[ppml] Policy Proposal 2003-15: IPv4 Allocation Policy for the Africa Portion of the ARIN Region

[Leo Bicknell]

A few issues I want to address.

In a message written on Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 09:55:13PM -0700, Owen DeLong wrote:
> 	2002-3 provides for ASSIGNMENT _ONLY_.  I still think it is worth
> 	passing 2002-3, but, it will _NOT_ help ISPs, because ISPs need
> 	ALLOCATIONS, not ASSIGNMENTS.

I agree this is an important difference.  As such, I want to make sure
my position is very clear.

We need to move both assignments and allocations to a /22 (and
actually I think /24, but I'll leave that for another day).  Given
the process to get things passed, I believe the fastest way to do
that now is pass 2002-3, and introduce a new proposal to extend to
allocations and pass that later.

To that end, I see that African ISP's could "bend" the rules in one of
two scenarios:

Get a assignment, but treat it as an allocation, and "ugprade" it
to an allocation later (I believe there is already a process to
turn an assignment into an allocation without renumbering) when the
new proposal passes.

Get an assignment, but treat it as an allocation, and in a few
months have it automatically become an allocation when trasferred
to AfriNIC.

I agree that's not 100% the letter of the law, but I think it's
workable, and given the choices we have not a bad way to go.

In a message written on Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 11:20:31AM +0200, William Stucke wrote:
> > There is a real problem that having both proposals in the system
> will split the vote.
> 
> Really? I know very little about ARIN politics, but I had no idea it was a
> "one horse race" where only *ONE* proposal may be accepted at a time. If
> that's not the case, then the issue of "splitting the vote" doesn't arise.

In theory, the proposals are voted on independantly.  That said,
before people vote on them they view all the proposals together and
decide what they like.  We've already seen on this list people show
a desire to support one, or the other, but not both.  That alone
is evidence to me that the two proposals split some part of the
vote.

Will it be significant or not, I cannot say.  That's why I advocate we
team up, worse case it makes no difference, best case it lets us
overcome the split vote.

In a message written on Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 12:28:39PM +0200, Gregory Massel wrote:
> Leo, maybe I'm misreading you, but the impression I get is that you're saying 
> you're concerned to support "Africa People" because they were not vocal 
> earlier in the year.

No, that is not the reason at all.  The reason is that I fear they
are derailing an existing process to get 2002-3 passed.  The fact
that they were not vocal as an issue by itself has little meaning
to me, but the fact that they didn't take the time to look that
there was existing discussion and proposals that would do what they
want in the process already before introducing their own does concern
me.

> I think you may be overlooking the fact that until recently very few "Africa 
> People" were aware of the ARIN public policy mailing list, 2002-3, etc. I, 
> for example, only joined it a few weeks ago and at the time posted messages 
> to a few popular African networking lists to create awareness of the PPML.

I can understand that, as I joined myself not all that long ago.
However, participating on a mailing list and introducing a policy
are two different things.  Before you introduce a policy you need
to do more research and make sure you're not stepping on other toes.
That seems to have not been done.  Moreover, some people here who
have indicated they have "participated" (to what degree I don't
know) in the AfriNIC meetings/proposals are long time list members,
who clearly didn't step up and point out efforts were already going
on to fix this problem.

> I have not yet seen a single posting from any one of the "Africa People" 
> rejecting 2002-3, although I have seen quite a number supporting it.

No one has rejected it as bad, a few have refused to support it though,
prefering their own amendment.

> So if were talking about standing united, then it means we all have to give 
> and take a bit. The best compromise I've seen to date is that we all stand 
> united in support of both 2002-3 and 2003-15. This is the only win-win 
> situation for all that does not involve the excessive delays that amending 
> either or both policies would introduce.

With both we still have the potential to have split votes.  Thus I
consider having both (fully supported) is risker than having just one.
Also, on a side note to the concensus talk, I still have a problem with
region specific policy, particularly when global policy is also on the
table.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
Read TMBG List - tmbg-list-request at tmbg.org, www.tmbg.org
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