[AFRINIC-rpd] AFRINIC Response to Government Calls for an Arab RIR

[Owen DeLong]

Seun,

> 
> ICP-2 doesn't require actual continents.  The actual wording is:
> 
> "The proposed RIR must operate internationally in a large geographical region of approximately continental size."
> 
> Thanks for quoting the exact word, however i will also like to quote a part below:
> 
> Each region should be served by a single RIR, established under one management and in one location
> 
> This will mean that RIPE NC and Afrinic will also have to review their region coverage otherwise the following as stated by ICP-2 is will be realistic
> The establishment of multiple RIRs in one region is likely to lead to:
> fragmentation of address space allocated to the region;
> difficulty for co-ordination and co-operation between the RIRs;
> confusion for the community within the region.
> 

Right... Since the establishment of ARIN, each RIR created has been created by reducing the service region of one or more other RIRs.
LACNIC was created by reducing the service region of ARIN.
AfriNIC was created by reducing the service regions of RIPE-NCC, ARIN, and APNIC.

If this RIR were to be created, most likely it would reduce the service areas of RIPE-NCC, AfriNIC, and possibly APNIC, depending on its proposed geographical boundaries.

> > What are the basis for this request,
> 
> I suspect it is similar to the basis used for the establishment of APNIC, LACNIC, and AfriNIC -- a desire to serve a particular "continental sized" community.  It is not necessarily related to unhappiness with the RIR service folks in that area are already getting, e.g., were folks in African nations unhappy with the service they were getting from RIPE-NCC and ARIN before AfriNIC was established?
> 
> Well you have made a point, however these community is within a region that already have a RIR that serves the community "adequately", although i did not experience how IP allocation request from Africa was before AfriINIC however i can guess that it will be more tideous than what we have at the moment (and lets not forget that request will be quite few at that time) perhaps the reason why RIPE-NCC and ARIN combined effort to serve Africa.

I believe that the reasons for the division of Africa among the other RIRs prior to AfriNIC was not for workload, but because of the existing cultural ties.

> So unless the Arab region have a similar motive why Afrinic was established(part of which will be related to meeting and sustaining IP demand in Africa) then they should provide justifications that are indeed obvious.
> 

I see no reason to believe that the community in question would not have similar motives. What is unclear to me is whether this is a request from the affected community or a request from governments in the region. In the latter case, I think it should be rejected. In the former case, I think we would be remiss if we did not consider it seriously with a strong bias towards granting the community's wishes.

In any case, the most important thing is to make sure we preserve the bottom-up multi-stakeholder processes of number resource policy. If a new region is to be designated and a new RIR created, we must ensure that it has the same kind of commitment to be representative of the community within its region and not merely the governments thereof.

Owen

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