[AfriNIC-rpd] What is our take on the central pool IPv4 exhaustion?

[Colin Alston]

On 11/08/2007 18:47 Richard Bell wrote:
> I have not followed the debate in detail. However clearly the cost
> to operators of upgrading their networks are significant.
> Furthermore the relative growth of african networks is gaining
> momentum.  Since many networks rely on the second hand equipment
> markets to grow cost eff ectively and since africa has the smallest
> share of existing ipv4 allocations, why not do something radical
> like lobbying for afrinic to get the lions share of what's
> left..................

Because that's a horribly unsustainable solution. In essence IPv4 
space should be considered redundant and not viable by the time 
migrations begin - and that time is not coming, it has come already 
and you should be migrating and not hoping for more cheap IPv4 space.

There is no point in picking up lots of discarded IPv4 space if that 
consequently means the people giving it up will no longer be 
accessible by our networks. This also damages Africa's reputation and 
makes it less attractive for peer since no one will be interested in 
connecting to IPv4 space.

Growth in my opinion is viable solutions. Conversely, lots of ISP's 
using old Cisco gear doesn't mean growth in my vocabulary. My 
suggestion to ISP's in that situation would be to use ad hoc equipment 
with better scalability in the form OTS x86 hardware and an operating 
system with a good IP stack like FreeBSD or a modern Linux distro with 
iproute2.

-- 
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