[rpd] AfriNIC policy AFPUB-2014-GEN-002-DRAFT-01 reject

[Owen DeLong]

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> I can concretely demonstrate that the availability of IPv4 addressing can have an impact on business investment.
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> Impact, sure. but not determining factor in any significant investment that can be said to be "developing africa". It the arrogance of the statement I mention.

Actually, it could well be a determining factor.

Nobody in their right mind is launching a new IPv4 ISP in Asia right now. The lack of available addressing makes such a venture foolhardy at best.

Africa has more IPv4 space available than anywhere else in the world right now. That makes it more reasonable for new market entrants to invest in Africa, but it also makes Africa a target for pulling resources out to exploit them in other regions.

While I agree with Andrew to a large extent that African companies must be allowed to use AfriNIC space to compete globally, I also believe that a lack of limitations on the exportation of address space by pseudo-African companies[1] and/or non-African companies[2] will lead to exploitation that does not particularly benefit Africa or Africans.

Full disclosure, while I am active (and have been active for several years) in the Afrinic RPD, I do not live in the region and have never lived in the region.

> Liquid investing $200m in Africa is NOT because of IPv4 address availability, rather it because of market opportunity. I not sure that "availability of IPv4 address" is make or break condition for making such investments. Maybe I'm wrong but i sure that there will still be invesitment in Internet infrastructure in africa with or without IPv4.

Lack of IPv4 address availability could well render that investment untenable. Nobody is going to make that kind of investment unless there’s a potential ROI. In order to have an ROI, one must be able to provision customers. If you cannot provide IPv4 addresses to those customers, you are unlikely to be able to recruit customers and/or provision them with the services necessary to obtain the necessary ROI.

> It is however a good red herring for IPv4 brokers and arrogant IT people who over-value IT in general and IPv4 in particulier.

It’s really not. It’s really just a red herring… A distraction from productive discussion. I’m not sure where brokers came into this or what you mean by arrogant IT people who over-value IT in general and IPv4 in particular, so I’m not sure how to answer that. However, I think that the goal of the policy at hand (whether it would achieve the goal or not) and what Andrew is saying and what you are saying are generally in agreement…

To prevent AfriNIC resources from being plundered and exploited by organizations without ties to the African continent or with specious or limited ties created solely for the purpose of exploiting resources.

> But believe me, coming from an environment where having address space is critical to the business, there is a correlation between investment and address space, and it can be clearly demonstrated.
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> Correlation != Causation. I be happy to be show both. The attractiveness of IT infrastructure in Afrique is based more on business opportunity.  link to a IPv4 resource that is quick running out is very shady at best. Or put different - will these investments stop if afrinic run out of ipv4? (we might look to see weather investments in infrastructure  in india and Chine have stopped because of lack of ipv4.

Addresses are a critical component of internet services. Liquid is an ISP. If they can’t provide addresses for their infrastructure and their customers, they will not be able to sell services and thus will not have an ROI. Therefore, a lack of address availability will, in fact, prevent future investment. That’s causation, not merely correlation.

> I do believe that we need to protect the African resources from being pillaged by non-African entities and IP Brokers.  I will strongly support policy that prevents African resources flowing off continent into the hands of those who have absolutely no link to Africa AND where there is no benefit (quantitative) to the continent. 
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> That seem to me to be a goal many people in the community share. but i wander , with such small IPv4 space compared to other part of world, why is afrinic consumption so small? 

There are a number of historic reasons relating to the following problem areas:

	1.	Difficulty qualifying for resources under ARIN policies of the past (pre-AfriNIC)
	2.	Perception problems created by 1
	3.	Cost and the perceived cost-savings of NAT (artificial, though they are)
	4.	Perceived security/control/etc. advantages of NAT (also artificial)
	5.	Limited understanding of the process of obtaining addresses and fee structures
> I just do not believe at this point we have a policy proposal that fulfills these objectives. 
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Rather than merely state that the current proposal doesn’t meet the objectives, perhaps it would be more useful if you could propose language or modifications that could be made to the current proposal in order to achieve what I think almost everyone agrees is the valid goal.

Owen


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