[rpd] More confusion from Noah

[Owen DeLong]

> On Jul 4, 2021, at 04:38 , Noah <noah at neo.co.tz> wrote:

> 

> 

> 

> On Sun, 4 Jul 2021, 12:41 Paul Hjul, <hjul.paul at gmail.com <mailto:hjul.paul at gmail.com>> wrote:

> People who act in good faith are welcome to email me separately if they want to have a more personal discussion but I don't like emails from bad faith actors, crooks or liars.

> 

> What are you talking about?


I believe he was choosing a round about mechanism for an ad hominem claim that you are a bad actor. I do not argue the merits or acceptability of his statement, merely explain my understanding of its meaning since you express confusion.


> 

> The constitution (Bylaws) states the objectives clearly on what is expected from resource members.

> The bylaws (as amended as late as 2020 - and quite deleteriously so) requires this from resource members:

> 6.4) Resource Member - A legal entity (local Internet registry or end-site) shall be deemed to be a Resource Member of AFRINIC after it has completed the following formalities cumulatively:

> justified its need for the right to use Internet Number Resources to AFRINIC;

> signed AFRINIC’s Registration Service Agreement; and

> paid the relevant setup and membership fees related to Internet Number Resources allocated/assigned to it by AFRINIC Registration Service.

> 

> 

> You skipped section 3.4 of the very bylaws which among other things reads as below...

> 

> 3.4) The Company shall have, both within and outside the Republic of Mauritius, full capacity to carry and/or undertake any business or activity, including but not limited to the following objects:

> 

> 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;

> to promote the representation of AFRINIC membership and the Internet community of the African region by ensuring open and transparent communication and consensus-driven decision-making processes;

> to promote responsible management of Internet resources throughout the African region, as well as the responsible development and operation of Internet infrastructures;       


He didn’t skip it, but that section is about what activities AFRINIC as a company is allowed to perform. It is not about AFRINIC’s ability to impose limitations on members.

Not one of those sentences enables AFRINIC to exercise any form of extraordinary control over the types of use of numbers other than possibly the implied ability to reject utilization plans which clearly violate applicable law.

Each of those statements is permissive and please note that both items 2 and 3 star with the words “to promote” rather than the words “to enforce”.


> So everything turns on what the services agreement posits is the nature of the allocation of resources. The agreement which I've got signed even after amendments and variations by Afrinic posits that the organization I represent as a member is a for profit private limited liability company incorporated under the laws of the Republic of South Africa. It is a commercial entity, it is in the business of for commercial benefit entering into commercial agreements to achieve a profit objective. Afrinic is in terms of that agreement a non-commercial entity. It has a strictly non-profit motive. It has a strict duty to allocate resources, there is no power given to re-distribute.

> 

> AFRINIC objectives in the bylaws section 3.4 are clear in subsections 1 and 3...below...

> 

> 3.4) The Company shall have, both within and outside the Republic of Mauritius, full capacity to carry and/or undertake any business or activity, including but not limited to the following objects:

> 

> 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;

> ..........

> to promote responsible management of Internet resources throughout the African region, as well as the responsible development and operation of Internet infrastructures;       

> Its therefore AFRINIC role to ensure responsible management of Internet Resources after they have allocated them to its members who are defined in section section 6.4 which you quoted above.


No. Ensure is not the same as promote. You are attempting to use sophistry to expand AFRINIC’s mandate beyond what is stated in the bylaws.

If you feel that the role should be thus expanded, then please, I am quite sure you are familiar with the necessary process to propose an amendment to those bylaws. This is yet another example of the continuing attempts by various members of this community and AFRINIC itself to twist the bylaws and the CPM into meanings that simply are not present in a plain text interpretation of the documents.


> The regulation (CPM) then empowers the organisation to carry out allocations and assignments as guided by the constitution.

> Exactly, the CPM etc ... provides for the allocation not the re-distribution, not the micromanagement and above all not the leasing of those resources by Afrinic on a commercial basis. The undertaking of management of entering into commercial agreements whether for profit or not for profit is determined by the member

> 

> You appear to read the power of allocation as being a power of re-distribution and of changing the goal posts of what constitutes need. This of course is designed to create a situation where internal political intrigue and inevitably corruption comes to determine "winners" and "losers", reputable organizations which require address resources will eschew the African market and the problems for investment that this eschewing brings will continue. 

> 

> The bylaws and RSA very clearly talk about the commercial relationship of number resources, what they say is that Afrinic is not to be in the business of undertaking commercial activities of assigning number resources for commercial ends (it is in the business of allocating number resources to LIRs and to making direct non-commercial assignments). 

> 

> 

> AFRINIC must also ensure responsible management of those very number resources and that is the basis for need-based allocation and assignment for the purpose defined in Bylaws section 3.4 subsection 1.


Again, you repeat the same fallacy from above. Needs based allocatoin/assignment is in the ambit of promoting responsible management, but it is also a recognition that AFRINIC’s control over how members choose to use their resources is to be limited by the nature of the relationship. It is a question of contractual performance and the contractual requirements are subject to some limitations.


> Its AFRINIC responsibility to support the development of Internet Infrascture in AFRICA as her service region and this is why AFRINIC was formed and the Org has played that fundamental role and must continue to as its her responsibility to manage INR for the best interest of AFRICA.


You have again attempted to expand the mandate beyond that which is stated. If you truly want this to be AFRINIC's mandate and to empower AFRINIC to take arbitrary and capricious actions in pursuit of that goal, then you must first amend the bylaws to reflect this new mission.


> The lease (temporary assignment or allocation of the use of an asset or resource for a defined period of time) by Afrinic is non-commercial, the lease by the LIR to customers is generally (but not always, you can have a non-commercial LIR) commercial.

> 

> The problem is that some in Afrinic believe that this means that liars, bullies and thieves can under the aegis of Afrinic undertake the pillaging as was done by your good friend Ernest (and you yourself call him your friend: https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/community-discuss/2020-December/003814.html <https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/community-discuss/2020-December/003814.html>).

> 

> I know Ernest very well FYI and just like Ernest i know so many other folks who work at AFRINIC who I consider great friends. The Man's mistakes are what they are but I won't pretend to not know him having interacted with him for years as a good friend. Did I know what was happening, Nop.... I did not, because I dont work at AFRINIC.


A mistake is something that you do unintentionally while trying to do something else. Ernest’s actions were no mistake. They are a long lasting combination of fraud and embezzlement and trivializing them by referring to them as mistakes shows just how lopsided your idea of fair administration and defense of resources is. As to your lack of knowledge, that’s OK… Apparently your in the good company of those at AFRINIC whose job it was to know.


> Please visit a court room one of this days and you will meet defendants who actually have family members and friends.... Those who know me well, no one thing about me... I don't pretend and am no hypocrite.


I have known several criminals and their families over the years. Yes, the tragedy of crime is borne largely by the innocent families who are in some ways often the most tragic victims of some types of crime. If Ernest ever faces justice for what he has done, it is inevitable that his family will suffer and that is unfortunate.

The fact that you are aware of this shows some level of enlightenment about the true costs of the current processes of criminal justice, but it does not show that you do not pretend or that you are no hypocrite.

Hypocrisy would be something akin. to holding more than twice as much address space as you advertise in the global routing table(s) while criticizing organizations that actually have fully utilized and properly advertised their full address range.


> I am quite pleased to see that the discourse from Andrew Alston about commercialization of intergers has entered the floor. Of course this entire thing boils down to the simple question of "who commercializes the integers" and the answer is LIRs.

> 

> LIR provide IP based services like connectivity, hosting and domain naming/dns services to their customers.


Nope… ISPs, Colo’s, and Registries/Registrars provide all of those services. Some companies in one or more of those businesses also provide LIR services. LIRs assign (and sometimes sub allocate or reallocate) addresses to their customers. That’s the clear definition of LIR contained in the CPM.

There is not one single thing in the CPM, the RSA, or the bylaws that ties LIR services to connectivity services. The requirement simply doesn’t exist in existing AFRINIC policy and never has.

You are free to argue that it should and you are free to put forth a policy proposal to make it so. Nonetheless, as it stands now, it does not exist. If you want to claim I am wrong about this, then please present the relevant text and/or citation from the bylaws, CPM, or RSA to support your argument.


> They archive the above by assigning integers to some network interface card with e.g ethernet ports on a L2 or L3 gear.


I presume you mean that they achieve rather than archive the above.

Mostly, LIRs achieve the above by a combination of individual port assignments within their own gear and assignments of blocks
of addresses or individual addresses to their customers to deploy on customer gear as the customer sees fit.


> The commercialization is therefore on the services and not the integers themselves.


This simply isn’t true. There are way too many ISPs and others charging separately for addresses vs. connectivity services as line items on their invoices for you to be able to defend this claim. It does not survive even the most superficial scrutiny.


> The services are what customers seek and not integers than enable to provision of IP based services.


That really depends. Some customers seek only connectivity and are content with a single NAT gateway and second class citizenship on the internet. Other customers are running a business and may need to facilitate inbound connections to multiple hosts or may need a bigger NAT pool that works well with a single address. Regardless of the situation, there are customers who seek more than a single address for their site(s) and there are many ISPs who charge for those additional addresses as a separate line item on the bill.

I’d even bet that Seacom has some customers in that category, whether or not Seacom charges extra for the addresses in question. I know that in the US, Comcast leases /29s to business customers for $15/month and the customer only gets use of 5 of the 8 addresses in that case.

(Comcast sells this product as “block of 5 IPv4 addresses”)

Interestingly, they don’t bother with any sort of needs justification from the customer and a customer can theoretically lease as many of those as they wish.

However, at the price of half an address per month, it rapidly becomes cost effective to move to a place where BYOA works instead if you need any significant amount of address space.

I admit that Comcast are highway robbers in their pricing model and I have no intent to hold them up as any shining example, but they are a very large ISP that does lease addresses plain as day.

Verizon does the same thing.

Unfortunately, it seems providers in Africa don’t generally publish detailed pricing information, but I will say that if there aren’t already providers doing similar things in Africa, there almost certainly will be soon.

If people will pay for addressing, someone will find a way to sell it to them.

Owen

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