Re: An update on the AfriNIC situation

[Owen DeLong via NANOG <nanog () nanog org>]

> On Aug 31, 2021, at 08:40 , Jon Lewis <jlewis () lewis org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 30 Aug 2021, Owen DeLong via NANOG wrote:
>
> >      On Aug 30, 2021, at 18:00 , Rubens Kuhl <rubensk () gmail com> wrote:
> >
> >      AFRINIC approves IPv4 for the purpose of leasing every day. It’s what ISPs do. It’s the definition of an LIR.
> >
> >      Yes, most LIRs are also in the connectivity business and provide addresses (mostly/exclusively) to customers of 
> > their connectivity services.
> > Which is why CI informed AfriNIC in their request that they were going
> > to have no network and provide connectivity-less services to CI
> > customers, right ?
> >
> >      However, there’s no such policy requirement in the AFRINIC governing documents.
>
> Sorry...I haven't been keeping up with all the messages in this thread, but assuming it's not already been brought 
> up, what about this, which has been in the AfriNIC CPM since v0.1 (i.e. the beginning):
>
> "5.4.6.2 AFRINIC resources are for AFRINIC service region and any use outside the region should be solely in support 
> of connectivity back to the AFRINIC region."

That’s part of the soft landing policy and applies only to prefixes issued by AFRINIC after the beginning of exhaustion 
phase 1.

It has been in the CPM since its first version, but the CPM is a relatively recent phenomenon at AFRINIC, having had 
scattered policy documents containing each adopted policy prior to that.

> I ran into issues years ago, trying to do an additional allocation request with ARIN, only to be told that usage of 
> ARIN-allocated resources out-of-region did not count toward utilization due to some very vague language in the NRPM 
> section 2.2 leading to the "invention" of unwritten policy.  The issue with out of region use of ARIN-allocated 
> resources was eventually resolved with a NRPM section being added explicitly allowing it.

Correct.

> AfriNIC's policy is not at all vague on the matter that their resources are to be used in or to support connectivity 
> in the AFRINIC region.

Try again. AFRINIC’s soft landing policy is not at all vague about prefixes issued after soft landing exhaustion phase 
1 began. This does not apply to any of the prefixes issued to Cloud Innovation.

> > From what I've read, Cloud Innovation primarily uses their AfriNIC IP 
> resources out of region.  How they managed to get a couple of /11s and /12s from AfriNIC seems to be a massive 
> failure on the part of AfriNIC's staff, or did their business model radically change after so much space had been 
> allocated?

Their business model has had to radically change to adapt to radically changing circumstances in the marketplace where 
they started.

Owen