RIPE NCC


RIPE NCC is the regional Internet registry for Europe, West Asia, and the former USSR. It is headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands, with a branch office in Dubai, UAE.
A RIR oversees the allocation and registration of Internet number resources in a specific region.
The RIPE NCC supports the technical and administrative coordination of the infrastructure of the Internet. It is a not-for-profit membership organisation with over 10,000 members located in over 76 countries in its service region.
Any individual or organisation can become a member of the RIPE NCC. The membership consists mainly of Internet service providers, telecommunication organisations, educational institutions, governments, regulatory agencies, and large corporations.
The RIPE NCC also provides technical and administrative support to Réseaux IP Européens, a forum open to all parties with an interest in the technical development of the Internet.

History

The RIPE NCC began its operations in April 1992 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Initial funding was provided by the academic networks Réseaux Associés pour la Recherche Européenne members, EARN, and EUnet. The RIPE NCC was formally established when the Dutch version of the Articles of Association was deposited with the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce on 12 November 1997. The first RIPE NCC Activity Plan was published in May 1991.
On 25 November 2019, RIPE NCC announced that it had made its “final /22 IPv4 allocation from the last remaining addresses in our available pool. We have now run out of IPv4 addresses.” RIPE NCC will continue to allocate IPv4 addresses, but only “from organisations that have gone out of business or are closed, or from networks that return addresses they no longer need. These addresses will be allocated to our members according to their position on a new waiting list ….” The announcement also called for support for the implementation of the IPv6 roll-out.

Activities

The RIPE NCC supports the development of the Internet through technical coordination of the Internet infrastructure in its service region and beyond. It undertakes many activities in this area, including:

Legal

The RIPE NCC is governed by Dutch law.

Organisational

The RIPE NCC consists of:
; Members
; Executive board
; RIPE NCC staff

The RIPE NCC and RIPE

Réseaux IP Européens is a forum open to all parties with an interest in the technical development of the Internet. Although similar in name, RIPE and the RIPE NCC are separate entities. However, they are highly interdependent. The RIPE NCC provides administrative support to RIPE, such as the facilitation of RIPE Meetings and giving administrative support to RIPE Working Groups.

Fees

Internet number resources do not have any monetary value. The RIPE NCC charges members an annual membership fee. Since 2012 this fee has been equal for all members and is unrelated to resource holdings. However a separate charge is made for each Provider Independent number resource associated with customers of members.

Databases

The RIPE Database

The RIPE Database is a public database containing registration details of the IP addresses and AS numbers originally allocated to members by the RIPE NCC. It shows which organisations or individuals currently hold which Internet number resources, when the allocations were made and contact details. The organisations or individuals that hold these resources are responsible for updating information in the database.
As of March 2008, the database contents are available for near real-time mirroring.

RIPE Routing Registry

The RIPE Routing Registry is a sub-set of the RIPE Database and holds routing information in RPSL. The RIPE RR is a part of the Internet RR, a collection of databases that mirror each other. Information about domain names in the RIPE Database is for reference only. It is not the domain name registry that is run by the country code Top Level Domain administrators of Europe and surrounding areas.

Service regions

The RIPE NCC service region consists of countries in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia. RIPE NCC services are available to users outside this region through Local Internet Registries; these entities must have a valid legal address inside the service region but can offer their services to anyone.
Asia
Southwest Asia
Central Asia
Europe
North America
Prior to the formation of AFRINIC, the RIPE NCC served the following countries: