[rpd] Questions about IP Allocation rate

Tue Oct 14 09:11:28 UTC 2025

On it Noah…   blog post loading!

From: Noah <noah at neo.co.tz> 
Sent: 14 October 2025 12:10
To: Ben Roberts - AfriNIC <ben.roberts at afrinic.net>
Cc: Andrew Alston <aa at alstonnetworks.net>; RPD <rpd at afrinic.net>
Subject: Re: [rpd] Questions about IP Allocation rate

Hi Ben

Yes lets get us get that data from Afrinic. It would be interesting to know how many African Govt have Internet Resources or which govt entities have internet resources in each country.

Cheers,

./noah

On Tue, 14 Oct 2025, 5:41 am Ben Roberts - AfriNIC, <ben.roberts at afrinic.net <mailto:ben.roberts at afrinic.net> > wrote:

Ok. What we probably need is to have IP allocation statistics by African country. We can ask Afrinic for this to be complied. From that you can work out how many IP addresses a country has per capita of population.   Our policy setting needs to be guided by data and research, not rumour. 

According to this website, Eritrea has just over 5000 IP addresses. https://lite.ip2location.com/eritrea-ip-address-ranges This is on the extreme low side for a country of nearly 4 million population. Seychelles on the other hand with population under 150,000 has multiple tens of IP addresses (allocated to Seychelles registered companies) per capita.

Countries that have very low uptake of IP addresses will likely be mostly ones where regulators have not opened up the space to grant new ISP licences, my example of Eritrea has only one AS number for instance. Whilst AfrNIC can hold back some space for countries that forgot to build their digital economies…, the regulators in these countries need to be engaged to tell them “it’s now or never”. 

Sent from my iPhone

On 13 Oct 2025, at 22:25, Noah <noah at neo.co.tz <mailto:noah at neo.co.tz> > wrote:

Ben 

There is critical structural challenge in the continents digital landscape and you more than anyone knows this very well that we also suffer from uneven maturity of Digital Public Infrastructure and Government Networks (GovNet), which directly impacts the equitable deployment of essential digital services across majority of countries across our continent.

Look we are talking about numbering infrastructure that would support services like e-government, digital IDs, and public/private data exchanges, while aligning with AFRINIC's exhaustion-phase policies.

We can not shy away from these reality or pretend that there is lack of foresight from actors at Afrinic and the community at large.

Its a known fact that many of our African governments lack operational GovNets and strategic reservations of IPv4 address space from AFRINIC could serve as a targeted incentive to bridge these gaps. 

Cheers,

./noah

On Mon, 13 Oct 2025, 8:34 pm Ben Roberts - AfriNIC, <ben.roberts at afrinic.net <mailto:ben.roberts at afrinic.net> > wrote:

I think The DPI systems are normally run by state owned digital agency entities which are already mostly LIRs having some space. It is not quite as you describe being state owned LIRs that have sovereign owned IPs that are independent of LIRs..

Sent from my iPhone

On 13 Oct 2025, at 20:01, Noah <noah at neo.co.tz <mailto:noah at neo.co.tz> > wrote:

54 African States are taking public services online.

Digital Public infrastructure (DPI) is nolonger an idea. Its a real thing. DPI is critical. The private sector will tap into that infrastructure. Its here now.

Each of the 54 African states need address space indepedent of LIR space in each sovereign state.

These are not ideas that actors in the private sector care about or think about. 

Cheers,

./noah

On Mon, 13 Oct 2025, 5:52 pm Andrew Alston, <aa at alstonnetworks.net <mailto:aa at alstonnetworks.net> > wrote:

Hi All,

I was wondering if there were updated statistics for the amount of space allocated in the last 3 years.  In addition to this information regarding exactly how much free space is still available in the IPv4 unallocated pool (excluding reservations)

I ask this because depending on the allocation rate - we may wish to consider revising the soft-landing policy that currently reserves a /12 worth of ipv4 space for "future uses, as yet unforeseen".

I point out that the soft landing policy was ratified in 2011, and if we still, after 14 years, have not been able to articulate a clear reason for such a large reservation, I think it's time we look at most, if not all, of that /12 back into the main unallocated pool that can be allocated for African resource holders that actually need it.

Amongst other reasons, sitting with unallocated, unannounced, reserved space like this leaves the space vulnerable to hijacking and malicious use or even potential theft.

Thanks

Andrew

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