[AFRINIC-rpd] IPv4 Address Allocation and Assignment proposal

[Andrew Alston]

Alain.

 

I am going to hope and pray what you wrote below is a joke (albeit a twisted
one).

 

I remind you to look back to 2005 when the ITU proposed similar and their
representative almost got lynched in Cairo.

 

I was under the impression that AfriNIC as per previous statements on the
member list was not a backer of the ITU or heavy handed regulation, and yet
now you propose handing all the space to governments who can then use it to
dictate who can and can't have space?  And if not governments then who?
LIR's that have to pay LIR fees and recover those fees drastically inflating
AfriNIC revenue and drastically inflating the money that academia has to pay
for space?

 

Come on. please. please.. Tell me this is a joke

 

Andrew

 

 

I have a suggestion:

 

Internet penetration in AFRICA is low and governments have strategies. Could
we  just  distribute the  v4 pool to the  economies served by AFRINIC? We
may work out a formula to make this  a bit fair.

 

So when Academic networks  need, they can get from there like others
entities ( governments, businesses, telcos......)

 

This could be a good enabler  to make the changes and local needs are best
assessed locally

 

 

--Alain

 

 









I work in a public university (which in most sub-saharan countries) would
take  over 80% of the total University Student enrollments in a given
country. I can tell you for sure that the the No. of PCs in a Public
University in a Sub-saharan economy has more to do with the ICT Investment
ratios rather than student numbers. In other words what % of the University
budget is going into ICT development per year - which translates better to
the No. of Labs, IP Devices expected.  Perhaps you may want to review your
policy in this light.

 

This is the kind of thinking that I was referring to when I mentioned to Nii
that I don't see the point in using equipment poverty as a reason to
preserve address poverty. I agree that both issues need to be addressed.
AfriNIC cannot solve the equipment issue, at least not completely or
directly, but can solve the address issue. Further, I don't believe this
policy would force a university to apply under the ratio criteria.
Universities that wanted to could still apply under the existing policy and
get less space if they had some reason and desire to do so.





Another point regards the fact that in recent years, Higher Educational
Institutions  have the trend of acquiring IPs through their Educational
Networks e.g. TENET in  SA, KENET in Kenya, etc.   This trend is being
picked up in West Africa and other parts of Africa (e.g.Madagascar).  And So
in future, less and and less individual universities may be applying
directly to AfriNIC for space.  This should however not stop the policy  -
since the same policy would still be useful in informing the Educational
Networks on how to approximate IP resource capacities in order to
subsequently request from AfriNIC.

 

IMHO, that's an unfortunate trend that probably indicates that getting space
from AfriNIC directly either is, or is perceived to be more difficult than
it should be.





Finally, with the continued use of NAT - African Universities  tend to have
a bigger problem of announcing their allocated space than perhaps the
problem of getting them from AfriNIC :-).  I believe there is  a policy
requirement that one should announce a % of their IP space within a given
time frame but not sure if this is monitored and/or if there are examples of
consequences for not doing this.

 

IMHO, we should discourage the use of NAT in universities where feasible.
NAT is contrary to good security practices and contrary to the principles of
a free and open internet.





On other matters that have been discussed:

*Policy vs Operational Issues: I agree we need to be careful not to use an
IP resource policy to address Operational Issues.  If AfrinIC staff and
management are taking too long on processing IP resource request, there
should be channels to address this e.g. by ensuring AfriNIC reviews or
publishes its Service Charter/SLA committement to its membership.

 

Agreed. I think this policy proposal is intended to resolve a policy issue
where AfriNIC staff in its strict application of current policy is making
university assignments and allocations unnecessarily difficult. I don't
think it is intended to directly address timeliness or other operational
concerns. Admittedly, a simplified streamlined policy for allocations and
assignments is likely to result in an improvement in response times, but I
don't think that is a primary intent of the policy so much as a beneficial
second order effect.





*Inter RIR IPv4 Transfers:

I did agree with the message that hording IPv4 space in the face of emerging
IPv6 space is like holding onto a losing stock.    A time is fast
approaching when Africa will be boasting of having millions of IPv4 space
that is not useful to anyone.  But this reality should trigger us to come up
with strategies of increasing usage as opposed to strategies of "selling"
or liquidating the stock.

 

I think this policy is intended to create increased usage and more effective
distribution to entities that should be using the addresses (even if they
lack the financial resources to take full advantage at the moment).

 

Owen

 

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