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

[Michael.Dillon at radianz.com]

>We don't know what AfriNIC or who AfriNIC will be _IF_ it ever actually
>exists. 

The funny thing is that Afrinic does exist! It even has a website at
http://www.afrinic.org and it has had several meetings over the past
couple of years including one last week in South Africa at 
Internet Week.

So, why haven't the several .ZA ISPs on this list said anything
about this?

Why didn't the policy proposal indicate whether or not Afrinic
had been consulted or whether the Afrinic Board of Trustees
supports the proposal?

I'm beginning to wonder if we are being dragged into some
internal Afrinic politics here. The transition plan for
Afrinic is that in February 2004, i.e. 3 months after the
ARIN meeting, they plan to process IP requests themselves
using ARIN and/or RIPE only for a 2nd opinion.

The Afrinic update presented at RIPE earlier this month
is available here: 
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-46/presentations/ripe46-plenary-afrinic.pdf

Someone mentioned that RIPE will be providing some sort
of special handling for African IP requests prior to the
transition. I found no evidence of this, however the
Afrinic hostmasters are spending 6 months working at
RIPE as trainees so this may be the source of that
comment.

I'm beginning to think that the best thing ARIN can
do to support African ISPs is to dump them and let
RIPE and Afrinic pick up the pieces. From the research
I've done it sounds like Afrinic is well progressed
in its functioning and has a closer working relationship
with RIPE than with ARIN.

Is there anyone on the list who knows more about Afrinic
than I do who could confirm, or deny, my assumptions?

--Michael Dillon