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

[Michael.Dillon at radianz.com]

>> procedures.  In turn this means only about 10% of the ISPs are capable 
of
>> providing the higher service levels that portable address space makes
>> possible.

>Please excuse me for being dense today, but can you define "higher
>service levels"?  In addition, would you please tell me why one can't
>provide those "higher service levels" under current policies?

It was already pointed out that portable space is needed for multihoming
and, in Africa, there are more frequent outages for single-homed
providers, therefore in order to increase service levels a provider
needs to multihome. And since these are smaller companies on average
it makes sense to allocate them smaller portable blocks to avoid
wasting IP addresses.

Since current policies make it impossible for African ISPs to get
portable blocks, current policies are making multihoming impossible
therefore current policies are an indirect cause of low service
levels in Africa.

>However there are no reasons given.  Why are smaller ISPs in Africa 
unable
>to obtain IP space from upstream providers? 

We went through this discussion several years ago when U.S. ISPs were a
lot smaller on average. The issue is not lack of IP space, it is lack
of portable IP space. An upstream provider cannot issue portable IP space,
only an RIR like ARIN can do that.

>That question needs to be
>answered and if there is a valid issue there it needs to be taken care of
>at the source.  It shouldn't be circumvented by loosening requirements 
for
>one geogrpahic area.

In this special case, I don't see a problem with setting special policies 
for one geographic area. This is a transitional policy that is part of the
process of setting up an African RIR to handle the needs of ISPs that are
now served by RIPE and ARIN and APNIC. I would be opposed to special 
policies
for California or Newfoundland but I support them for continental Africa.

--Michael Dillon