In May 2026, Josh attended RIPE 92 in Edinburgh, a meeting of Internet service providers, operators, and interested parties (including academia and governments), hosted in the UK for the first time in over a decade. A lot has changed since RIPE 69 when it was based in London in 2014: this time, we had talks about IP addressing policies when deploying networked equipment in outer space (albeit still considering the need for this to be IPv4!)
Some key takeaways from the meeting include:
- An interesting ‘BoF’ discussion on the relationship between the RIPE community and the IETF, including how to better bridge the relationship between the RIPE working groups and the IETF, given both have overlaps in different areas.
- The impact of the EU’s upcoming Digital Networks Act and its potential wider consequences, including restrictions on how network providers are able to interact and work together.
- Various developments on Internet of Things (IoT) security, including shocking findings on poor DNS implementation in IoT (where a study revealed over 40% use hardcoded DNS resolvers), and emulated IoT honeypot devices for early detection of potential IoT attacks.
Attending RIPE meetings is a great opportunity for gaining greater insight into the day-to-day work and implementation approaches of network operators from a variety of industry backgrounds. We’re glad to have engaged with both operators and regulators on different topics - such as gaining insight into network anomalies from those behind them, or informal conversations on potential threats to Internet or telecoms resilience (key components of our ongoing network research).