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

[Bill Woodcock]

      On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 jlewis at lewis.org wrote:
    > Why does a NIC need offices in 4 countries?

There are a variety of reasons, of which possibly none will satisfy you as
an engineer.  However, this isn't an engineering problem, this is a
business and political problem.

First: language.  Afrinic will have to operate in more languages than the
other RIRs.  Note that LACNIC operages a good low-overhead operation out
of two offices, in three languages.

Second: politics.  How many more years do you want to wait, before you
allow a compromise like this one to get things moving?  You were the one
complaining that it was taking too long to get going.  If there were an
office in every gcountry in Africa, it could have been started
immediately.  This seems a reasonable compromise.

    > Who's going to fund AfriNIC's 4 offices in 4 countries with >4x the
    > overhead of a single office?

Um, I'd point out that the cost of maintaining a fully-staffed office in
Africa is probably significantly less than the cost of the liability
insurance alone on an office like RIPE's or ARIN's.  Four offices in
Africa isn't a significant cost difference versus one office.  A
significant cost would be sending someone on an international flight to a
conference.

                                -Bill