A RIPE Meeting could be carried out amid the COVID pandemic; thanks to considerable, fast coordination. Named ‘RIPE 80’, the virtual event happened, thanks to video conferencing technology and all the modern facilities. For an uninitiated, the five-day-long event sees network operators, internet providers and others from the international internet community, discussing things that affect the community. It is usually carried out over five days, but this time around, the virtual event was cut short to 3 days due to the pandemic situation.
It was a bit shorter, with some changes to the list of matters to be talked about, and a pretty extreme reading of the phrase ‘social distancing’. Nonetheless, the first completely-digital event of the internet community went ahead successfully, with close to 1,750 people taking part on the starting day through video conferencing programs. Overall, there were 2,000 individuals in the meeting. Shared below are some of the things discussed in it.
- Developments after the non-profit RIPE NCC run out of the pool of IPv4 addresses of last November;
- The latest information from Europol about the impact of the coronavirus disease on the characteristic of cybercrimes including distributed denial of service, ransomware and phishing;
- A few of the issues that affect the deployment of IPv6; and,
- RIPEstat’s redesigned interface, which is scheduled to be launched in the upcoming meeting.
It is not known whether it will be the second virtual RIPE Meeting or one where the parties will be physically present. It will most likely be another virtual event considering that it is scheduled to take place in a few months.
RIPE NCC’s MD, Hans Petter Holen, said, “Efforts like as this are important to ensure the continuity of the RIPE community’s work on Internet coordination and policy-setting, in light of the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.” Holen thanked every person who attended the meeting and helped to make it work despite the threat that this global pandemic posed.
It was among the broader efforts of the non-profit organization to back the community of network operators, internet providers, and others. The non-profit maintains key infrastructure, registers IP addresses, and plays a part in internet routing security. It also offers services to help the broader internet community like training, plus the process of creating analytical tools for internet measurements. Organizations can sponsor the meeting and thereby, make themselves more visible in the international internet community.
