[AfriNIC-rpd] IPv6 Allocations to Non-Profit Networks

[Bill Woodcock]

      On Tue, 13 Jan 2009, Graham Beneke wrote:
    > IPv6 Allocations to Non-Profit Networks
    > ----------
    > Many community and non-profit networks exist on the African continent
    > and around the world...  Many of these organizations provide the 
    > services free of charge and do not have any kind of revenue stream. 

I strongly support this policy.

This is the model under which the Internet was initially built...  IP 
addresses were allocated to those who needed them to build Internet 
infrastructure, without fees, up until the creation of the RIRs, and a lot 
of work got done during that time.  Notably, a lot of the work was done by 
individuals and small organizations that were subsequently squeezed out of 
the industry by large phone companies, for whom the RIR fees were not an 
impediment.

With IPv4 address scarcity, using fees as one of many ways of managing 
distribution of the remaining few resources seems reasonable.  Since IPv6 
addresses aren't scarce, and most organizations will only ever need a 
single allocation, I believe that RIRs should make them more readily and 
widely available, in the same way that caused the Internet to grow 
successfully in the first place.

That has to be balanced against the need for continued sufficient funding 
of the RIRs, of course, to manage the critical services of uniqueness, 
whois, and the in-addr delegations.

But, that said, I strongly support this policy.

                                -Bill