[rpd] Unaddressed queries by AFRINIC during AGMM

[Mimi dy]

Hi Fernando,





First, I find it important to remind you that the Internet is ONE.
Moreover, the African region will immensely benefit from this activity,
how? African ISPs/ network-holders can start leasing out unused IPs,
creating a whole connectivity ecosystem, which primarily can help them
generate more income, and more prominently, small scale enterprises/ tech
start-ups…etc., will also thrive through IP leasing instead of dedicating a
large portion of their capital to pay RIR membership fees. Additionally,
the organizations that have the capacity to lease IP addresses to richer
countries (i.e., Australia) will definitely generate an important profit
that will be used for the striving of internet connectivity worldwide. If
you do not see that as an economic growth incentive and a comparative
advantage, I suggest you give it a second thought.



As a matter of fact, all RIRs allow IP leasing, and inter-RIR resources
transfer, because there is no harm in liberating number resources and
allowing them to be globally transferrable. It is important to realize
that, in this day and age, the whole concept of the Internet is rooted in
openness, freedom and sharing, if you start elaborating restrictive laws
and regulations, the internet will be no different from a communist
government, which can lead to catastrophic repercussions.



To sum up, number resources are valuable assets and should be used in a
strategic and intelligent way, which can be beneficial for the whole
Internet, while of course maintaining its cooperative nature.





Best,

Le mer. 7 juil. 2021 à 23:51, Fernando Frediani <fhfrediani at gmail.com> a
écrit :


> There are several points and places that make it cristal clear that the

> idea of IP Leasing is not just something absurd in terms of IP usage but

> also against different rules in place. However some keep repeating the

> words are not written in the way "they" would like to read and ignoring all

> that just because that might go against their business.

>

> All that Noah put below makes sense even to a newbie in Internet Business

> so any company who need smaller allocations get them from their LIR which

> provides connectivity and that's the main propose these LIRs justified the

> need of these addresses when they were request to AfriNic. These business

> are developing internet in Africa by allocating internet resources for the

> purposes of enabling communications which is also provided by these same

> businesses. What communications are enabled by a member who has unused

> resources and is renting it to another member - or worst - in many cases to *a

> member of another RIR elsewhere* - therefore out of the region?

>

> What promotion of responsible management of Internet resources is being

> done *throughout the African region* when a member simply rent these

> resources to someone out of the region ? What development and operation of

> Internet infrastructure is being done in Africa ?

>

> Every unused resource with hold by a member is one chunk of less of

> resources in AfriNic's pool. What is the point of exhausting that pool

> completely and force newcomers to pay a higher price for the same resources

> they could get directly from AfriNic if these unused resources simply used

> for renting would have been returned back to AfriNic pool ? AfriNic looses

> newer members and in turn these companies become dependent from another

> company whose business is not transporting a single bit throughout the

> African region.

>

> Isn't all that enough to stop those who blindly keep trying to make IP

> Leasing and usage out of the region something normal and that should be

> accepted by AfriNic ?

>

> Fernando

> On 07/07/2021 13:15, Noah wrote:

>

>

>

> On Tue, Jul 6, 2021 at 1:06 AM Anthony Ubah <ubah.tonyiyke at gmail.com>

> wrote:

>

>> Hi Noah,

>>

>>

> Hi Oga Ubah,

>

>

>> What you describe sounds nice if you are one of the established ISPs who

>> are running a top to bottom network. However you can not say the same

>> for smaller enterprises, too small to be an LIR, and unable to run full

>> operations profitably, giving inability to afford the RIR/AFRINIC fees.

>>

>

> RIR membership fees are annual and AFRINIC today has close to 200 resource

> members across the region both large and small.

>

> I know a good number of small enterprises across the eastern coast of

> Africa that get sub-allocations of /29, /28, /26 to /24 from ISP (LIR's)

> providing them with connectivity or hosting services. This practise is

> common and it enables such small enterprises who don't need to become

> AFRINIC resource members to enjoy internet related services through ISP or

> hosting providers infrastructure on the continent.

>

> I similarly know of hyperscalers who provide compute and storage services

> across their infrastructure to a wide range of customers and each service

> comes with some assignment of an integer which is fundamental to provision

> of the IP related services of (compute, storage, applications) enabled by

> integer wrapped in the service to enable IP communication. Customers are

> not paying hyperscalers or hosting providers for an integer but a service.

>

> AFRINIC Bylaws Section 3.4) Sections i. and iii. Below talk about *enabling

> communication to assist in the development of the Internet in Africa and

> promote responsible management of number resources* and not

> leasing/brokering.

>

>

> *i. to provide the service of allocating and registering Internet

> resources for the purposes of enabling communications via open system

> network protocols and to assist in the development and growth of the

> Internet in the African region;*

>

>

> *iii. to promote responsible management of Internet resources throughout

> the African region, as well as the responsible development and operation of

> Internet infrastructures; *

>

>

>> I feel total reliance on network providers/carriers also limits

>> flexibility

>>

>

> As far as I am concerned, we have had multiple customers who wanted their

> own managed INR beyond what we as an LIR can sub-allocate as part of the

> connectivity services they enjoy from us and we encouraged and guided them

> to seek small blocks from AFRINIC. This turned out to be a much cheaper

> alternative than going to brokers and folks who lease each IPv4 for 30USD

> without providing any Internet related service to the customer beyond

> dashing out IP's with LOA's.

>

> AFRINIC FYI, does more than just allocating and managing INR. Read Bylaws

> section 3.4 in full to understand her complete objectives as an RIR for

> this region.

>

>

>>

>> No textbook analogy. IP leasing can allow the enterprise/organizations

>> certain flexibility in administration. Like having a single contiguous

>> range to numbers on all their interfaces and infrastructure either locally

>> and across the cloud, for better administration and scaling of their

>> network they need. This way all their IPs are unique and contiguous, and

>> they can number their offices networks, servers, VPN etc. for easy

>> management.

>>

> So Yes, fully (physical)provider independent. Without the physical

>> connection to provider being involved, that provider will still be there of

>> course, but the end user is not forced to number their LAN with that

>> provider's IP addresses.

>>

>

> Ooooh well.... last I checked ... AFRINIC is provider Independent and has

> alway been.

>

> So I encourage you to encourage those enterprises to reach out to AFRINIC.

> All they need is to become resource members, sign an RSA and justify their

> needs and they will be served.  AFRINIC manager INR transfers within the

> region as well.

>

>

>>

>> On another note, AFRINIC itself would give out such IP addresses as

>> assignments with the same justifications,  These  provider-independent

>> address space (PI) has some limitations in the current CPM. The PIs

>> assignments are also called "leasing", and well.

>>

>

> There is no language in the CPM that indicates that PI assignments are

> also called *leasing*. Please point me to such a language.

>

> However, Section 9.0 talks of temporary assignments of not more than one

> month in section 9.2 and this is often done by AFRINIC to support Internet

> related events and capacity building and education activities through

> various Af* initiatives (AIS, NOG's etc) as per the Bylaws section 3.4 iv.)

> v.) and vi.).

>

> This short term assignment as far I know is done for free and AFRINIC does

> not charge the temporary requesters any fees.

>

>

>

>>

>> AFRINIC as a non profit organisation should not place itself in direct

>> competition with its members.

>>

>

> Which members is AFRINIC competing with exactly?

>

>

>

>> Resource owners are restricted from leasing,

>>

>

> There is no such thing as a Resource owner. What there is, is Membership.

>

> *Bylaws section 6.1 subsection i.) talks of Membership as below.*

>

>

>

> 6) *MEMBERSHIP*

>

> 6.1) Subject to the other provisions of this Article, membership shall be

> open to:

>

>

> *i. any Person who is geographically based within, and providing services

> in the African region, and who is engaged in the use of, or business of

> providing, open system protocol network services;*

>

> So to break down the above for you, the language talks of *engaged in

> the use of* and not leasing or brokering IPv4's but rather ''*use of*"

> meaning using the IP  to provide internet related services in the Afrinic

> region on some network or system infrastructure.

>

> while the registry can lease out space as described in the policy, placing

>> AFRINIC in a very awkward situation.

>>

>

> AFRINIC does not lease, it allocates to LIR's and assigns members who seek

> PI INR's....

>

> CPM Section 5.4.6.2 reads as below and still talks of *use*

>

>

> *5.4.6.2 AFRINIC resources are for AFRINIC service region and any use

> outside the region should be solely in support of connectivity back to the

> AFRINIC region*

>

>

> Cheers,

> Noah

>

>

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