[rpd] Policy Proposal: in-region vs out-of-region use of resources, and restrictions thereon

[Jaco Kroon]

Hi All,

I believe that it's plain that AFRINIC was established for the benefit
of the African continent, this is even enshrined in the by-laws, as
detailed in section 3.4.  I believe sub-point (i) summarises it quite well:

/(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; [emphasis added]/


I won't quote the rest of it here, but the rest of the section is
equally relevant (https://afrinic.net/bylaws#b20-3) and makes it plain
that everything AFRINIC does should be for the benefit of the African
continent (region).  Even the *membership* is based on this regional
affinity:

/MEMBERSHIP - 6.1//
//Membership shall be open to://
//(i) any Person [including non-natural persons eg companies] 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;/

That is - the member is based in the AFRINIC region.  This applies to
all three classes of members (Registered, Resource and Associate).

It is also implied here that the resources are for use within the
African continent.

Over the last while it's become apparent that many people are extremely
unhappy about the fact that Afrinic resources are being used
off-continent.  Based on the above I think it's a fair
assumption/expectation (as well as appropriate) that at least the
majority of issued resources should be used in-region (In particular
IPv4 resources).

I believe it to be appropriate at this time to state this as policy in
the CPM, and thereby to make the general sentiment I've seen plain as
day.  This should then apply to all issued resources retrospectively as
well.  Not only newly issued resources (which is currently already dealt
with from the soft landing policy).

I request from the community opinions on the following:

1.  If you had to assign a percentage to out-of-region use, what
percentage of resources allocated from AFRINIC would be considered "fair
usage" for out of region use (I'm thinking "At least 50% of issued
resources should be used in-region", or then "less than 50% of resources
may be used out-of-region"); and

2.  Assuming that a policy gets passed to enforce some form of in-region
use - what would be an acceptable amount of time to provide members to
comply (I'm thinking either 6 or 12 months, definitely no longer than 18
unless someone can justify that sensibly) with respect to existing
resources?

You're welcome to differentiate between different types of resources
(for example, I don't think it makes sense to have to get a separate AS
number just because a company is multi-continent, so here as long as the
AS is also used in-region).  Space on v6 is of such a nature that I'm
inclined to say "who cares".

Currently the only restriction in the CPM regarding resource usage
relates to IPv4 during soft-landing
(https://afrinic.net/policy/manual#Soft-Landing relating specifically to
the last /8.  The fact that this can just be used in-region and then
move other existing resources out-of-region is of concern to me and this
is part of the "problem" I'd like to address in a policy update.

Kind Regards,
Jaco Kroon

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/attachments/20210728/64c049c2/attachment.html>