On Monday, November 27, the RIPE NCC87 began in Rome. During the opening, RIPE Chairman Mirjam Kühne recalled that the capital of Italy is hosting the meeting of the European Regional Internet Registry for the third time. This time, a long way has been covered: for example, the RIPE 21 conference, held in Rome in 1995, became the most representative at that time: 110 people took part in its work. This year's conference is attended by 424 people - 363 in Rome and 61 online, with a total of 966 registrations for the conference. This shows the growing interest in the activities of the RIPE NCC and the importance of the role of the Regional Internet Registrar.
The Head of the host party, the Italian traffic exchange point Namex, Maurizio Goretti, addressed the audience with a greeting. His performance was colored with humor and national flavor. Thus, he presented a souvenir T-shirt issued for the conference with a carbonara pasta recipe, and also reported a serious “problem” with Namex. The company traditionally names its data centers after Roman emperors, but the next data center, in accordance with chronology, should be named after Nero, who, as we know, burned Rome...
The participants then moved on to discuss serious issues. Swiss researcher Romain Jacob devoted his presentation to the problem of global network energy consumption. He said that, according to 2022 data, the energy consumption of data centers is 240-340 terawatt-hours, and telecommunication networks - 260-360 terawatt-hours. However, about 60% of all energy in the world is still produced in carbon-intensive ways. Thus, reducing the energy consumption of the global Internet is an extremely important task from an environmental point of view. Romain Jacob's report was paradoxically titled: “The Internet of Tomorrow Must Sleep More and Grow Old,” but the researcher substantiated both theses. He showed that hibernating resources that are not constantly used (ports, channels, devices, etc.) and updating hardware less frequently are two ways to significantly reduce power consumption.
And researcher Randy Bush titled his presentation “The RIR Social Contract.” The meaning of his speech is that the Internet has become an object of critical infrastructure, and bureaucratic contracts regulating and formalizing the activities of registrars should be replaced by social contracts that take into account the interests of all stakeholders, including national governments and civil society, whose role will become increasingly important. At the end of the plenary session, Randy Bush was presented with an award named after Robert Blokzijl, a Dutch scientist, creator and first head of the RIPE NCC. It is awarded for outstanding contributions to the development of the Internet in the region in which the RIPE NCC operates.
