[rpd] Some thoughts, and some actions required

[Owen DeLong]

> On Feb 4, 2016, at 7:36 PM, Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston at liquidtelecom.com> wrote:
> 
> Owen,
> 
> And there in lies my exact point.  I cannot see how we can have a policy that is a one way policy that only allows inbound transfers, because I don’t believe the rest of the world will accept such a thing.  At the same time, I know we will need space that only exists off the continent and will need to be transferred in from other RIR’s.  Everyone is so worried about space leaving the continent on mass, but we are forgetting, once we have exhausted what is in the AFRINIC pool, Africa will have the least amount of space of anywhere in the world.  Why on earth would people come and try and BUY space on the secondary market in Africa?  There is almost none to sell and its going to be far easier and probably far cheaper to convince companies elsewhere in the world to sell purely because of the volume of space available elsewhere.  However, we also have hundreds of millions of people not yet connected and because of the very low rates of space on the continent, it is us that will have probably the greatest need for space.

I assure you people will attempt to buy space wherever they think they can get it, especially if they think they can get a lower price.

Space is going to be scarce everywhere and likely in short order. I don’t think there’s as much space available for transfer everywhere else as you seem to think. I suspect that in 1-2 years, we will have seen all of the space that will change hands at anything remotely resembling a reasonable price has already done so.

After that, I think that the price of IPv4 addresses will rapidly become an increasing incentive to deploy IPv6.

> As I said, we if we extrapolate from the allocation rates of November, December and January combined we were allocating at in excess of 3 /8s a year, and to my knowledge (and I’m open to correction here), no other RIR ever hit those kinds of levels.

APNIC was doing a /8 every other month for about the last 1-2 years of their free pool, actually IIRC.

> Rejecting a transfer policy right now in my view would be like a man who has a canteen of water as he starts a venture into the desert, and says to the guys with a water truck, just incase you decide you want a sip of my canteen and I run out, I want a rule that says you can never fill up my canteen so its clear you can’t have any of my water.  Guess what, after a short while the guy with the canteen will run dry, and he will die of thirst.  The guys with the water truck may end up rationing but they will survive.

Except that Africa is not headed into a desert. There is the possibility to reverse the decision or pass a transfer policy which is not available until the canteen is empty. However, even then, there is also the possibility of markets pulling addresses off continent.

> Are we as an African community really going to be that short sighted?

As I have repeatedly stated. I am neither in favor of nor opposed to an inter-RIR transfer policy in the region. I just want all of the facts and potential consequences out in the open for the community to discuss and decide.

Owen

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