[rpd] Soft Landing, Recovered Space and Priority AFPUB-2026-IPv4-001-DRAFT01.

Thu May 21 14:19:51 UTC 2026

Hi Jaco,

Tks for the inputs.

I understand your point, and ideally I will be also for “stop completely” providing IPv4 addresses, but this is impossible while you can do transfers, even if they may happen under the table, so not a realistic position.

In other regions, only newcomers can get new IPv4 addresses, but the difference is that in other regions, they don’t have anymore any space, so the situation with Afrinic is quite different.

I think we should work in a better use of the recovered space, or learning from what happened in other regions with policies similar to “soft landing”, have a much better policy, but as said, I don’t think this will reach consensus in a short time, so meanwhile, let’s clear contradictions in the CPM.

Also note that in Africa, the penetration of Internet is still low, unless it changed a lot in the last few years, compared to other regions, so having the recovered space in the “soft landing” space, seems more appropriate. Note also that the other proposal also allows to use some of this “extra” IPv4 recovered space.

I think overall, this way to approach what do to with the recovered space helps Africa to improve Internet penetration tied to IPv6 deployment.

Regards,
Jordi

@jordipalet

> El 21 may 2026, a las 15:26, Jaco Kroon <jaco at uls.co.za> escribió:
> 
> Hi Jordi,
> 
> Thanks for raising this.
> 
> To be clear:  I'm mostly neutral on this.  To a degree I'm of the opinion that the remaining space should just go away so that IPv4 can now go the way of the dodo and those that have not yet deployed IPv6 can remain behind in an eventually disconnected world of their own.  That said ...  "no IPv4 space" makes you the "currently disconnected from reality" service provider - whilst in most cases is possible to overcome by providing services on IPv6-only and using a service like Cloudflare to bridge from IPv4 to IPv6 - but that's not always possible for all services.  From the latter perspective I'm in support of what you're saying, but I do thing we're just pro-longing our pain.
> 
> I do thing we also need to urgently address if possible is a policy around how to handle space that's recovered that were leased to AFRINIC members (or entities that could legitimately become AFRINIC members) by the entity from where the space is recovered.
> 
> I see two options:
> 
> 1.  Lose it.  For some of those entities this could be a death stroke.
> 2.  If the space could be justified as per existing AFRINIC policies, the space (or the portion that can be justified) gets assigned to the AFRINIC member.
> 
> This is aimed towards not penalising downstream customers (presumably innocent) of entities that engaged in policy violating behaviour (not speaking towards guilt/not - that's for others to determine, but it doesn't hurt to prepare for space recovery in the case that that happens).
> 
> Kind regards,
> Jaco
> 
>  On 2026/05/21 14:45, jordi.palet--- via RPD wrote:
> 
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> I just want to make a short intro to this proposal, aiming to create, hopefully, some discussion.
>> 
>> This proposal aims to resolve in a single step, most of the conflicts that have been raised by the staff and summarized here:
>> https://www.afrinic.net/policy/implementation-reports/pier-summary
>> 
>> Those conflicts are because the soft landing policy takes over some of the articles in other parts of the CPM.
>> 
>> This proposal address that by basically stating that in case of conflict, soft-landing articles will have higher priority and actually removing 3 articles and rewording one more, to avoid confusion for anyone reading the CPM.
>> 
>> This is the actual way the staff is doing for any request for IPv4 addresses, so basically, the proposal doesn’t imply changes in the actual evaluation process, just ensuring that there are no misinterpretations or confusions.
>> 
>> Please, let me know if you feel that something is broken or can be improved or whatever.
>> 
>> Note that this proposal doesn’t prevent the community to improve the soft-landing policy, for example regarding what do to with the IPv4 addresses being recovered, but reaching consensus in changes to soft landing, probably can take longer discussion cycles.
>> 
>> Tks!
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Jordi
>> 
>> @jordipalet
>> 
>> 
>>> El 15 may 2026, a las 17:46, dacostadarwin at gmail.com <mailto:dacostadarwin at gmail.com> escribió:
>>> 
>>> Dear PDWG,
>>> 
>>> We have received a new draft policy proposal - Soft Landing, Recovered Space and Priority, ID AFPUB-2026-IPv4-001-DRAFT01  from author Jordi Palet Martinez. The proposal contents are published at:  
>>> 
>>> https://afrinic.net/policy/proposals/afpub-2026-ipv4-001-draft01
>>> 
>>> We encourage you to take some time to go through the proposal contents and provide feedback as follows: 
>>> 
>>> a) Do you support or oppose the proposal?
>>> b) If you oppose the proposal, state your reasons?
>>> c) Is there anything in the proposal that is not clear?
>>> d) What changes could be made to this proposal to make it more effective?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> Vincent Ngundi & Darwin Da Costa
>>> AFRINIC PDWG Co-Chairs.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> RPD mailing list
>>> RPD at afrinic.net <mailto:RPD at afrinic.net>
>>> https://lists.afrinic.net/mailman/listinfo/rpd
>> 
>> 
>> **********************************************
>> IPv4 is over
>> Are you ready for the new Internet ?
>> http://www.theipv6company.com <http://www.theipv6company.com/>
>> The IPv6 Company
>> 
>> This electronic message contains information which may be privileged or confidential. The information is intended to be for the exclusive use of the individual(s) named above and further non-explicilty authorized disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information, even if partially, including attached files, is strictly prohibited and will be considered a criminal offense. If you are not the intended recipient be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information, even if partially, including attached files, is strictly prohibited, will be considered a criminal offense, so you must reply to the original sender to inform about this communication and delete it.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> RPD mailing list
>> RPD at afrinic.net <mailto:RPD at afrinic.net>
>> https://lists.afrinic.net/mailman/listinfo/rpd

**********************************************
IPv4 is over
Are you ready for the new Internet ?
http://www.theipv6company.com
The IPv6 Company

This electronic message contains information which may be privileged or confidential. The information is intended to be for the exclusive use of the individual(s) named above and further non-explicilty authorized disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information, even if partially, including attached files, is strictly prohibited and will be considered a criminal offense. If you are not the intended recipient be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information, even if partially, including attached files, is strictly prohibited, will be considered a criminal offense, so you must reply to the original sender to inform about this communication and delete it.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/attachments/20260521/284f0a99/attachment-0001.html>