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@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@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@alstonnetworks.net Sunday Folayan, sfolayan@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@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@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@gmail.com Mark J Elkins, mje@posix.co.za Mauritz Lewies, mauritz@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@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@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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------