[AfriNIC-announce] IPv4 Central pool running out: Where do we stand?

[Adiel A. Akplogan]

Dear Colleagues, 

In light of the recent development in the Internet environment and relayed by 
different media coverages and reports on what some characterised as “Internet 
Doomsday” predicted to be within the first quarter of 2011, at AfriNIC we find 
it important to provide our community some clarifications and information 
related to the situation allowing everyone to have a little  bit more 
information on what they can except during the coming months in our region.

Recently, the central IPv4 address pool managed by the Internet Assigned 
Numbers Authority (IANA) has dropped to its last seven /8 blocks (less than 3%
of the total pool). Two of these blocks are expected to be allocated soon,
making us reach the threshold that should trigger an equal distribution among
the five RIRs including AfriNIC as  per the global Policy AFPUB-2009-v4-1:

http://www.afrinic.net/docs/policies/AFPUB-2009-v4-001.html

However, and even after the total exhaustion of IANA’s IPv4 address pool, we 
would like to reassures our members and our community at large that according 
to current allocation trend in our region we will be able to continue to serve
IPv4 needs for few more years (3 to 4 years) after the central pool
exhaustion. 

AfriNIC will continue to allocate and assign IPv4 and IPv6 based on its 
current policy until we  each our final /8. As soon as that threshold is 
reached, the IPv4 Soft Landing policy that has recently reached consensus form
our community at the recent AfriNIC-13 meeting in South Africa will take
effect.

See http://www.afrinic.net/docs/policies/AFPUB-2010-v4-005.htm for more
information.

In addition to that, at AfriNIC we still strongly stand behind our campaign to
encourage operators to review their NAT usage practice which in many cases 
unnecessarily complicates networks design and could make the IPv6 transition 
more complex.  At this point of time there is no reason to extensively
implement  NAT (as we have sees several time) and not to request needed public
IPv4 addresses  from AfriNIC. It is time to review your network topology and
address planing in  order to request the amount of IP address that you need to
properly run your  network an offer efficient service to your customers. the
AfriNIC Internet Number  Resource Analyst team will be happy helping you
through such process. 

While we are emphasizing on the fact that there is no reason at this point of 
time to react in a panic mode, we are also urging the operators to swiftly
take  the necessary measures and actions for IPv6 readiness and implementing
the new  protocol on their infrastructure. It is important to note that the two
versions  of the protocol will have to coexist and work both together for a
while. Through  our IPv6 program our members can access to IPv6 resources
without any additional membership fees. You can request your IPv4 & IPv6 blocks
through the same regular  application process and start deploying it as well so
to be ready for future  evolution.  IPv6 is clearly the only long-term solution
we see for a sustainable  growth of the Internet Business particularly in
region like ours.

During 2011, AfriNIC will be focusing more on its IPv6 program through several
activities that encourage and support its deployment throughout the region. The
African IPv6 Task Force we are supporting will certainly help LIRs, Private
companies and Governments to develop a clear roadmap for Pv6 deployment. This
is critical for us and is a high priority in our next year activity plan. We 
would like you to stay tuned and follow us in the upcoming moths.  

To finish, I would like to use this opportunity to wish you all a very happy 
new year 2011 from all the AfriNIC team.

Sincerely

-----------------
Adiel A. Akplogan 
Chief Executive Officer
AfriNIC, www.afrinic.net 




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/announce/attachments/20110105/cc9cbaad/attachment.htm