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

[William Stucke]

Leo Bicknell asked: -

> So, is ARIN or RIPE assigning space in Africa?  From the discussion
so far it seems both are assigning space.  This surprises me, as I
thought things had been divided up geographically.

ARIN assigns space in sub-Saharan Africa. RIPE assigns space in North
Africa. That's why I specifically highlighted the six countries in my
previous message that form part of sub-Saharan Africa, i.e. get their
allocations from ARIN.

>  don't think anyone wants
the ARIN support fee to prevent people from getting the IP's they
need, so if that's a problem we should get some economic data and
look at how we can make the fee less of a burden to African ISP's.

Thank you for recognising the point I made previously. Smaller allocations,
with a smaller fee, would suit Africans better. $2500 might not be a lot of
money, but R20,000 or Ks200,000 or Us1,000,000 *IS* a lot of money.

> Why does an African ISP with an E1 and 1000 subscribers get to
multihome, yet E-Bay with several gigabits of traffic and millions
of users not?

Ahem. An African ISP with 1000 subscribers has 64 kbps to 256 kbps, *NOT* an
E1 ;-) We simply can't afford an E1. An E1 would cost 5 times the ISP's
total income, excluding any other costs.

The E-Bay example is comparing apples with oranges, I think. E-Bay runs a
web site, they don't provide access, as far as I know. Their "users" are
accessing their web sites to buy and sell stuff. That doesn't make them an
ISP. It means that they go to an ISP who *IS* multihomed and pay him to host
their servers.

> When a US ISP the same size as an African ISP comes to ARIN after
this has passed and claims that if an African ISP of his size can
multi-home, what argument are we going to use to tell him no?

I have no problem in making it a global solution. Follow the RIPE example
and have "micro" members.


Regards,

William Stucke
ZAnet Internet Services (Pty) Ltd
+27 11 465 0700
William at zanet.co.za

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