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

[Mark Tinka]

On Saturday, July 19, 2014 08:02:49 AM Andrew Alston wrote:

> It’s an interested dialectic, it is in AfriNIC’s (and
> hence it could be argued the communities) interests to
> have as many people as possible with their own space and
> their own ASN’s.  However, it is in the interests of
> providers to encourage the uptake of space out of their
> own blocks assigned by AfriNIC and discourage this
> behaviour.

Personally, I prefer not to get in my customers' way. I'd 
much rather rely on other methods of keeping customers than 
holding them hostage due to renumbering nightmare. But 
that's just me.

Sure, I understand the motivation behind providers pushing 
customers into their own PA space, but things happen, and if 
a customer gets their own PI or PA space, it can become a 
problem if their sole reason for doing so is to break free 
of you :-).

That said, this typically applies to if your customers are 
service providers or large enterprises.

If your customers are broadband or SOHO users, then it's 
typical to have them under your PA space.

> At the same time, what amazes me about
> Africa and the substantive use of NAT, it is NOT in a
> providers interests to have customers behind NAT, and I
> wonder if this isn’t something we could use to promote
> the uptake of IPv4 on the continent.  The simple reality
> is, a customer behind NAT can churn in an instant, the
> changes required on the customer side are minimal. 
> However, a customer on a providers space that is NOT
> running NAT and has the space all over the place has to
> renumber which could be a downtime and OPEX intensive
> activity.  (I’ve actually seen research that shows that
> non-NAT customers are FAR less likely to churn, it
> reduces the churn rate by double digit percentage
> points).

I agree, we should discourage NAT as much as possible.

We see NAT mostly in use by mobile operators (for obvious 
reasons). But unless AFRINIC have run out of space to 
allocate to them, I think they should be looking at using 
less NAT and more public space. 

Practically, it's only a matter of time before AFRINIC run 
out of space and these mobile providers are forced to NAT 
anyway, unless they start getting aggressive about IPv6.

Mark.
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