[ppml] Policy Proposal 2003-15: IPv4 Allocation Policy for the

[Rosi]

> If the problem lies with these monopolies not giving IPs to their
> downstream customers, why are they going to cooperate and route IPs
> allocated from ARIN?  If all these arguments are true, why won't they just
> have a "non-assigned routing fee?"

hi,

As one of the largest ISPs in South Africa and Southern Africa, we do
not have any problems giving downstreams as many IPs as they need.

Also, we do not charge for IP address space.

Our conditions are that customers must be connected through us,
and that they must justify their need for address space with a
network plan and future estimate plans.  We can and have currently 
assigned anything from /29s to /19s to customers.

I am amazed at what I am seeing on the list that so many folks here
in South Africa are having huge difficulties in getting the address
space that they need from upstreams.

I suspect, and this is my personal opinion, that there may be *some*
incompetency involved with the ip-admin dept of certain ISPs who refuse
to give their downstreams sufficient address space because they themselves
may not know how to wade through the bureacracy of ARIN to get sufficient
space for current and future needs or simply don't understand how assignments 
of address space is supposed to work or how to plan for it.  But that
probably doesn't account for everybody.

I would ask some very pointed questions of such an upstream as to exactly 
why there is a problem assigning more space and why they haven't applied
for sufficient space from ARIN. 

I am also outraged (but not surprised) that ISPs here are charging 
anything other than nominal processing fees for address space.

There is a grey line here between admin fees and selling address space.

Charging an admin fee is fine.  But selling address space would be fraud,
as you are not allowed to sell what you don't own - and while I'm unclear
as to whether address space belongs to ICANN, the RIRs or nobody, it
certainly does not belong to any ISPs in Africa, but from the way some
of them are acting it looks like they seem to think it does!

We also have no problem routing address space that customers have from
other ISPs in situations of multi-homing, providing the space is large
enough to be practically routable and that the other ISP is happy with
us routing it.  We have several customers who multi-home with our
biggest competitors and we have very amicable agreements with our competitors
to route each other's address space for such customers.

regards,
Rosi