[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 15:35 , Noah Maina <mainanoa at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> On 11 July 2014 00:49, Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston at liquidtelecom.com> wrote:
> Errr,
> 
> Owen, for the record.
> 
> My employer is an African multi-national.  How do African companies
> expanding outwards help Africa?  Lets stop for a second and think about
> this.

I did not say or mean to imply that African companies expanding outwards
did not help Africa.

However, I would argue that if they do so by gaining a competitive advantage
over the "natives" in other regions using resources intended to serve the AfriNIC
community, they are doing a larger disservice to the AfriNIC community than
any potential benefit achieved for that same community.

> Firstly, we need infrastructure in foreign countries for peering, for
> transit routers, for providing circuits to people on the African continent
> who want to reach foreign entities.  Without infrastructure off the
> continent, how exactly do we provide end to end service to other African
> companies looking for things like EoMPLS circuits with the A side in
> Africa and the B side outside of Africa? Or would you rather that we
> played the half circuit game at additional expense to the African consumer?

The proposed policy provide for more than enough address space use outside
of the AfriNIC service region to cover this. Nobody is disputing the need for this.

What I was talking about (and what Andrew stated, or at the very least implied)
was using AfriNIC issued resources to expand services sold to customers outside
of the AfriNIC service region.

> Would you rather than African multi-national ISP’s didn’t have
> international points of presence where they could peer off their traffic
> at exchanges internationally and reduce the cost of service provision to
> their african customers?  Would your rather we wait for people to bring
> the content to us at inflated prices rather than going to the source and
> fetching it ourselves?

Of course not and I would never support a policy that prevented this. However,
that's got nothing to do with the discussion at hand. The policy being discussed
allows more than sufficient extra-regional resource utilization to accommodate
this. Andrew's stated opposition implied a much larger need for out-of-region
resource utilization and a complaint about being unable to obtain that space
from the other regions.

If we're strictly talking about peering infrastructure, then, as a matter of fact,
you can obtain a /22 from RIPE and a /22 from APNIC for that purpose and
I believe that would more than cover most such needs. Especially since peering
at IXPs usually involves obtaining the IXP address from the IXP itself and doesn't
consume your resources.

> All of these things require international infrastructure, it has to be
> numbered, and as you yourself have admitted, V4 is still a major part of
> this.  Of course I can get V6 resources out of region, but the V4
> resources are still necessary and getting those for international
> infrastructure without using AfriNIC resources is not possible right now.

And all of this is a red herring compared to the discussion that led to my
comments.

> I might also point out, there are vast tracts of the African continent
> still only served by Satellite, if the Satellite hub is in Europe and the
> customers themselves are in Africa, if I am routing the space to the
> Satellite hub in Europe, where are the resources being used?  Its
> ambigious.

And everyone has stated that this policy should not be interpreted as to prevent
that. The consideration should be based on the location of the end customer using
the resources, not the media translation gateways in between.

> I might also point out, that large African multi-nationals that are
> expanding also provide a LOT of employment on the continent and the
> expansion off continent helps drive the employment ON the continent (for
> example, NOC’s based in Africa for international networks, that employ
> large numbers of people in Africa, for the betterment of the African
> community)

And here we hit the first point which is actually relevant to the ongoing policy
discussion and not a red herring. Rather than repeat my first paragraph here,
I will simply incorporate it by reference.

> @Andrew  +++++++1 x1000.  Rest your case, you need not to say more :-) ...I raise a glass.

I wish you the best of luck in this regard.

>  IMHO, I don’t support this policy even a bit since it doesn't even take into consideration the operational reality on the ground. Besides, hardly 20% of the resources obtained from Afrinic are used outside Africa by entities registering in Africa with operations in Africa mainly for infrastructure seated outside Africa....

Um, for most organizations, this is true. However, open your eyes to what is happening in the larger world. There is at least one (and I suspect several more are already there, but if not, they will be watching and follow closely if possible) which is consuming AfriNIC resources (and as many resources as they can get from other regions) for use in other regions through a rather interesting VPN-based dodge to the policy.

> Naked truth, the biggest market for IP now is in Africa and she continues to develop her Internet!!!! 

Naked truth, bigger or smaller doesn't matter. There's enough demand and enough money in the other regions to bleed Africa's IPv4 number resources dry rather quickly.

> So if this policy is for restricting number resource usage to a certain % outside Africa, then where exactly are you going to use them v4 IP's, In Europe, North America, Asia, where the internet is already developed and folks are already getting used to v6, not a chance.

You bet. Address consumption and trading is continuing in those regions and the internet continues to grow in those regions. Used to IPv6? I wish. Progress is being made, but it's still nowhere near where it needs to be.

http://www.delong.com/ipv6_fortune500.html
http://www.delong.com/ipv6_alexa500.html

Owen

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