Summary

  • The RIPE NCC 2026 Activity Plan promised a K-root core-site hardware refresh by July across Amsterdam, London and Tokyo.
  • At RIPE 93 on 29 October, a RIPE NCC engineer said Amsterdam had replaced servers and routers, while London and Tokyo had replaced routers only; the remaining servers were delayed by expense.

“Refreshed” sounds final. RIPE NCC’s quarterly plan uses the word for Amsterdam and London, while keeping the three-site K-root programme “in progress”. The page was last updated on 17 September. A month later, engineer Leon Grasmeijer gave the component list that the status line lacks: servers and routers in Amsterdam; routers in London and Tokyo; servers in those last two cities still to come.

The 2026 Activity Plan had set July as the hardware-refresh deadline. October is three months beyond it. Grasmeijer said the team had planned the London and Tokyo server replacements, but “stuff gets expensive”, and they still intend to finish. He gave no new server date or site-level price. That missing date, and the spending choice behind it, would settle how long the remaining old hardware stays in service.

This is a core-site story, not a hosted-node count. In the same talk, K-root hosted instances rose from 136 to 138. Two more instances do not replace the servers at London or Tokyo. A status card that says “London refreshed” compresses a router swap and an unfinished server swap into one comforting verb.

RIPE NCC should publish a site-and-component schedule with the remaining server dates and the approved cost envelope. The root service depends on functioning equipment, not on whether a quarterly page finds a pleasing past participle.

Sources: RIPE NCC 2026 plan, RIPE NCC quarterly plan, RIPE 93 DNS transcript.