[rpd] [Last Call] Draft Policy Proposal - Hierarchical Names for New AS-SETs (AFPUB-2026-ASN-001-DRAFT02)

[Hendrik Visage]

Hi Tshepo,

To be Hendrik and Honest,

I'll make the claim the community cares about this issue - the archive shows the operators that run networks here do care about it. And yes, AfriNIC is handling and keeping book of those resources that those network operators in the Africa Region need and care about and want to protect it.

But here is what I struggle to follow, and I put it plainly for the record: the remedy you drafted in (015421) - restore the pre-existing AS-SET, under the same key, from its archived state, with documented evidence - is the remedy that is already inside the draft you oppose. Section 3 of DRAFT02 says exceptions MUST be allowed on a case-by-case basis, and its own example is your exact case: an AS-SET "deleted by mistake" that "should be possible to restore ... without having to rename it". The staff assessment (7.8.7) adds the documented reasons you ask for. Your text does not add this remedy, it narrows the one that is already there.

So the position now on record is: two weeks of arguing this proposal is too restrictive, ending in an amendment to make it more restrictive, while remaining opposed "as written" to the only text on the table that contains your own remedy. And if the proposal falls, there is no restoration rule at all - not your narrow one, not the draft's wide one, nothing.

The theoretical cases in between ((015415), (015417)) were answered with the registry mechanics in (015416) and (015418): they require transfer types AFRINIC does not perform.

If the community later wants the exception narrower, that is one normal PDP cycle away, as James already explained in (015412). It is not a reason to keep zero protection today.

I said in (015418) that the record is complete for the Co-Chairs, and I hold to that. This message only puts the above contradiction plainly in that record, in my own broken English.

Yours humanly,
Hendrik Visage (AS329532; also AS213481)