Welcome to AFRINIC's new blog! We'll use this platform to share interesting articles, news, research and statistics that are relevant to the community as well as to facilitate community discussion on Internet related topics in Africa and beyond. Please take a moment to read our comment policy and our contribution guidelines.
For our blog's inaugural post, I would like to take the opportunity to give a short round up of what has been happening at AFRINIC since I took up the post as CEO back in April.
Firstly, I would like to thank the AFRINIC Board, staff and the community for the warm welcome and support I received when joining the team earlier this year. It's been a busy few months with getting to know my team, AFRINIC-22 and the Africa Internet Summit (AIS), AFRINIC becoming the only RIR with an unrestricted supply of IPv4, and the IANA Stewardship Transition process reaching a critical turning point.
Events
In June, we held another successful AIS Meeting/AFRINIC Meeting in Tunis, Tunisia. Over 350 people attended, gathering to discuss Internet number resource policies, technical and governance issues and to attend the many training courses and workshops offered. You can watch the recordings of many of these sessions here, view presentations here and read the meeting report here. We're now working hard on preparations for AFRINIC-23, which will take place from 28 November - 4 December in Pointe-Noire, Republic of Congo. Find out more on the meeting website.
IPv4
The issue of IPv4 depletion became even more relevant for Africa with the news that ARIN had exhausted its supply of IPv4 address space, the fourth of the world's five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) to reach this stage. AFRINIC is now the only RIR that can still allocate IPv4 addresses in the same way as before. We do not see this as an advantage; on the contrary, it is something that is providing a false sense of security for the region. Therefore it is necessary for our region to not only make use of the remaining IPv4 address space, but to also focus on getting IPv6 deployed on networks throughout Africa: if we don't prioritise this, we will face the very real scenario that global online services available over IPv6-only will not be available to end-users who are connecting to the Internet with an IPv4-only address.
ARIN's recent announcement puts AFRINIC - and Africa - firmly in the spotlight where IPv4 space is concerned. Businesses and network operators from outside the region are interested in acquiring IPv4 address from our address pool. The current AFRINIC policies are not very clear about this: members based in Africa are eligible to apply for resources from AFRINIC, but there is debate about the extent to which these resources may be used outside the AFRINIC region as part of a member's network. I'd like to encourage the community to continue to participate actively in the policy development process to decide how we want our IPv4 address space to be used as we enter this new phase of Internet development.
IANA Stewardship Transition
Another historic milestone in the evolution of the Internet is the ongoing IANA stewardship transition. Since the NTIA (part of the US Department of Commerce) announced their intention to transition oversight of the IANA functions to the global community, there has been much work by many people. ICANN created the ICG, the RIRs created the CRISP Team, the IETF created the IANAPLAN working group, the domain names part of ICANN created the CWG-Stewardship and the CCWG-Accountability groups, and all these groups produced documents, called for public comments, and held meetings. The consolidated IANA Stewardship Transition proposal from the ICG, and the accountability proposal from the CCWG, reached the end of their separate 40-day comment periods on 8 September 2015. I'd like to extend a huge thank you on behalf of the entire community for all the work that our CRISP Team representatives have put into this and thank everyone who took the time to submit comments. We will keep the community informed of the RIRs' collective work on this important progress on www.afrinic.net and this blog.
Looking Ahead
Looking forward to the months ahead, we will continue to address issues that are pertinent to the Internet community, such as the IANA Transition, IPv4 exhaustion in the region and beyond, IPv6 deployment, cross-border connectivity and promotion of Internet exchange points. Internally, we are committed to improving our customer services, our website, and the way we report on our activities and will be focusing on these key activities throughout the rest of 2015 and beyond.
Alan Barrett
CEO AFRINIC
