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

[dogwallah at gmail.com]

Hullo David,

Thanks for the perspective, my comments inline:

On 1/14/09, David Conrad <drc at virtualized.org> wrote:
> On Jan 13, 2009, at 8:26 AM, Bill Woodcock wrote:
>>      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.
>
> So, you'd be happy for (say) the Gates Foundation to not pay AfriNIC
> while a small two person commercial ISP serving some rural area in the
> bush would be subject to full freight?
>

I certainly wouldn't, and while this isn't the intent of the proposal,
it might certainly be the effect.

> Also, in my (perhaps dated) experience, few countries had a useful
> definition of "non-profit corporation".  This is why, for example,
> APNIC is actually a for-profit company, at least according to the
> Australian government.  If this remains the case, this policy would
> appear to disadvantage ISPs in countries without a non-profit legal/
> tax status.
>
> I'm curious: what percentage of the total cost of doing business for
> ISPs in Africa is the annual AfriNIC fees relative to the cost of
> connectivity, staff, rent, electricity, etc.?
>

small, but this is for community networks, "ISPs" as we usually think of them.

>> This is the model under which the Internet was initially built...
>
> No it isn't.  The model under which the Internet was build (at least
> in the context of address registration) was government subsidies.
> Before the RIRs existed, the US taxpayers (via the US government) paid
> for _all_ address registration services.  That time is long past and
> we probably don't want to try to revisit it.
>

Agreed

> To be clear, this policy is asking one set of AfriNIC members (for-
> profits) to subsidize another set ("non-profits", whatever that
> means).  Long ago, APNIC looked at the same policy and decided against
> it since (a) it was felt yearly APNIC fees were such a tiny proportion
> of the total cost of providing Internet service in the AP region that
> it was nonsensical to think that waiving those fees would have a
> significant impact on the growth of the Internet in the region and (b)
> the APNIC executive council had mechanisms by which fees could be
> waived.  Whether or not these considerations are relevant for the
> African region at this point in time is obviously something you all
> will need to determine.

This seems to be a corner case, and while I am all for getting IPv6
into the hands of community networks and their ilk, I wonder if this
can't be done via tunnel brokers making /48 assignments
or by other means.  In general, I think it is not helpful to write many
corner cases into policy.

Like Badru, I am on the fence on this one, but currently leaning on
the "no" side.

-- 
Cheers,

McTim
http://stateoftheinternetin.ug