Dear Colleagues,
It is my hope that you are keeping safe, I share below some updates on AFRINIC activities for the month of June 2021.
AIS’21 Online Highlights
It was the second time that we were having the meeting online and this time, we had a lot of improvements which were mostly lessons learned from AIS’20. This year's meeting hosted 378 unique delegates from 55 countries, 7 sponsors and was virtually hosted by Internet Service Providers in DRC (ISPA-DRC). Here are a few of my Personal Highlights of AIS’21.
The Inclusivity and diversity session had a panel discussing aspects of digital inclusion in the African Ecosystem and the importance of thawing technology and gender to work hand in hand in the educational sector through mentorship and knowledge sharing.
The first two days of the meeting were dedicated to AfNOG and AF* Days. The AIS’21 Online opening ceremony was flagged off by His Excellency Augustin Kibassa, Minister of Posts, Telecommunications & ICT in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he highlighted the production and supply of digital services and related activities that are developing rapidly in Africa through the participation of public administrations, the private sector and civil societies.
The “Building Digital Economy in Africa” session called on the need for investment in infrastructure development and building networks across Africa with emphasis on the importance of public-private partnership where governments facilitate collaborations and are the enabler on matters legislations, connectivity, entrepreneurship and data protection.
It is worth noting that during the AGMM session, privacy concerns were raised, and we managed to quickly resolve what we could during the meeting. However, we have taken note of such concerns and we will be organising webinars around how AFRINIC deals with data privacy to share and discuss best current practices.
I would like to thank our virtual host ISPA-DRC, our partners: AfNOG, the AF* and AIS’21 Online Sponsors for your immense support. Thank you to all event speakers and delegates for the rich presentations and conversations that enriched this meeting. The AIS’ 21 Online meeting recaps are available here <https://2021.internetsummit.africa/daily-recap>.
AFRINIC Online Course - Arabic version
We recently launched the “Creating the perfect IPv6 addressing plan” online course in Arabic. The course that is available in English and French, helps you create the best possible hierarchical addressing and facilitate the aggregation of your resources. The course has been developed and is offered by the AFRINIC Academy. I would like to appreciate our community members: Ms Sara Alamin, Ms Khansa Abdalla and Mr Manhal Mohamed for their support in translating the course.
Lame Delegation Policy implemented in its entirety
AFRINIC went live with the full implementation of the Lame Delegation Policy (section 10.7 of the Consolidated Policy Manual) on 29 April 2021 and since then, DNS lameness tests run daily from at least 3 geographical locations. When an “nserver” record on a “domain” object is found to be lame on consecutive days, notifications are sent on days 3, 10, 17 and 24 to admin-c, tech-c and zone-c contacts, while on day 11 a remark is added in the "domain" object identifying the lame nameserver(s). On day 30, the lame “nserver” record will be removed from the WHOIS database. Following the removal of all lame “nserver” records, if a “domain” object is left with zero “nserver” records, the “domain” object will be removed from the WHOIS database. As per the Policy, this measure ensures that nameservers, as recorded in the WHOIS, are in fact authoritative for the relevant zones, making the WHOIS a reliable source of information for network operators.
More information on this change, advice and contact details for inquiries may be obtained on this online publication>> https://afrinic.net/20210428-lame-dns-delegation-policy. A tool for reports on lame delegations per domain is available at >> https://afrinic.net/whois/lame
I wish you well as we pursue our common goals and aspirations.
Kind Regards,
Eddy Kayihura
Chief Executive Officer,
African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC)
ceo at afrinic.net
