sure that the numbering system that allows computers to connect with each other over the Internet would remain stable. One those people was Mirjam Kühne, now RIPE Chair. In this episode, Mirjam talks about the beginnings of the RIPE community and new challenges it faces today.

1:06 – More about RIPE

4:18 – Meet the New RIPE Chair

5:16 – Daniel Karrenberg on the first hours of the RIPE NCC

8:00 – A Tribute to Rob Blokzijl

9:35 – RIPE Working Groups

11:10 – ripe-001

13:07 – Chris Buckridge on RIPE principles

17:43 – RIPE NCC service region

18:13 – NIS 2

19:46 – RIPE Atlas

22:40 – Meetecho at RIPE Meetings

26:15 – ENOG

27:38 – CAPIF 1

28:30 – Network Operator Groups (NOGs) on RIPE Labs

32:28 – RIPE Cooperation Working Group

33:15 – Kieran McCarthy on the RIPE Labs podcast

35:51 – Measuring Damage on the Internet and Keep Ukraine Connected

39:00 – Franziska Lichtblau, RIPE PC Chair

39:37 – RIPE 85

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Are the organisations that form the Internet governance ecosystem failing to rise to new challenges the modern Internet has created? And if so, what steps need to be taken in order to revitalise Internet governance? Joining me to discuss these issues in depth are Kieren McCarthy (journalist and Internet governance expert) and Chris Buckridge (Advisor to the RIPE NCC Managing Director on issues of Global Strategic Engagement and member of the IGF's multistakeholder advisory group).

00:37 - Revitalising Global Internet Governance, by Kieren McCarthy

06:09 - Sessions and policy outcomes from ICANN 74

08:36 - More on the Internet Governance Forum (IGF); also check out this article from Chris on this year’s IGF event

13:35 - World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)

15:34 - International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

16:05 - International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

18:07 - A useful Q&A on New IP from ISOC

20:16 - RIPE Cooperation Working Group

21:01 - RIPE Accountability Task Force

21:05 - The IANA Stewardship Transition

21:23 - Chris on RIPE Principles

21:30 - Properties of Today's and Tomorrow's Internet at RIPE 84 (video)

24:27 - More on NIS 2 on RIPE Labs and a more recent update in the RIPE Cooperation WG archives

39:18 - RIPE IoT Working Group

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The analysis Pavlos and his colleagues are carrying out is part of the AI4NetMon project that aims to deliver methods for reducing biased findings from Internet measurement infrastructures. The platforms under investigation include RIPE NCC operated services RIPE RIS, RIPE Atlas, RIPEstat and also RouteViews.

01:20 - Pavlos's winning article on Bias in Internet Measurement Infrastructures

01:37 - About the Data and Science Laboratory (DataLab)

02:53 - More on the RIPE Routing Information Service (RIS)

04:10 - Robert talking about RIPE Atlas in Episode 3

19:46 - Watch Pavlos's presentation at RIPE 84

20:20 - Other data sources Pavlos and his colleagues are using: CAIDA’s AS-rank, PeeringDB, Internet Health Report (AS-hegemony), and bgp.tools.

22:15 - Read more about RACI support for AI4NetMon

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