[rpd] Statistics on IPV4 allocation in Africa as of 2016

[Owen DeLong]

> On Jun 15, 2016, at 19:50 , Badru Ntege <badru.ntege at nftconsult.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On 15 Jun 2016, at 9:58 pm, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I’m sorry, Honest, but I couldn’t disagree more.
>> 
>> The continued IPv4 free pool in Africa and the perception that delaying what comes next by slowing down the uptake of IPv4 addresses in Africa is a complete fallacy.
>> 
>> Let me attempt to provide a real world parallel. I apologize for the graphic nature, but it’s the closest I could come in analogy.
>> 
>> Let’s say you are stranded in a remote area with a 7 day supply of food. If you go to the minimum consumption that will still sustain your health, you can stretch it to 10 days. If you go to the minimum that will keep you alive, it will last 21 days.
>> 
>> You might think that the intuitively obvious answer is to go to the minimum that will keep you alive. However, consensus among survival experts is that this is a very wrong answer. See, while you will still be alive after that 21 days, you’ll be extremely weak, very hungry, and your body will have begun feeding off of itself. Your health will be severely compromised and your actual chances of survival overall are greatly reduced. Instead, it is better to go for the 10 day consumption rate and try like hell to get rescued, find food, or reach civilization during those 10 days.
> 
> I like the survival analogy and it makes some sense only difference is that in our regions we are already working on the rescue packages like building out our fiber and power networks to reach all our last villages. 
> 
> This will take some years but the cross regional programs are already underway. We beleive v4 would be a good start for these small networks like the schools plan in Tanzania where one of the new operators has a commitment to connect schools Ina big part of the country. In East Africa the Nortern corridor project is building out power networks with a planned connection to the Ethiopian power grid. And alternative fiber networks along the planned new rail networks. 

I think that’s a furtherance of the same fallacy. Because it will take years to deploy this, I believe that it would make far more sense to deploy them as IPv6 networks and make sure that you have an IPv4-compatible backup solution in place for them.

It is far better to build a network for the future with the future capabilities it will need and a degraded interface to the legacy network than to build it to meet the current needs with a degraded potential for maybe one day addressing the future needs.

> These are a few of the projects going on in the region to ensure every citizen has access to the Internet if they choose to. 
> 
> Just like we did with motor vehicles we started with second hand vehicles from Japan but we are now not only importing new cars we are assembling cars locally and even building new electric powered cars and busses localy. 

The difference is that second hand vehicles will run on the same highways as new vehicles or electric cars. If you pave an IPv4 only highway for these networks, then you will have an IPv4-only highway that will not carry these new IPv6 trucks that the rest of the world is slowly (or not so slowly in some cases now) moving to.

> So to ammend your analogy I would say 20 days are needed and a rescue team is already on the way. If we give the region only 10 days we would be cementing the existing imbalance. We should encourage large networks with resources to get v6 and ring fence v4 for new small start up networks. 

But here’s the thing… There’s no way to give the region 20 days instead of 10 other than giving everyone half as much address space per day for twice as many days.

There’s a finite stack of IPv4 and the only way to make it last longer is to make the problems of shortage more acute.

Owen

> 
> 
>> Similarly, the only way to make the free pool last longer in Africa is by starving those providers who have needs now in favor of holding the resources for them or other providers who might need them later.
>> 
>> Instead, the best thing is for all of us to recognize that IPv4 has become unsustainable and stop depending on its continued availability.
>> 
>> Owen
>> 
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