[rpd] Soft Landing-SD (AFPUB-2017-V4-001-DRAFT-02)

[Douglas Onyango]

Hello Owen,
Thanks for your feedback,
Comments are inline:-

On 10 April 2017 at 13:21, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
> I believe that the problem statement remains fundamentally flawed and that
> the resulting policy suffers from those flaws. Clarification in-line
> below...
>.
>
> Specifically, the current Softlanding Policy:
>
> Allows a maximum allocation size of a /13 in Phase 1. The authors feel this
> is too large based on average allocation size, and can be abused.
>
> Please define the perceived "abuse" and explain how it constitutes abuse.
> Note, I feel that use of loaded terms like "abuse" to describe "a result we
> don't like" is disingenuous and contrary to open and transparent policy
> development.

To abuse to use improperly, or to misuse. I don’t see why you think
this is a loaded term.

On the meaning and use, we believe that Internet resources are
supposed to be used for the greater good of the AFRINIC community.
Based on staff analysis, 93% of the 1,373 v4 requests requests in the
last 5 years were for blocks smaller than a /16. As authors we believe
that any policy that favours the 7% of members at the expense of the
93% is what is not  in the best interest of the greater AFRINIC
community.

You have seen nefarious elements go as far as hijacking unused v4
prefixes, so telling ourselves that they won’t come for large chunks
of v4, if no limits are set, especially for this last pool, then we
would be burying our heads in the sand.

However, we were careful with any restrictions. Based on our analysis
more than 93% of organization/requests in the past 5 years could be
served without a problem if this policy is passed, which represents
the greater AFRINIC community.


>
> Allows organizations to request allocations/assignments without limiting the
> number of times or maximum size that can be requested. The authors of this
> policy feel this can advantage a few, mostly large organizations, at the
> expense of the general community, and can also be abused.
>
> This perpetuates the myth that large organizations don't serve the general
> community when in reality, depending on the organization, in some cases,
> large organizations serve the biggest fractions of the general community.
> While I can't cite specific examples within the AfriNIC region, I will point
> out that a /8 being held by a fruit company  in Cupertino (ticker symbol
> AAPL)  (large-ish organization that serves a very small fraction of the
> IP-using community) is probably a very poor use of resources. OTOH, /8s held
> by various large ISPs actually serve very large fractions of the internet
> community in the region. Organization size alone is not an effective measure
> of benefit offered to the community for addresses consumed.


Apologies if we gave this impression. We have tried our level best to
cater for large organizations. While it is impractical to cater for
all members at all times, we have catered for 93% of them based on
requests from the last 5 years We feel that this is representative of
the greater good.

>
> The current policy does not "advantage" large organizations in any  way.
> True, you can't fill as many large requests from the remaining free pool as
> you can smaller requests, but the reality is that customer growth is likely
> to be roughly the same over the same period of time regardless of whether
> those customers are connected to a few large providers or a whole lot of
> smaller ones.
>
> Preventing larger providers from obtaining addresses for their customers in
> order to protect the abilities of smaller providers to serve smaller blocks
> of customers is arguably not so much leveling the playing field as it is
> creating an advantage for smaller providers at the expense of larger ones.

We are not preventing larger providers from obtaining addresses for
their clients, Like we've stated in our proposal,  the current
statistics shows that a significant percentage of current members got
space less than a /16.  All factors constant, only 7% of the requests
MIGHT not be met with this policy passing. However, we believe the
interest of the greater community would have been served.

>
> Does not make any specific provisions for new entrants. The authors feel
> that this might advantage existing organizations at the expense of new
> entrants.
>
> Please explain why this is a bad thing? Why should we create additional
> hardships for existing organizations with real needs now on the basis that
> there might be some other organization that doesn't even exist now which
> might need addresses at some later date?

Perhaps our choice of wording maybe at fault here, but we have
attempted to make provisions for new entrants without creating
significant hardship for the existing organizations. From the  5-year
analysis, we should be able to accommodate 93% of requesters, which we
feel represents the greater community of existing users. We have been
careful to make sure any such provision is not at the expense of
existing users, this is the reason we proposed allocation/assignment
rounds within phases. So that if a pool still has resources, anyone is
free to request for more, after a wait period.


>From the Policy Authors.
Regards,