[AfriNIC-rpd] Definitions of LIR versus End User

[Frank Habicht]

Hi all,

Not quoting any emails, just want to get all the flaming for myself ;-)

Just want to voice my personal opinion as well - with apologies for being
quiet so long.

In my understanding students (and staff) of universities are also
considered "members" of a university.
In my understanding a ("normal"[1]) university is clearly not an LIR.

What is more important then defining "university" would be defining "LIR"
and "End User".

Well, I _like_ that AfriNIC has a definition for 'university' and gives a
50% discount for them. Good!

There are organisations that provide internet connectivity or generally
electronic communications services to 3rd parties - outside their own
organisation, and they should be LIRs [2]
To be complete: I believe NRENs should be LIRs.

There are others who have internet connectivity needs (including addressing
resources) and they provide for internal needs / internal customers / other
departments, but they don't provide outsiders with internet access
services, just "content", "services" ....
And we call them End Users (in my opinion).
And they can (besides universities) include banks with several public
services, ccTLDs, etc

I'm concerned about definitions of LIR that will include organisations
where the primary service is not in the electronic communications area.
I'm thinking again about Starbucks etc.
And I'm thinking also about Hotels.

What if half of the hotels in Africa don't have logging in their billing
gateways, they have fewer public IPs than internal ones, and they use
techniques to translate internal to public addresses (yes, ugly, I know...)
So after a few complaints about spamming from their ISPs and a few calls
from all the 3-letter-agencies complaining about the crackers residing at
the hotel (or getting wifi access), they see they can't trace this to the
source, they decide to do away with this ..... network address translation.
[3] .... and get public IPs.
Then they are providers of internet connectivity and assigning
(temporarily, if that matters) IP addresses to customers ("guests").
Should AfriNIC get ready for a "few" LIR membership applications from Hotels?
I _guess_ it could be good for the budget, but I doubt that this community
wants this.


But I do support calls by the community to have a review
(by the community? by the board? But by someone please!)
of the fees structure for PI.
I believe fees for a PI /16 should be far less than for a PA /16.
After all the latter supports an entity "in the Internet business".
I also believe fees for a PI /16 should be higher than fees for a PI /24.
A university [4] asking, justifying and qualifying for a /16 PI can in my
opinion be expected to sustain a higher fee than a start-up ccTLD.
And both should have access to what they can justify at "reasonable" cost.

Greetings,
Frank

PS: Good that the discussions about definitions and fees have surfaced.


[1] ie a university by itself.
If a university owns a separate legal entity "University Computing Centre"
which acts actively as an ISP and has the license, then the latter would be
an LIR...
( and if the /20 from ARIN times is split half between the two, then it's
only fair to be charged LIR fees ;-) )

[2] this is not an attempt for a definition.

[3] I'm very aware and convinced that the real solution is not more public
v4, but more v6 all the way to the end user....

[4] established, relatively "old", tens of thousands of students