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

[Owen DeLong]

> On Jul 28, 2021, at 05:41 , Jaco Kroon <jaco at uls.co.za> wrote:

> 

> 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 <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:


It’s equally clear that section 3.4 is a broad-brush set of goals for how the organization should conduct itself, not a binding limitation on the members of the organization.


> 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).


Yes. Cloud innovation is domiciled in the Seychelles and has operations in other parts of Africa as well as in countries outside of Africa.


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


Implied how?

The statement is that the member must provide services in the region. It says nothing about what percentage of services provided by the member must be in region.


> 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).


If you believe that, then there should be policy to that effect placed in the CPM through the PDP.


> 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).


The only way to achieve that is to create a proposal, fill out a proposal template, submit it and convince the community to come to consensus around the proposal.

Anything else is an end run on the community driven bottom up consensus process which must be followed for policy to remain valid.


> 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


Percentages are dangerous here. The 50% mark has precedent in LACNIC, but frankly, it has also stymied international development of organizations in the LACNIC region.

Doesn’t this also become further moot if the Resource Transfer Policy which achieved consensus is (as some claim is mandatory) becomes ratified by the board?

Even in my opinion, while the Board Prerogative proposed policy has valid grounds for rejection by the board (it is a bylaw matter and out of scope for the PDP as it seeks to control the powers of the board), the Resource Transfer Policy is 100% in scope and the PDP was followed in its reaching consensus. As such, it is hard to imagine the board having any valid basis to refuse to ratify it.


> 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 <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.


You’re also going to need to find a way to carefully define “use in region”. If an ISP in the region is terminating a circuit between said ISP and a customer out of region, is the utilization of the IP Addresses by that customer considered in-region usage or out-of-region usage?
What if the ISP in region is terminating a circuit with a customer out of region, but that customer has a backbone that includes sites in-region?

The vast number of corner cases and the difficulty of addressing them is the reason that this kind of policy utterly fell flat the last time it was proposed many years ago. Suggest you review that record.

Owen

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