RIPE decision and its consequences on the elimination of two Russian LIRs (Netup, gcxc.net)

Last week, the RIPE NCC sent out letters to Netup customers that their LIR was excluded from the RIPE NCC and they had to find a new LIR or get their own LIR status. The letter itself was published in the ENOG chat ( copy on pastebin ). A brief excerpt from the letter:

Sponsored by LIR, NetUP Ltd., is no longer a member of the RIPE NCC. Therefore, the sponsorship agreement has become invalid.

If you would like to continue, you need to:

a) Signing an End User Assignment Agreement with a sponsoring LIR of your choice. You can find a list of Local Internet Registries here
or
b) Become a RIPE NCC Member. RIPE NCC member here

This news was published on the portals opennet.ru and linux.org.ru , but the news itself was politicized in the comments, and the real consequences of this event were not disclosed. Let's try to calmly understand this situation.

Netup provides support services for PI-blocks and AS. The meaning of this “support service” is that the client pays annual payments to Netup, and Netup pays to the RIPE NCC (the RIPE NCC does not accept payments directly from users who do not have LIR status). In the RIPE database, this is indicated by the sponsoring-org attribute. It looks like this:
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ORG-JR8-RIPE is LIR Rostelecom (you can see whois). Thus, we have the following: The PI block 194.54.12.0/22 ​​is used by Sberbank, the LIR is provided by Rostelecom. This network is fine.

After excluding Netup from the RIPE NCC, the RIPE NCC sent letters to the owners of PI blocks and removed the sponsoring-org attribute from inetnum (IP addresses) and aut-num (Autonomous Systems) objects. Using the example of the 195.43.144.0/24 network, let's see what happened in the RIPE database recently that we have now. Unfortunately, RIPE itself does not show the change history of objects, but you can use a service that caches objects for a while and therefore shows a bit of outdated information. On this link (its archive version for today) it is clear that until recently there was an attribute sponsoring-org with the value " ORG-NA225-RIPE " (the same Netup). At the moment (the archival version of the object for today with nic.ru) in the RIPE database for this network the sponsoring-org attribute is missing.

Thus, Netup PI-blocks really remained without LIR, which means that if the owners do not find a new LIR within a month, they will lose them. Here it should be noted that Netup filed (or are going to submit) to the RIPE NCC arbitration (you can read the link for the reason for excluding Netup from the RIPE NCC). If arbitration is won, all changes will be rolled back and you can forget about this story. However, there is evidence ( archive ) that arbitration in such a situation is a big chance to lose.

In this situation, the RIPE NCC employee Alex Semenyaka in the ENOG chatroom recommends the following:

I would, on the site of the owners of PI, now carefully arrange for a transition to another LIR, and prepare the documents (warning that the transition is not 100% complete). If everything is bad, then everything is ready, and the transition from finished documents is quickly carried out. If the arbitrator withdraws the decision, then we apologize and remain with NetUp

Thus, in case of arbitration loss by Netup, resource owners (IP addresses, AS) are encouraged to look for a new LIR right now.

Now let's try to understand who are potentially affected. For this, the inet-num and aut-num files in which the objects modified on March 1, 2019 were found were parsed by analysts lor and opennet , on that very day RIPE removed the sponsoring-org attribute from PI blocks and autonomous systems. The results are posted on pastebin: AS , PI-blocks (records related to Netup begin 2019-03-01T11: 56: 27Z and end 2019-03-01T12: 28: 39Z, several records at the beginning and at the end got there due to the lack of exact search criteria for networks that were previously in Netup, because from the RIPE website you cannot download the archive file ripe.db.inetnum). Analysis of these files (first of all, by AS) indicates that Netup clients were:

1. Commercial telecom operators (telecoms, mostly small, the number of Vainakh-Telecom subscribers could not be found in public sources)
2. Commercial enterprises (for example, X5 Retail Group (AS44704))
3. State-owned companies (or with state participation), starting with Sberbank branches (AS47457, AS58112) and ending with a hospital in Kemerovo (AS35835)

Actually, the first two categories of problems with the transition to another LIR should not be, if they know about this problem at all (not the fact that all the recipients in the RIPE NCC and Netup mailing lists are relevant), but with state companies everything is not so simple. As a rule, they must hold a tender in order to renew the contract with another legal entity. face that may be significantly more than 30 days. If Netup loses arbitration, they offer this option in their letter :

In the event that we fail to prove the illegitimacy of applying sanctions during arbitration, we will invite all clients to enter into agreements with the new LIR organization on the same terms.

Given that the new LIR organization should be a different legal entity. the person, then with the renewal of this contract, the state. Companies may experience significant difficulties due to the bureaucratization of the procurement process of goods and services.

A small addition regarding LIR gcxc.net. Unfortunately, there is no information when they deleted objects from the RIPE NCC, so it is not yet clear how to parry the RIPE database and find potentially affected networks and AS. There is only a comment ( archive ) from the company itself on the forum nag.ru, which describes the essence of the situation because of which they were also excluded from the RIPE NCC.

I wish the companies of Netup and gcxc.net good luck on arbitration, and keep their clients with valuable resources.

UPD 2019-03-07: Updated lists of AS and networks appeared (by archives for the end of February)
Autonomous systems supported by Netup
PI IPs supported by NetUP
Autonomous systems supported by GCXC
PI IPs supported by GCXC