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

[Owen DeLong]

On Feb 27, 2013, at 11:48 AM, David Conrad <drc at virtualized.org> wrote:

> On Feb 27, 2013, at 10:27 AM, SM <sm at resistor.net> wrote:
>> At 09:15 27-02-2013, Stephen Wilcox wrote:
>>> Its not really important - my point was that current RIRs exist around natural geographic areas rather than artificially defined political or linguistic areas that may not be contiguous.
>> 
>> The "natural geographic areas" is debatable.
> 
> Not really even debatable. There's been a bit of rationalization over the years (e.g., many of the former French colonies in the AP region and the Caribbean used to go to RIPE but I gather that's changed) but you still have non-intuitive situations like countries clearly in Asia (e.g., the 'Stans') going to RIPE or all of North America below the US not being part of ARIN. The reason for this is the boundaries of the RIRs have always tended to be defined by political/linguistic/cultural boundaries as opposed to purely natural geographic ones.
> 

However, I think it is worth noting that it makes sense to do so. Mexico has much stronger economic, social, cultural, and as a result network ties with the rest of the LACNIC region than with the US. LACNIC meetings are conducted in Spanish (for the most part) with simultaneous translation into English and (IIRC) Portuguese. ARIN meetings are conducted in English. Were Mexico part of the ARIN region, they would probably be somewhat less represented and would face a number of challenges (visas to attend meetings not being the least of them).

>> The only information which has been provided is:
>> 
>> "The matter has been raised and promoted by representatives of certain
>>  governments in the Arab community."
> 
> So it isn't even ISPs that are requesting this? I have even more skepticism that sufficient consensus will be reached…

Exactly.

Owen