[AfriNIC-rpd] RE:AFPUB-2011-v4-003-draft-02 - Limited Out of RegionAllocation of IPv4 Resources - of Legacy Space

[Andrew Alston]

Hi McTim,

I've been doing some digging as promised, and I have to start this email
stressing again that the return of space by the organization for which I
work was done before my time, and I am simply repeating what I have
found from a bit of research.  I do not claim that what is said below
represents any official position by TENET on the subject.

Firstly, the original announcement about this was made here: 

http://www.afnog.org/archives/2005-August/001230.html

Now, there are some interesting points to be raised from this
announcement which was posted by Adiel.

Notably:

No current assignments from these blocks to any end user organisation
are affected by this change.  In particular, AfriNIC acknowledges and
will respect the portability of such assignments. To perform its role
as a registry, AfriNIC will contact holders of prefixes in the related
blocks in order to get the correct contact information so that these
assignments can be properly registered in the public whois database.

The above is interesting, particularly when you look at the second
sentence, AfriNIC in that announcement acknowledged the portability of
legacy space, and therefore in my reading of that, implies that such
space can be transferred between organizations at will.  But that's just
my reading of it.

As to the reasons why the space was returned, I think the announcement
adequately deals with this, and based on that announcement, I do not
believe any precedents were set, the return of space was a voluntary
action based on the nature of TENET's business and our function, rather
than us returning the space because it was not used.

Thanks

Andrew