The international Internet registrar RIPE NCC allowed Russian companies under sanctions to defer payment for Internet resources.
Maxim Burtikov, director of external relations for RIPE NCC in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, confirmed the sending of such letters to companies.
The RIPE NCC said in a statement: “We understand that sanctions and other related factors may prevent some of you from making payments to us. Please don't worry about your membership if this is the case: you don't risk losing your membership or your IP addresses or AS numbers if you fail to pay your bills by the due date." The Registrar notes that companies still "remain an obligation to pay," but if "sanction-related factors prevent payment of bills," then RIPE NCC will not terminate the standard service contract.
RIPE NCC is one of the five global Internet registrars that distributes IP addresses in Russia, Europe and the Middle East. To receive Internet resources directly, you need to become a member of the organization by entering into a service agreement and paying an annual fee. In 2022, its amount is €1.4 thousand. You can pay the fee by bank transfer, credit or debit card, as well as through the American payment system PayPal. Membership also entitles you to participate in RIPE NCC internal discussions, access the RIPE Atlas measurement platform and learning tools.
Due to sanctions against the Russian Federation, some payment methods are now limited, including for companies that were serviced by banks that fell under the sanctions. They cannot transfer money abroad in foreign currency, as this payment will be blocked by a foreign correspondent bank. Under the sanctions were, in particular, VTB, Otkritie, Sovcombank, Novikombank and Promsvyazbank. At the same time, PayPal announced the suspension of services for sending and receiving payments in Russia.
According to sources in the telecom market, the company has so far paid for IP addresses in euros, but now there are problems with this.
Earlier, the Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov called on RIPE NCC to permanently or temporarily revoke the .ru, .rf and .su domains and facilitate the revocation of SSL certificates, as well as disable root DNS located in Russia and revoke IP addresses.
But the RIPE NCC refused to comply with the request. The organization's managing director, Hans Petter Holen, said that "registration of Internet resources should not be used as a means to secure political results, it will have serious consequences for the Internet, not only in Russia, but throughout the world." The RIPE NCC also noted that it has nothing to do with SSL certificates and domain zones for which other organizations are responsible: a certificate authority (CA) and ICANN (International Domain Name Management Corporation). The latter also said that "the globally agreed policy does not include ICANN's ability to take unilateral action to disable domains upon request."
In early March, backbone providers Cogent Technologies and Lumen, as well as the London Internet Exchange traffic exchange point, stopped working with Russian companies, and hosting providers DigiCert (USA) and Thawte Consulting (South Africa) revoked the SSL certificates of Russian banks under sanctions. Comodo, the largest provider of SSL certificates, has stopped selling certificates for domains in the .ru zone.
maintains an updated list of foreign cloud and network services, services and platforms that may be blocked or no longer work in the Russian Federation.
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