Introducing the MANRS Advisory Group

MANRS was created in 2014 by members of the network operator community. While the Internet Society provides support in the form of hosting this website, providing email lists, and the participation of Internet Society staff, it has always been a community initiative and the intention is for MANRS participants themselves to be setting the directions and making the decisions.

With close to 600 participants though, it was felt desirable to establish a smaller group of individuals who could represent the wider MANRS community and provide advice on the increasing number of decisions that need to be made. The MANRS Advisory Group was therefore established earlier this year (2020) also to develop the conditions for MANRS participation, and to ensure that decisions about participation have the support of the MANRS Community.

After a call for volunteers amongst the MANRS participant organizations, 18 individuals formed the initial group which has a one-year mandate and will develop the directions and principles for MANRS in future.

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 restrictions meant the planned meetings at RIR meetings such as RIPE could not be held, although the Advisory Group met online in October and November and will again meet in December. The issues discussed included how to respond when a MANRS participant experiences a routing incident, and as a result an incident response procedure was agreed and added to the MANRS Actions. The group also discussed the MANRS Administrative process and developing the principles for community self-governance by the end of 2021 – including how the Advisory Group will be appointed in future – as well as the possible ongoing conformance criteria for the MANRS Network Operators programme.

The current membership of the MANRS Advisory Group is as follows:

• Martin Atkinson (Equinix)
• John Brown (CityLink)
• Rich Compton (Charter Communications)
• Jean-Michel Combes (Orange)
• Anirban Datta (Fiber@Home)
• Andrew Gallo (GWU)
• Peter Gitau (KIXP)
• Marcelo Gondim (BPF)
• Will van Gulik (RomandIX)
• Marco d’Itri (Seeweb)
• Carlos Martinez (LACNIC)
• Warrick Mitchell (AARNet)
• Eduardo Morales (NIC.br)
• Arnold Nipper (DE-CIX)
• Andrew Owens (NAPAfrica/Teraco)
• Antonio Prado (SBTAP)
• Arturo Sevrin (Google)
• Jack Wang (TWIX)

The MANRS Auditing Officers are ex-officio and are currently Hanna Kreitem, Kevin Meynell, and Andrei Robachevsky – all Internet Society staff. The MANRS Auditing Officers assess whether organisations are MANRS conformant, based on the established criteria for MANRS participation.

The Members of the Advisory Group are representing the MANRS Community so please feel free to contact them at ‘[email protected]’ if you would like to discuss anything related to MANRS.

More information including the role and activities of the Advisory Group can also be found at https://manrs.org/about/advisory-group/