[rpd] AfriNIC RSA & policy improvement

[Adam Nelson]

Vladimir,

Now that I'm not co-chair I can have an opinion :-)

As somebody who hosts a public cloud in Kenya, foreign organizations are
critical to our business (http://kili.io).  They're also critical members
of the African Internet ecosystem.  So I definitely second (in principle),
the proposal.

Still, I think it's best to clarify your request into 2 separate items.

The first would be a specific set of changes to the processes you're
talking about and getting them passed in November at the next meeting.
Your current text is too vague to be actionable (but it's a good starting
point).  It also bundles things like who can be the PDWG co-chair (7) with
the concept that allocation should be based on policy alone (5) - so maybe
more than one proposal would be best.

The second would be to take the parts that sound like deficiencies in the
secretariat (i.e. unresponsiveness from admin-escalate@ and lack of
responsiveness) and directly address our new CEO Alan Barret.  He's
extremely capable so I'm sure he'll be putting his own stamp on the
secretariat's functioning in short order.  We aren't just members of
Afrinic, we're customers too.

Cheers,
Adam

--
About Adam: www.linkedin.com/in/adamcnelson

On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 11:10 AM, Jérôme Fleury <jerome at fleury.net> wrote:

> Vladimir,
>
> We (CloudFlare) are in the exact same situation as you:
>
> - Company decides to make investments in Africa
> - Company registered in Seychelles
> - Unreasonable requests from hostmaster (he wanted the list of our 2
> million domain names)
> - allocation request started in October 2014, still no IP allocated
> - wait times between replies are between 2 and 3 weeks
> - the only way I found to get an escalation was to use Twitter - per
> policy, admin-escalate at afrinic.net is unresponsive
> - Plus adding a misinterpretation on the Anycast policy
>
> This is delaying our deployment in Kenya and expansion in Johannesburg
> where we already are.
>
> I second your proposal.
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 7:48 AM, Vladimir Kangin <v at kangin.org> wrote:
> > Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
> > AFRINIC community,
> >
> > Please allow me to tell you a 3 minute story before proposing some
> > suggestions for further discussion.
> >
> > I would like to bring to your attention AGAIN, the case of IPTP
> > Networks. Being part of IPTP Holding PLC established in Cyprus. That's
> > 200 miles away from Egypt for those who do not know where Cyprus is
> > situated. IPTP Networks is a member in good standing of LACNIC, APNIC,
> > ARIC and RIPE for quite some time and operates one of the largest global
> > networks across all of the continents.
> >
> > In 2012 a decision was made by IPTP Holding PLC to invest and expand in
> > Africa. In order to be present in an AFRINIC region a company was
> > registered in the Seychelles. Our team has tried to secure initial
> > allocation of /22 for the star-up in Africa. However somehow,
> > communication had no progress. As a consequence last AFRINIC I decided
> > to visit AFRINIC in person in an effort to speed up the process.
> >
> > As per AFRINIC advice we apply for /22 allocation in November 2014. We
> > clearly illustrated our plans and were given assurances that companies
> > such as IPTP Networks are welcome in Africa and that there will be no
> > issues in allocation.
> >
> > During AFRINIC (roughly 7 months ago) we explained that we would like to
> > have /22 allocation for our project in Johannesburg and based on advice
> > from Arthur we obtained and provided a letter of intent as proof of our
> > agreements with Colocation and Network providers to deploy our POP in
> > Johannesburg.
> >
> > However we have had no progress with allocation for a few months. At
> > this stage the AFRINIC team has informed our team that until we actually
> > deploy all equipment and network in Africa we would not get any
> > allocation. We were then given further assurances that as soon as our
> > presence in Africa was established there would be no further delays and
> > issues.
> >
> > Based on this information IPTP Holding PLC has approved an investment
> > into the Johannesburg POP and as of April a full size POP has been
> > operating in Teraco JB1 datacenter. From that point we have endured a
> > monthly expense while our AFRINIC /22 allocation case kept being
> > delayed. We were repeatedly advised that in accordance with AFRINIC RSA
> > (due to so many fake applications) hostmasters are in the position to
> > request ANY documents from the applicants. Some of the documents that
> > have been requested are strictly confidential and we did our best to
> > obtain said documents from our vendors/providers together with the
> > appropriate letters.
> >
> > However our documents were not accepted and Arthur continuously insisted
> > on documents that we cannot disclose. Having escalated it further we
> > have had a discussion with Medhvi and she has shown her full support for
> > the inadequate requirements of Arthur. Our position on this issue is
> > simple and open. We are happy to provide any reasonable proof of our
> > presence. We are OK with involving Terraco and Level(3) representatives
> > to provide required evidence too. The hostmasters reject these options.
> > At the same time Arthur is continually handling this case in a most
> > unfavorable way, taking a lot of resources from our team and delaying
> > the start date of operations in IPTP's Johannesburg POP.
> >
> > We have large number of customers signed with IPTP Networks that are
> > waiting for the service to be delivered. This creates an additional
> > financial loss to IPTP Networks.
> >
> > Medvi and Arthur have stated clearly that they cannot trust the letter
> > provided by Teraco (because there have been a number of forgeries) but
> > refuse to meet Teraco representative for confirmation. I therefore have
> > to admit that the policy is not sufficient and allows hostmasters to
> > make unilateral decisions at their sole discretion.
> >
> > Based on the unpleasant experience above I would like to humbly propose
> > few important changes to the RSA and policy:
> >
> > Summary of proposal:
> >
> > This proposal is to improve service quality and transparency of
> > AFRINIC's number resource service.
> >
> > Proposal:
> > 1. AFRINIC Shall define a clear time-frame for approval and escalation
> > whereby cases will be address to the management in a timely manner.
> > (It would allow to rectify the endless loop or let's say “ping pong”
> > cases in a constructive way)
> > 2. AFRINIC shall simplify the extra-small and small allocation process
> > for companies entering the African continent. This can, for instance, be
> > copied from LACNIC whereby a company can be allocated a /22 on a basis
> > that it confirms its intention to start operations within 6 month of
> > assignment.
> > (Such treatment is certain to stimulate foreign companies' investment in
> > Africa, a fact that I am certain is welcome in this room)
> > 3. AFRINIC should publish standard documentary requirements for each
> > type of request for resource allocation.
> > (It is not enough to leave it up to the hostmaster's sole discretion to
> > request ANY information as is the case now in accordance with the
> > current RSA. This could allow the hostmasters to abuse the policy and
> > potentially pressure applicants for “bakshish”)
> > 4. AFRINIC should not store or request any marketing, business related
> > or basically non-technical information. For instance customer data,
> > marketing channels, marketing budgets etc.
> > 5. AFRINIC allocation should be solely based on current policy, no other
> > factors other than policy should influence AFRINIC's decision on
> > processing allocation.
> > 6. AFRINIC shall carefully select the hostmasters and monitor their
> > activities. In case of any suspicious activity the offender shall be
> > immediately suspended.
> > 7. AFRINIC policy working group chair election should be conducted
> > independent from AFRINIC board nomination committee. Candidates should
> > be free of any requirements.
> >
> > --
> > Best regards,
> > Vladimir Kangin
> > IPTP Inc Seychelles
> > Part of IPTP Networks
> > IPTP HOLDING PUBLIC LIMITED
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > rpd mailing list
> > rpd at afrinic.net
> > https://lists.afrinic.net/mailman/listinfo.cgi/rpd
> _______________________________________________
> rpd mailing list
> rpd at afrinic.net
> https://lists.afrinic.net/mailman/listinfo.cgi/rpd
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/attachments/20150605/bfaa8c48/attachment.html>