- European
regional co-ordination of registries is a necessary and indispensable activity,
ensuring good functioning of the Internet network and its baseline services.
- Its creation
and maintenance is based on constant comparisons among sector operators
in order to determine common policies and positions on the various topics.
- The creation
of RIPE (Réseaux IP Européens), the first step in European
Registries Co-ordination, was the result of careful preparatory work among
the Internet operators at the time. RIPE was set up at the end of the 80s
and involved the leading European experts in research environments (universities,
research centres, etc) and from Eunet (the European UNIX Network) which
started activities in 1982 using UUCP connections. Its head office has
always been in Amsterdam, initially at the NIKHEF offices (National Institute
for Nuclear and High energy physics).
- The academic
and research community in Italia at the time made an important contribution
to the creation and start up of RIPE activities, via the participation
of technicians, mainly from CNR and INFN: in particular, people like Antonio
Blasco Bonito and Enzo Valente during creation.
- Subsequently
there was constant participation at RIPE co-ordination meetings by Antonio
Blasco Bonito and Cristina Vistoli.
- RIPE activities
have from the start focused on assignment of IP addresses and correlated
activities.
- It should
be remembered that IP addresses were allocated at that time in a centralized
way using "InterNIC".
- With the
growth of the Internet in Europe it quickly became clear that a change
was required from the centralized model to one on a regional basis and
RIPE was the first RIR (Regional Internet Registries) to be set up.
- At the
beginning IP addresses were allocated on the basis of service providers;
while initially national "last resort" registries were created
for those who needed public IP addresses but still had no active Internet
connection.
- This was
carried out for Italy by CNR-CNUCE, through GARR-NIS.
- The experience
of national "last resort" registries did not last, given the
continued growth of Internet connections and consequent increasingly central
role played by LIR (Local Internet Registries), assigning and managing
within their own areas the IP addresses assigned to users.
- The LIRs
still remain central part of RIPE organization; for management of RIR activities
RIPE created a non-profit organization embracing all European LIRs, called
RIPE-NCC, funded by contributions made annually by every LIR.
- At present
in Italy there are some hundreds of LIRs, belonging almost entirely to
companies operating in the commercial sector (Telecom Italy spa, Tiscali
spa, Dev Italy srl, etc.) but also including some in the public sector
(GARR, CNR, the Tuscany Regional Authority, etc.).
- RIPE activities
were organized after the initial meetings to set up work groups. One of
the first to be set up was the DNS group, which in the late 90s led to
the creation of a workgroup for management of TLDs, which was later assigned
activities known as "CENTR RIPE" and this finally in 1998 led
to the creation of CENTR (Council of European National Top Level Domain
Registries).
- CENTR
is a non-profit organization founded by the administrators of European
ccTLD Registries (country code Top Level Domain), which later came to include
some other non-European Registries (e.g.: Japan, Canada, New Zealand, Iran,
etc.) in order to discuss questions of management of the ccTLDs, creating
a common co-ordination policy to best represent the interests of the community
at the various meetings dealing with ccTLD administration, such as ICANN,
EU meetings and those of national governments.
- The principal
activities carried out by CENTR in the first phase was to represent the
point of view of the ccTLDs at ICANN, in particular the European meetings
and especially at discussions connected to the publication of the "green
paper" and then the "white paper" by the US Government on
Internet governance.
- Subsequently
CENTR was structured in work groups which, especially for technical aspects,
continued to operate in close collaboration with RIPE.
- At present
there are about 65 members, comprising effective members, associates and
observers.
- Through
regular meetings, mailing-lists and discussions on specific topics, the
members can exchange opinions and share common policies and approaches
to management of ccTLD Registries.
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