Summary

  • RIPE NCC told RIPE 93 it had contacted all approximately 1,500 legacy-resource holders in its verification project. Its separate status table counts approximately 2,300 resource ranges, 51.7% of them awaiting a response.
  • Another 19.8% of ranges are marked responded, 14.5% verified under contract, 12.7% verified without one and 1.1% converted. RIPE NCC plans anonymized organisation records for the remaining unverified ranges by early 2027.

RIPE NCC has finished its outreach. The ledger has not finished answering it. In a 29 October presentation at RIPE 93, Registration Services manager Marco Schmidt said the registry had contacted all roughly 1,500 legacy resource holders in its current project. The next slide counted a different population: approximately 2,300 legacy resource ranges. In that range-level table, 51.7% were still marked “awaiting response.”

One holder can control more than one range. “All holders contacted” measures outbound work; “ranges awaiting response” measures the status of resource records. Treating those as one completion figure would make the project look tidier than the original slides allow. They give approximate total holders and ranges, not the raw count behind each percentage or a timestamp more precise than the presentation date.

The rest of Schmidt’s table is as useful as the leading half. A further 19.8% of ranges are in a “responded” category; a reply has arrived, but that row is not labelled verified. Another 14.5% are verified under a contract, 12.7% verified without a contract, and 1.1% converted. The rounded categories total 99.8%. The point is not a synthetic completion rate: the registry itself keeps reply, verification, contractual relationship and conversion in separate columns.

That separation has a history. Legacy IPv4 blocks were issued before today’s regional registry system. Schmidt says about 2,300 ranges lacked verified holder information when this project began in early 2026. The RIPE community’s 2014 service framework leaves room for a legacy holder to have no contract with RIPE NCC. Verification can therefore establish who belongs in the public registry without forcing every holder through one membership door. A verified record with a contract and one without a contract are distinct outcomes in today’s presentation.

The next publication step is visible. RIPE NCC is adding co-maintained organisation objects to legacy resources. A verified holder’s object will carry full holder details; an unverified holder’s object will carry anonymized data. Schmidt said the remaining anonymized objects should be added by early 2027, and promised a project summary at RIPE 94. That creates a deadline for the registry’s data model even while replies and reviews are unfinished.

The stakes are mundane until an address record needs to be trusted. A buyer, operator or investigator looking up a range wants a reliable holder trail, while a holder who has not completed verification does not want an untested public label turned into an accusation. RIPE NCC controls which status enters the database and how an unverified record is masked. The slides provide no case-level corrections or figures for later disputes; those records would show whether the public-facing handoff works.

The strongest signal in Schmidt’s account is that contact and verification now move on different clocks. Every known holder may have been sent a message; a majority of ranges still sit in the unanswered column. By early 2027, the public registry will have to represent that gap plainly rather than paper it over with a completed outreach list.

Sources: RIPE 93 Registration Services session and Marco Schmidt’s original slides, especially pages 7–10.