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

Fri Oct 3 12:01:48 EDT 2003

Hi Lee,

Re:
> Let me know if I'm spiraling in toward accurate understanding of the
> situation in Africa.

I'm not sure, depends on my shallow view of the following....

> Elsewhere people have said that upstreams' peers would not accept the
> prefixes because they were too small.  That should not be the case,
> for two reasons:
>
>  - ARIN allocations to Africa are from Class C space, and are not
> 	generally filtered at shorter prefix-length.  Your mileage
> 	may vary.

Please can someone else confirm this. My understanding is that only 
legacy class C space (swamp space) is not filtered at shorter 
prefix-length.

>  - Multi-homing is sufficient justification for a /24 re-assignment

My limited understanding is that because of the above, only the 
preferred route to the larger blocks are followed thus limiting 
international multi-homing.   Please keep in mind that there are three 
major ISPs in SA. Not all of them buy transit from anywhere other than 
the US.

I recall at the ICANN meeting in Sweden, when the US link went down, 
only IP's on the one of the three networks was running since they were 
the only ones that had a european transit connection. At that same 
time, our small network - which had local multi-homing enabled - was 
not accessible because the multi-homing was only between the local 
upstream ISPs.

Since >85% of SA traffic is international it is important to ISPs that 
don't own their own global connections that their multi-homing is 
global.

e.g aside but fyi, I use my.yahoo. and some yahoo decided that SA 
traffic should be - automatically - served by the .uk servers...
[neo:~] alanlevin% traceroute www.yahoo.co.uk
traceroute to www2.vip.ukl.yahoo.com (217.12.3.11), 30 hops max, 40 
byte packets
  1  172.16.0.250 (172.16.0.250)  0.448 ms  0.216 ms  0.195 ms
  2  router.barn.za.net (196.7.14.130)  33.258 ms  27.34 ms  29.02 ms
  3  s8-0-7chan23.gw1.cpt1.alter.net (196.31.167.105)  78.872 ms  96.771 
ms  61.185 ms
  4  atm8-0-0sub100.ir2.mia16.alter.net (196.30.229.170)  366.408 ms  
256.937 ms  369.133 ms
  5  pos0-1-0.ih4.mia4.alter.net (152.63.86.145)  278.556 ms  366.868 ms 
  309.099 ms
  6  302.at-6-1-0.xr2.mia4.alter.net (152.63.7.226)  379.2 ms  286.42 ms 
  369.123 ms
  8  0.so-4-2-0.xl2.atl5.alter.net (152.63.81.81)  498.393 ms  307.793 
ms  299.738 mss
  9  pos7-0.br4.atl5.alter.net (152.63.84.153)  358.356 ms  327.266 ms  
379.133 ms
10  204.255.174.206 (204.255.174.206)  338.559 ms  356.398 ms  319.14 ms
11  so-6-0-0.gar2.atlanta1.level3.net (209.247.9.161)  388.705 ms  
347.246 ms  308.971 ms
12  so-0-3-0.bbr2.atlanta1.level3.net (209.247.11.225)  288.686 ms  
315.806 ms  339.516 ms
13  so-0-1-0.bbr2.washington1.level3.net (64.159.0.230)  408.239 ms  
316.926 ms  359.099 ms
14  so-0-0-0.mp2.london2.level3.net (212.187.128.133)  488.702 ms  
497.021 ms  429.077 ms
15  unknown.level3.net (212.187.129.212)  448.61 ms  396.833 ms  
398.985 ms
16  unknown.level3.net (212.113.10.210)  378.574 ms  383.855 ms  398.79 
ms
17  alteon1.34.ukl.yahoo.com (217.12.6.6)  418.382 ms  396.943 ms  
389.141 ms

but when one look a little closer it looks like london is closer to 
miami than silicon valley is...
[neo:~] alanlevin% traceroute my.yahoo.com
traceroute to my.yahoo.akadns.net (66.163.171.129), 30 hops max, 40 
byte packets
  1  172.16.0.250 (172.16.0.250)  0.45 ms  0.222 ms  0.203 ms
  2  router.barn.za.net (196.7.14.130)  16.761 ms  29.095 ms  25.352 ms
  3  s8-0-7chan23.gw1.cpt1.alter.net (196.31.167.105)  73.165 ms  34.876 
ms  53.336 ms
  4  atm8-0-0sub100.ir2.mia16.alter.net (196.30.229.170)  498.812 ms  
398.726 ms  398.98 ms
  5  pos0-1-0.ih4.mia4.alter.net (152.63.86.145)  308.705 ms  268.373 ms 
  349.085 ms
  6  302.at-5-1-0.xr2.mia4.alter.net (152.63.7.182)  288.547 ms  317.476 
ms  329.102 ms
  7  0.so-4-2-0.xl2.mia4.alter.net (152.63.101.46)  308.484 ms  268.485 
ms  289.17 ms
  8  0.so-7-0-0.xl4.atl5.alter.net (152.63.85.194)  378.555 ms  307.495 
ms  359.259 ms
  9  192.atm6-0.br1.atl5.alter.net (152.63.80.121)  278.311 ms  298.481 
ms  299.1 ms
10  204.255.168.74 (204.255.168.74)  288.495 ms  306.661 ms  279.229 ms
11  agr4-loopback.atlanta.cw.net (208.172.66.104)  318.539 ms  336.417 
ms  349.04 ms
12  dcr2-so-1-3-0.atlanta.cw.net (208.172.75.157)  287.664 ms  386.454 
ms  359.082 ms
13  dcr1-loopback.santaclara.cw.net (208.172.146.99)  358.692 ms  
336.632 ms  359.019 ms
14  bhr1-pos-0-0.santaclarasc5.cw.net (208.172.156.74)  408.659 ms  
396.393 ms  469.122 ms
15  csr3-ve243.santaclarasc5.cw.net (64.56.192.146)  458.536 ms  
376.603 ms  398.942 ms
16  g2-1.bas1-m.sc5.yahoo.com (64.56.207.146)  456.941 ms  396.889 ms  
368.972 ms
17  vl48.bas2-m.sc5.yahoo.com (66.163.160.214)  408.563 ms  437.369 ms  
418.622 ms
18  alteon5.128.sc5.yahoo.com (216.136.129.1)  438.14 ms  416.581 ms  
419.057 ms

> Thanks for taking the time and having the patience to help me improve
> my understanding.

Please excuse me if this doesn't relate directly to the policy in 
discussion.....

hth,

Alan

---------------------------------------------
Alan Levin
Tel: +27 21 409-7997