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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Andrew,<br>
<br>
You and I elected a Board. They are representatives of the
community, knowledgeable and of course, they have a
responsibility. They should be left to carry it out. We do not
need to query all expenditures like Travels, Lobbying, ICANN, IP
Research, Trainings, Linkages, leap-frog Technologies, etc. After
that, we will being to argue about impact assessment, priorities,
Per $ contribution of AfriNIC to fighting Sahara desert
encroachment etc etc etc. <br>
<br>
I think this route is poisonous, lets exit the loop.<br>
<br>
Please note that I am not saying people should not be accountable,
nor should we not raise legitimate queries. I just believe we
should exercise discretion when necessary.<br>
<br>
Sunday.<br>
<br>
<br>
On 21/07/2012 20:54, Andrew Alston wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAD52VQ0dL0LZdnF1XFAgWL0Mmm8WQZ44LFYnJD79_MEt=ydz0A@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
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Hi All,
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Sorry, just a correction to my below email. I referred to
the financials presented in Ghana, I meant to say Gambia.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Thanks</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Andrew</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 9:34 PM, Andrew
Alston <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:alston.networks@gmail.com" target="_blank">alston.networks@gmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote">
Hi All,
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I've been sitting thinking about this a fair bit, and
perhaps we do need a very close look at the fee structure,
that being said, under the way that AfriNIC works, the
fees are the domain of the board rather than the
community, hence the community is left with policy only
options should they feel the fee structures aren't working
for them (Well, thats my understanding, someone can
correct me if I'm wrong).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Now, with regards to the policy, as I've said, I do
feel that until we can resolve the issue around the fee
structures, we need the definitions tightened up, and I
still believe that, but I'm going to leave that alone for
a minute and look at the fees.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Here are a couple of thoughts on this firstly.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>AfriNIC is an organization that is fairly new,
operating on a continent that has a fairly low internet
penetration rate when compared with the other regions.
They also, because they are the youngest of the RIR's,
have less total space to assign and hence less total
overall revenue that can be generated in annual fees.
This WILL have an effect on their pricing. However, this
has to be balanced with economic reality, and that reality
is that the prices in Africa for internet related
resources (be it bandwidth, access, IP addresses etc) are
also having an effect on growth in the region. I believe
though (without empirical evidence I admit), that the
AfriNIC fees as they currently stand DO however promote
systemic use of network address translation. The economic
realities of operating in the ISP environment in Africa
leave people trying to scrape every cent from anywhere
just to survive, particularly with the smaller players
trying to start their own ISP's, and if you can NAT and
save yourself a few thousand dollars a year, well, that's
whats going to happen.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Now, this leads to the next question. Why are AfriNIC
fees what they are. I will be the first to state, that
AfriNIC has to be financially viable, the organization HAS
to generate enough revenue to sustain itself, that being
said, I think below we can look at the fee structures in
any coherent way, we need to understand certain things.
Therefore, I want to ask AfriNIC, in the name of
transparency, to provide certain information which I have
been unable to find on the website, so that the community
as a whole can analyse this.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>a.) How many LIR's are there in each category of
membership</div>
<div>b.) How many End Users are there in each category of
membership.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Once we have answers to (a) and (b) we can potentially
start looking at shifting costs if necessary from one to
the other (in particular on the annual maintenance basis)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Then, the trick to lowering the costs of IP space is
also to look at AfriNIC's running costs, and since this is
a community based organization, I feel it is fair to
question some of these costs and get some explanations so
that we can better understand where the money we, as the
community, are spending is going to. The financial
reports presented in Ghana where, in my opinion, a little
ambiguous and fairly hard to figure out exactly what was
meant by each line item, which also didn't help this
situation.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I'd like to better understand the need for AfriNIC's
staff compliment as well, after all, AfriNIC's core
business is to allocate IP addresses to its community, yet
it employs 34 full time staff according to its website,
and is advertising for more. At the same time, from what
I can see from the website, and again, I say I am open to
correction, it only employs 2 individuals in the
hostmaster position. These two individuals also travel
extensively, and this leads to severe delays in evaluating
and approving requests (which is the CORE business of
AfriNIC). I fail at this point to understand why in a
staff compliment of 34 staff, there seem to be a relative
few number dedicated to what is the core business, and I'd
like AfriNIC to comment on this. I also understand the
need for AfriNIC's involvement in ICANN/IANA/etc, since we
HAVE to be involved in the global community, however, I
would like to see what this involvement is costing AfriNIC
at the end of the day, and how this is contributing to the
fees.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Basically, what I'm trying to get at is this. A.) Are
the LIR and End User fees disproportional, and B.) are the
costs involved in running AfriNIC that necessitate these
fees really justified and can we get better insight into
these running costs.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I think once we get some better understanding,
particularly in regards to the balance of the membership
base, we can take a far better look at this, and I look
forward to hearing AfriNIC's response to the community on
these questions.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Thanks</div>
<span class="HOEnZb">
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Andrew</div>
<div> </div>
</span></blockquote>
</div>
<br>
</div>
<br>
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