[kictanet] AFRINIC 101 Issue 1 - Policy Development Process

Tue Apr 9 11:34:53 EAT 2013

Dear Colleagues,

Please find below the first issue of AFRINIC 101, the first of a series
of summaries of various AFRINIC services and operations.

The 101 series will act as a guide, to enable all members of the
community to understand our activities.
The first edition has been published in view of the coming Public Policy
Meeting, AFRINIC-18, to be held on 15 - 21 June 2013, in Lusaka, Zambia.

Enjoy the read.

Regards,

Babusha Radhakissoon
*If you cannot view this email properly please click here*
<http://afrinic.net/multimedia/email/social_101/Social_101.html>

Ever wondered what the Policy Development Process is all about? I
remember when I first joined AFRINIC, the main thing I retained after my
first week, was that AFRINIC’s main activity was the management and
distribution of IP addresses and this was facilitated by policies,
defined and adopted by the community, for the community. At the time
that seemed like an over rehearsed, generic line that was thrown around
and I too memorised the text.

But, with time and interactions with the community, I learnt that as an
integral part of the AFRINIC team, we all need to know about our core
activity and be able to talk about it with anyone. Enter AFRINIC 101!
This series of mini articles on AFRINIC processes will help guide each
and every one of you through many of our operations, which you might not
be fully conversant with.

Since our main mandate is the management and distribution of Internet
resources, what better way to start the series than by the Policy
Development Process (PDP)?

*A**FRINIC 101 on Policy Development Process (PDP)* *
*
This document will walk you through the steps via which proposals for
number resource management policies are submitted, considered, debated
and adopted by AFRINIC. Important to know, policies are developed by a
member or the broader Internet community through a bottom-up process of
consultation and consensus. You may want to implement a new policy or
change and existing one; to do so the PDP must be respected. You can
refer to the PDP blueprint here
<http://www.afrinic.net/en/community/policy-development> for the
detailed process.

The forums for policy development are our bi-annual AFRINIC Public
Policy meetings and discussions on the rpd at afrinic.net mailing list. Our
meetings are open to all and anyone may participate in discussions and
decision making.

The PDP is a well elaborated sinequanone of steps leading to the
implementation or rejection of any policy.

*So what are Policy Proposals?**
*
Policy proposals are basically any new, innovative idea that would
ultimately simplify or enhance Internet Number Resource management. They
are officially submitted for discussion by members of the community.
They propose either a new policy or changes to an existing policy. Upon
adoption, these policies will apply directly to the way AFRINIC manages
and distributes Internet number resources to all AFRINIC current and
prospective members.

*And why do we need them?*

Policies are implemented to guide AFRINIC towards managing Internet
Number Resources for the community in a transparent, fair and neutral
way for the proper usage of these resources. Policies serve this purpose
as all issued Internet number resource allocations and assignments must
match and comply with their content.

*So, what we must remember is that the PDP is above all:*

**- Open
- Transparent
- Bottom-up

*6. You still with me? Here are some proposals currently under discussion **
*

With this proposal, SM’s idea is to attempt to update the existing IPv4
Address Allocation Policy (AFPUB-2005-v4-001)
<http://www.afrinic.net/en/library/policies/126-afpub-2005-v4-001> by
introducing and incorporating changes that will enhance IPv4 address
allocations based on the experience acquired since 2006 when AFRINIC
started registry operations. 	  	
  	a. 	IPv4 Address Allocation and Assignment
  	  	AFPUB-2013-V4-002-DRAFT-01

Author: 	S. Moonesamy,
sm+afrinic at elandsys.com

In a nutshell, this proposal aims at improving IPv4 allocations by
putting into practice all the know-how accumulated. “There have been
complaints on the rpd mailing lists about the time it takes to process
an IPv4 allocation or the amount of information that needs to be
provided. So the aim of this proposal would be to address such issues”,
says S. Moonesamy.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew and Sunday bring us a proposal defining a process that will guide
AFRINIC while evaluating IPv4 address requests from higher education
institutions (HEIs). Their proposal wants to define concurrency usage
limits that will count towards calculating the maximum prefix size to be
issued to the HEI. The main motivation is getting rid of NAT and
consequently renumbering out of any NAT’ted networks at the HEI. Oh and
Ernest has it at his fingertips if you are lost. 	  	
  	b. 	Academic IPv4 Allocation
  	  	AFPUB-2013-GEN-001-DRAFT-01

Authors: 	Andrew Alston,
aa at alstonnetworks.net
  	Sunday Folayan, sfolayan at skannet.com.ng

------------------------------------------------------------------------
This proposal sets the procedures for transferring IPv4 address space
from AFRINIC to out-of-region organisations (and vice versa). According
to Chad Abizeid, after the proposal is ratified, African companies will
be able to participate in an IPv4 address transfer market already
available to ARIN and APNIC LIRs by allowing them to transfer their
excess or unneeded IPv4 addresses to companies in other RIR regions.
This type of policy actually exists at ARIN
<https://www.arin.net/resources/request/transfers_8_4.html> and APNIC
<http://www.apnic.net/policy/transfer-policy#rir-transfer>. 	  	
  	c. 	Inter RIR IPv4 address Transfers
  	  	AFPUB-2013-V4-001-DRAFT-01

Author: 	Chad Abizeid,
chad at logicweb.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our very own Jean Robert likes things tidy, and his proposal calls for
AFRINIC to maintain accuracy of WHOIS data through periodical and
routine clean-up of the WHOIS database. The data needing to be
“cleaned-up” mainly concerns contact information that is no longer
accurate or up-to-date.

  	d. 	AFRINIC WHOIS Database Clean-up
  	  	AFPUB-2012-GEN-001-DRAFT-02

Author: 	Jean Robert Hountomey, jrhountomey at gmail.com

With the advent of cybercrime and related misdemeanours, Law Enforcement
Agencies (LEAs) constantly want to identify the origin (and location) of
cybercriminals, and their first stop (after identify an abusive IP
address) is the WHOIS database so as to know which company was issued
that IP address. When the information therein is not accurate and
credible, LEAs will not find it easy to look up these offenders. Apart
from combating cybercrime, many businesses and services depend on the
WHOIS database for services targeted for different countries, like
iTunes. This is called IP address geo-location, and it depends heavily
on accuracy of WHOIS data.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a nutshell, the team of authors, McTim, Mark and Mauritz are
requesting that any organisation may obtain a /24 IPv4 prefix for
anycast or GRX (exchange points for Internet and mobile networks
respectively), from AFRINIC or from the organisation they get their IP
addresses from. In case of the latter, and upon adoption of the
proposal, such a /24 is considered by AFRINIC as "fully utilised" when
auditing the LIR’s utilisation of previous allocations.

  	e. 	Anycast Assignments in the AFRINIC region.
  	  	AFPUB-2012-V4-001-DRAFT-01

Authors: 	Tim McGinnis,
dogwallah at gmail.com
  	Mark J Elkins,
mje at posix.co.za
  	Mauritz Lewies,
mauritz at three6five.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------
This proposal, brought to you by McTim is very straightforward.
Basically, he is suggesting that we should limit LIRs from obtaining
reverse delegation (rDNS) unless the LIR has properly registered all
assignments and sub-allocations from its allocations for its customers,
end-sites and own network infrastructure.

  	e. 	AFPUB-2012-DNS-001-DRAFT-02
  	  	AFPUB-2012-V4-001-DRAFT-01

Author: 	Tim McGinnis (McTim), mctimconsulting at gmail.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Before I pen off, I would strongly recommend that all of you go through
the full policy proposals on the policy page
<http://www.afrinic.net/en/community/policy-development> of our website.
As ambassadors of AFRINIC, we ought to know what we are working on to
better represent ourselves in the community.
Stay tuned for more...

-- 
Ms. Babusha Radhakissoon                        Tel:   +230 403 51 00
Social Media/Online Engagement Officer          Fax:   +230 466 67 58
babusha at afrinic.net - www.afrinic.net       
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join us at the Africa Internet Summit'13 for our Public Policy Meeting in Lusaka, Zambia on 9 – 21 June 2013
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