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

[Abraham van der Merwe]

Hi Alec                                          >@2003.09.22_22:54:36_+0200

> >[...]
> >Arguments for Policy Change
> >
> >The economies of Africa and those of other countries in the ARIN
> >region (United States and Canada) are not of the same scale. The
> >number of Internet users inside Africa is much fewer than in the
> >other countries in the ARIN region. Whereas it may be reasonable to
> >expect that the user numbers in North America support an ISP's
> >ability to meet the current ARIN IPv4 criteria, it is not reasonable
> >in Africa. Unable to meet the current criteria to obtain IPv4 address
> >space from ARIN, and unable to obtain adequate address space from
> >upstream providers; African ISPs must resort to solutions such as
> >NAT, or sometimes are simply not able to provide services to
> >customers due to the lack of IPv4 address space. Lack of adequate
> >IPv4 address space may be slowing down the growth and development of
> >the Internet in Africa.
> 
> I am curious, why are African ISPs unable to obtain sufficient address 
> space from their upstream providers?  Is the issue that such upstreams 
> don't themselves qualify under ARIN's current policies?

It is not just a question of obtaining sufficient address space, it is a
question of multi-homing.

Bandwidth here are very expensive. That means most of us have to scrounge
for cheap local-only connections (cheaper), assymetric satellite connections
(because bidirectional in some places such as South Africa is illegal) for
international bandwidth, and some other connections for outgoing traffic
through one of our very few big ISPs. Unfortunately this is only
possible for those of us who can get portable address space.

There's the question of peering. I can't speak for the rest of Africa, but
here in South Africa we desperately need to get our cost of local bandwidth
down (for most of us it is cheaper to get a international link up than get a
link between major cities here in the country!) and we can only accomplish
that with more peering links - something which is impossible for most right
now because nobody can get portable address space.

-- 

Regards
 Abraham

The only real argument for marriage is that it remains the best method
for getting acquainted.
		-- Heywood Broun

___________________________________________________
 Abraham vd Merwe - Frogfoot Networks CC
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