[rpd] New proposal - "Out-Of-Region Use of AFRINIC Internet Number Resources" (AFPUB-2014-GEN-002-DRAFT-01)

[Owen DeLong]

On Jul 10, 2014, at 12:26 , Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston at liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

> Hi Bill,
> 
> Except for the fact that there are massive African organisations that are
> expanding both inwards and outwards.
> 
> I use Liquid (my employer as an example).
> 
> We operate the largest cross border fiber network in Africa, and operate
> our own infrastructure in:
> 
> Zimbabwe
> Zambia
> Uganda
> Rwanda
> Tanzania
> Burundi
> Botswana
> South Africa
> Kenya
> 
> And are expanding all the time.  That being said, we also operate points
> of presence in London and the UAE, and are growing both inwards and
> outwards.  I cannot get space from RIPE, I cannot get space from APNIC, so

Why not?  All you need to do is apply. This claim is patently false.

Both of them have plenty of space available in modern internet numbers.

As to IPv4, yes, those regions are exhausted. In the case of APNIC, you can transfer
numbers from a willing provider to your presence in the AP region from either APNIC
or ARIN regions under existing policy. In RIPE, you can also transfer numbers from a
willing provider within the RIPE region. RIPE has chosen in their policy process to opt
out of being able to transfer numbers from the ARIN region. I don't know if APNIC
will transfer numbers to RIPE or not. I have not done the necessary comparison and
correlation of the APNIC and RIPE policies. This is the post exhaustion environment
in each of the exhausted regions and that will soon apply to LACNIC and ARIN too.

If the AfriNIC community allows expansion into other regions to be fueled by use of
resources delegated to AfriNIC to manage, then that will reduce the resources available
for deployment within the region.

It is up to the AfriNIC community to decide whether it wants to use its resources to
increase the ability of organizations to expand outside of Africa or whether it wants
to preserve its resources for the betterment of the population living within the region.

Personally, I tend to favor the latter, but I don't live within the region, so my voice in
this regard can be taken with a grain of salt.

I realize your employer stands to have a competitive advantage against the natives
if it is allowed to take resources from AfriNIC and use them to provide services over
IPv4 in those regions while their more local competitors have no IPv4 addresses
available to provide additional services, but I fail to see how that serves the interests
of the AfriNIC community at large vs. the more narrow interests of your employer
and to some extent, the people employed by your employer.

> pray tell, how is the organisation meant to grow if we cannot use
> legitimately applied for AfriNIC space off continent as we continue to
> grow a massive multi-national network?

You can use legitimately acquired addresses from those regions.

> And for the record, everything we do is IPv6 enabled all the way to the
> edge - so we make sure we¹re doing our part there as well!

This is a very good thing, and I applaud it. Generally, Liquid strikes me as a good
organization trying to do good things. However, what you have said above seems
to me to depart from this down a road of self-interest at the potential expense of the
AfriNIC community.

Owen

> 
> Andrew
> 
> 
> 
> On 7/10/14, 7:47 PM, "Bill Woodcock" <woody at pch.net> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Jul 10, 2014, at 9:19 AM, Nishal Goburdhan <ndg at ieee.org> wrote:
>>> RIRs allocate resources to _organisations_ in their region.
>>> if i look at some of the prefixes that i see at african exchange
>>> points, i see a fair chunk of "international" space.  good for them, i
>>> say.
>> 
>> Well, not reallyŠ  We have an area of policy inconsistency between RIRs
>> here, and I think it¹s going to cause a problem.
>> 
>> Looking at ARIN policy, ARIN allocates space for use in the ARIN region.
>> If you take ARIN-allocated space and use it out-of-region, you can¹t use
>> it in a justification for more space.  That effectively means that using
>> it out-of-region means you¹re cutting yourself off from further
>> allocations, which effectively precludes doing it in any meaningful
>> volume.
>> 
>> What I believe I¹m hearing about AfriNIC policy is that it allocates
>> space to organizations that are incorporated in Africa, but not to
>> networks that operate in Africa.  That leaves a gap in policy, that fails
>> to address the needs of networks that operate in Africa.  That in turn
>> disincentivizes deployment in Africa.  If I can¹t get addresses from
>> other RIRs to deploy in Africa, and I can¹t get addresses from AfriNIC to
>> deploy in Africa, how do I deploy in Africa, other than by giving up my
>> ability to request more addresses in a different region, which isn¹t
>> sustainable either?
>> 
>> Yes, all this becomes somewhat moot in an IPv6-only future
>> economy-of-plenty, but that¹s a ways out, yet.
>> 
>>                               -Bill
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
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