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

[Owen DeLong]

On Jan 15, 2013, at 10:21 AM, Seun Ojedeji <seun.ojedeji at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jan 15, 2013 2:58 PM, "Andrew Alston" <alston.networks at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Maina,
> >
> >  
> >
> > I personally believe that the problem is two-fold.  Firstly, the community tends to resist change and the argument always surfaces, why implement something that isn’t going to generate revenue.  The fact is though that many of us have been saying for years and years that IPv6 is not about revenue generation, it’s about revenue retention.  When the day arrives that customers cannot access something elsewhere in the rest of the world because its gone IPv6 only
> >
> I don't get it Andrew you are making it look like it's either now or never ;-)  will v6 allocation end at this future your are painting here?
> and an ISP cannot offer IPv6, at that point, the customer is going to walk and go somewhere that can give him full access to the Net, and the revenue from that customer is gone. 
> >
> 

It's not now or never, but if you wait for the customer to demand it, it's too late. Deploying IPv6 is not an instantaneous process. You can't get the request from the customer today and have IPv6 delivered to them in a stable, scalable manner in 30 days. You're looking at a process which could take as little as 6 months on a small dynamic network or as much as 3-5 years in a large-scale organization.

> My dear, ISPs got business plan, and one of the reasons why we've got slow migration is because they have not seen major client demand. The times you refer on the other hand will be good news for them!
> 
That's the point… By the time you see client demand, you're in a long dark tunnel and the light you see is an on-coming train.

> Once a customer is gone, its far harder to get them to come back than it was to lose them.  The argument though around revenue retention versus revenue gain is something that we, as technical people, have often failed to make to the upper management and those that hold the purse strings, and I believe that technical people who DO see the risk of not rolling out IPv6 have failed in this regard. 
> 
Right… If you don't start deploying IPv6 today (or haven't already started), you risk losing customers because you can't possibly deploy it fast enough once they do notice that you aren't ready.

> >
> This is valid with HEis who don't do business with IPs
> 
> Regards
> As technical people it is our responsibility to ensure that our employers understand the dangers of not moving forward, after all, if our employers don’t move forward and end up bankrupt as a result, it is us that will be out of work.
> 

I agree.

> >
> >  
> >
> > Secondly, with regards to AfriNIC.  I stand by my view that holding onto IPv4 space is counter-productive, it propagates the mindset that the food will never spoil. 
> >
> >  
> >
> > With regards to the policy in question, believe me, I would prefer to see other options before this one, but I’m prepared to look at any option that speeds up the burn rate of the IPv4 pool to bring us closer to the rest of the world in terms of when we run out.  This is why in Tanzania I proposed allowing foreign entities to get space directly from AfriNIC for a premium price once other regions had run out of space, though I can also understand why the community stands so strongly against such initiatives, it is an emotional issue.
> >
> 

I believe that the very small amount of free space in the AfriNIC pool will be legitimately consumed for needs within the region much faster than 7 years even if we make no changes to policy. I do, however, support more liberal distribution of the IPv4 addresses for legitimate use within the region. I do not support selling the address space off to other regions.

Owen


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/attachments/20130115/a68bb71f/attachment.html>