[AFRINIC-rpd] Academic IPv4 Allocation Policy Second Draft (AFPUB-2013-GEN-001-DRAFT-02)

[Andrew Alston]

I 100% agree with you here Frank.

Furthermore, as stated in a previous email.  The issue of Universities
keeping traffic local is due to be resolved in the coming months in many
places. 

I would suspect by end of Q2 this year we will see drastic improvements on
this in the following places in African academia:

Rwanda
Uganda
Tanzania
Mozambique
Zambia

(KENET and South Africa are already well connected, Zambia has connectivity
back through South Africa but to optimize African traffic certain
configuration changes need to happen)

By 2015 I strongly believe we'll also see drastic improvements in the
following:

Malawi
Ethiopia
Sudan
Namibia
The DRC
Zimbabwe

(Some of these well before others, again, budgets dictate and readiness of
the academic sector in the particular country for proper connectivity
dictate)

Yes, we'd all like to see faster change, and we'd all like to see
multi-10gig links everywhere, but the point is, things are progressing and
being actively worked on within the Academic sector, tirelessly.  However,
one of the major impediments going forward is going to be that of addressing
and getting rid of NAT.  While most of the academic networks listed above
ARE LIR's, with the bigger Universities I still believe that PI space is the
better option since the NREN's simply do not have the type of space (or the
financial means) to become LIR's of the size dictated by their sectors.

I strongly believe that either via the UbuntuNet Alliance or via the NREN's
directly, the universities *will* get to the local IXP's in time, it may not
happen instantly, but it will happen.  I actually foresee a situation where
certain countries are exchanging traffic at some of the larger IXP's before
their own and then expansion will occur to their own country IXP's (For
example, I foresee a situation where the majority of IXP based traffic
exchange for Uganda and Rwanda could potentially take place on KIXP, since
its where the content is).

However, putting such a requirement into the policy that is aimed to allow
for Universities to get PI space, fundamentally breaks the collaborative
model being built around the national academic networks and regional
academic networks and will potentially slow the growth of local traffic
rather than increase it as a result.  Asides which, and I have said this
many times before, AfriNIC are there to distribute IP resources, they are
*NOT* IP police, nor are they there to dictate how, where and what a network
does.  Their SOLE responsibility in regards IP addressing and autonomous
systems is to allocate the resources and ensure they are being used and
routed as far as I am concerned.

And while I cannot believe I am about to type this....

To quote Randy Bush at APNIC when policies were being proposed that gave
APNIC any say in how networks were run... "HANDS OFF MY NETWORK"

Andrew

-----Original Message-----
From: rpd-bounces at afrinic.net [mailto:rpd-bounces at afrinic.net] On Behalf Of
Frank Habicht
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 1:04 PM
To: rpd at afrinic.net
Subject: Re: [AFRINIC-rpd] Academic IPv4 Allocation Policy Second Draft
(AFPUB-2013-GEN-001-DRAFT-02)

On 1/25/2013 12:26 AM, SM wrote:
> From an IP addressing perspective the following suggestion is a bad idea. 
> I suggest adding a condition in the proposal for connectivity to an 
> IXP within the region.

No!
for getting resources from afrinic, there should be good reasons and they
should not have to do with being connected to an ixp.
fulfilling conditions of an afrinic policy should not be a reason to connect
to an IXP. I'd go as far as saying that then the Org would connect for the
wrong reasons...

Also, one (University or NREN) can ensure traffic gets routed locally
without being directly connected to an IXP. and they should have the freedom
to do that.
Doing a direct connection to the IXP is mostly the better choice, but it
should not be AfriNIC or PDP doing the choice.

Interconnection should happen. But better for good reasons. Like moving a
certain number of bits to some destinations in 20ms instead of 300ms.
It should be unrelated to IP resources and their justification.

I'd rather start a public campaign - unrelated to AfriNIC - to publicly
shame universities (like the oldest in TZ) who have no national
interconnection (other than to one ISP by virtue of a common (multinational,
local presence) provider).

Frank
supporting IXPs
supporting networks to connect to IXPs
for the right reasons

_______________________________________________
rpd mailing list
rpd at afrinic.net
https://lists.afrinic.net/mailman/listinfo.cgi/rpd