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

[Nishal Goburdhan]

On 30 Aug 2016, at 16:13, sm+afrinic at elandsys.com wrote:

> The "vote with your wallet" may be applicable in the United States.  
> It is not applicable at my location.

i don’t live in the US, so i can’t speak to that.  but, fwiw, i 
*did* live in mauritius for a few years.  i recall there being choice 
then.
i hope, for the sake of competition, that hasn’t changed.  i’m 
guessing, by looking at the participant list at the MIXP, that it 
hasn’t.


>> to be clear, you do realise that it takes *ISPs* that are willing to 
>> peer, to "keep traffic local".  if a particular ISP, does not want 
>> to peer, the IXP isn't going to magically fix your packet's 
>> trajectory.
>
> According to http://pages.au.int/axis/ixp "The primary role is to keep 
> local Internet traffic within local infrastructure".
> The question which the press will ask is why funds were disbursed for 
> a project if there is a low probability of "keeping traffic local".

that would indeed be a good question.
and with more informed traceroutes, in some other parts of africa, that 
would probably be a Really Good reason to ask that.
seeing as how this is not the mailing list that deals with AUC spending 
however, i’d suggest that this is best done elsewhere.

here, we’re talking about mauritius;  which has a functioning IXP, 
and, has had one since about 2005, even though some parts of it only 
starting being publicly shown recently.  earlier, it was claimed that 
this is not functional;  i disagree.  it was mentioned that there was an 
ipv4 /22 (?) reserved for it (and hence its relevance to RPD);  i see 
(ipv4) only two individual /24s as per afrinic norm.
not all operators want to peer.  or peer correctly.  however, as long as 
three networks are changing traffic, that’s a working IXP.  anyone 
that doesn’t want to .. well, that’s their network’s prerogative!  
  and there are more than three networks peering at the MIXP.  call it 
whatever;  i call it a functional IXP.  perhaps not to the full 
potential of the domestic environment, but it’s still perfectly 
functional!

how to get the ixp working to its full potential is another long-drawn 
our (and not relevant to RPD) discussion.


>> https://lg.mixp.org tells me that there's network prefixes being 
>> announced at the IXP.
>> statistics from         http://www.mixp.org/#statistics tell me that 
>> there's live traffic going across the IXP.
>> the members list at http://www.mixp.org/#members shows me what looks 
>> like likely real peers.
>>
>> your complaint seems to be about one ISP's peering policy.  it's 
>> probably best to take that up with the ISPs directly.  i don't think 
>> RPD can assist you, though.
>
> I am not complaining about one ISP's peering policy.  Section 3.9.1 of 
> a proposal states that "critical infrastructure" is, among others, 
> IXPs.  I don't think that an IXP which has been down for two days 
> could be described as "critical".

i wrote to the administrator of the MIXP switch - aka the ixp.
i asked them if there was indeed a two day outage as alluded to.
i guessed at the date from the article - sometime in feb/march 2016.
they said no.  i have no reason to believe that they would be lying to 
me.

otoh, i can easily believe that an ISP messed up their network 
advertisements to make one believe that the IXP was not operational, 
from their perspective.  it won’t be the first time this has happened.


> In case the mailing list might be curious about whether I have a 
> conflict of interest in this matter, I'll mention that the only 
> interest I have is that it is local to me.  I (or any company I work 
> for) do not have had any direct or indirect financial interest in the 
> matter.

seeing as how the MIXP is a not-for-profit, that’s run by volunteers 
there’s little reason to question financial interest.  of course, if 
you have an interest in making sure that the MIXP stays up and running,  
you could always feel free to volunteer your time and energy to assist 
them, as well.  info[@]mixp.org is your friend;  i’m sure they’d 
welcome the additional assistance.

—n.