[rpd] Some thoughts, and some actions required

[Andrew Alston]

Mwendwa,

You say that but history also indicates that there have been significant issues in certain cases around universities applying for large tracts of space.  Most of which were resolved at the time, but it was a fairly complex exercise that at times took long periods of time and a lot of back and forth that I’m not sure most universities are geared up for.  

Sadly, our current policies are such that there is enough ambiguity that large applications often require explanations which can at times be fairly difficult to calculate and provide, for example, the issue of wifi usage concurrency has proved to be a major point of contention, because on a new wifi deployment its extremely difficult to prove concurrent utilisation without historic figures.

The other issue in the past (which thankfully seems to have been resolved) is the debate about if a university is an EU or an LIR, I remember debating this at length with AfriNIC a few years ago and there was substantial discussion on this list around this point (please lets not reopen this one, it gets messy)

I to would support large amounts of space being left in the hands of academia, and it really saddens me that I know of universities that are still using NAT to push entire campuses through address space that is smaller than a /28!

Why didn’t the policy pass?  That I have never understood, because I never truly understood the arguments against it (for example, one argument that was put forward was that increasing the number of live IP addresses available to universities would increase spam on the internet)

But, it is what it is and the community could not reach consensus, so we have to move forward and we’re moving into an arena of unchartered territory.  I’m very curious to see what happens the day an African ISP applies for space and gets told there is no more, and the reason they cannot have any is not because their application is invalid, but because there is no more.  I’m even more curious to see the reactions if there is no transfer policy and as a result zero ability to get their own space.  I pray I never see my curiosity satisfied on the latter, and realise that its only a matter of time before my curiosity is satisfied on the former.

Andrew




On 03/02/2016, 4:29 PM, "Mwendwa Kivuva" <Kivuva at transworldafrica.com> wrote:

>On 03/02/2016, Sunday Folayan <sfolayan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> On 03/02/2016 05:32, Mukom Akong T. wrote:
>>> I've always championed, Universities should get their own IP space and ASN
>>> and then
>> interconnect with the REN using BGP. Is that the case at UoN and if not
>> I'd be interested in knowing the challenges there. I'm pretty sure that
>> if every university on this continent requested IPv4 space for 1/3 their
>> need, AFRINIC's pool won't last 3 months.
>>
>> Long dead (live) the IPV4 academic policy!!
>>
>> http://www.afrinic.net/en/community/policy-development/policy-proposals/842-academic-ipv4-allocation--afpub-2013-gen-001-draft-03--under-discussion
>>
>> Perhaps Kivuva can breathe some life into it.
>>
>
>Sunday, The Academic IPv4 Allocation proposal looks solid. I wonder
>why it never passed then.  Has it not been overtaken by events? I'm
>not sure we have enough v4 resources now to make the proposal a
>reality. But I would not mind having a big percentage of our remaining
>resource go to education institutions in the region.
>
>The draft policy aside, nothing is preventing Universities to apply
>for resources ans end users. Indeed, they are always welcomed to do
>so.
>______________________
>Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya
>twitter.com/lordmwesh
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