[AFRINIC-rpd] New Policy Proposal: Inter RIR IPv4 Address Transfers (AFPUB-2013-V4-001-DRAFT-01)

[Owen DeLong]

Admittedly, I don't live or have operations within the AfriNIC region, so take my position or leave it as you see fit on that basis.

I oppose the proposal. I won't repeat what others have said, but I think Nii made an eloquent example regarding exploitation.

However, I do want to repond to Andrew and SM below because I think this raises a tangential but much more important issue… Why IPv6 deployment is slow moving in Africa and what can we do about it?

On Jan 11, 2013, at 12:33 PM, SM <sm at resistor.net> wrote:

> Hi Andrew,
> At 11:23 11-01-2013, Andrew Alston wrote:
>> move to v6 unless they are thinking long term.  Thinking long term though, doesn't seem to be in the nature of this industry for some bizarre reason.  ISP's want to make sure
> 
> Yes.
> 

I don't think "want to make sure" is the issue at this point. Anyone who isn't sure about IPv6 by now isn't paying attention.

I think the issue is more insidious. I'll be talking about it in Zambia.


>> Why are our v6 deployment rates so chronically low on the African continent?  Because the
> 
> There are speeches and there is reality.  The IPv6 deployment rates is what is actually happening.  IPv4 deployment rates is not that better.
> 

I'm not sure about that.

However, the bigger problem, IMHO, is that due to economic realities, Africa is often faced with the dichotomy between buying current generation gear at unaffordable prices or buying the worlds previous or even two generations old gear at 1/100th or so of the original price, rendering it much more affordable.

In most circumstances, this means you get less bandwidth within the continent, a few less features, and a generally poor, but better than the generation before user experience. That's usually an acceptable tradeoff when you don't have an economic model that will support buying current generation gear and neither do your competitors. Especially when you take into account the abysmal state and ridiculous cost of getting bits to and from Africa from other continents.

Unfortunately, as the internet moves to IPv6 (and make no mistake, the move is accelerating and once IPv6 is ubiquitous in the developed world, the push to turn off IPv4 will be strong), this means that having equipment 1, 2, or even 3 generations old may mean you aren't able to communicate with the rest of the internet. It doesn't matter how many IPv4 addresses you have if all the sites you want to reach are IPv6-only.

As a result, current and future purchases of equipment which is incapable of full IPv6 support (for whatever definition of full meets the needs of your particular organization) is, IMHO, foolhardy at any price.

I hope as many of you as possible will attend my talk in Zambia and I look forward to seeing you all there.

Owen