AFRINIC-2 Public Policy Meeting Minutes | 27 April 2005 | Maputo Mozambique

Policy Proposals:

Some new policies and a few amendments to current policy were proposed 2 weeks before the AfriNIC-2 meeting. According to the current AfriNIC policy development process, at least 30 days of discussion are needed on the policy working group mailing list prior to face-to-face discussion and consequent consensus at the public policy meeting. These policies are:

Policy for IPv4 End-Users:

Minimum Assignment: /24
Criteria: - show existing utilisation of /25 from upstream
- Or, justify immediate need of 50% of total requested.
Additional space:
- 25% immediate utilisation,and
- 50% utilisation in 1 year.
IXPs, Root Server or ccTLD Operators:
- Assignment no greater than /24.
- At least 2 peer ISPs in an IXP
Temporary IP assignemnts in the AfriNIC region
- The activity requiring temporary IP resources should be publicly documented and available, preferably on a website.
- The IP resources must be returned to AfriNIC after the experiment.
- Resources are assigned on a lease basis for a period of one month.
- The assignment can be renewed after providing the necessary information .
- The size of the assigned IP resource will be determined from the plan submitted by the requesting entity.
Change in Policy for AS Number Assignments:
Major change:
- An entity requesting an AS number from AfriNIC must be an AfriNIC member in good standing.
- LIRs cannot assign AS numbers to other organisations, other than their own network infrastructure.

group mailing list, by sending an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with the subject


Summary of discussion about the above policy proposals:

o The AS number proposal did not get much discussion.
o Temporary Assignments and Experiments:
- Some concerns about a 1 month return period being too short.
- One member mentioned that some temporary allocations tend to get 'tainted' by some carriers (due to frequent withdrawing and injecting of the prefix into the global routing table) - though others said this is never the case.
- A need for these allocations to come from a single large reserved block.
- Suggestion that AfriNIC asks the requestor for their routing decisions/plans, and base the approval from that.
- Issues about the costs involved were also raised - whether this is prefix-size based or a general similar fee irrespective of allocation size.

o IPv4 End-User Assignments:
- Concerns about the /24 minimum not being a good thing given the rapid growth of the routing table.
- Several people were not concerned about the routing table growth, as such prefixes are usually not numerous.
- Questions about what happens to end-user PI requests between now and the next member meeting, when the policy will be discussed and approved/rejected by the members.
- The AfriNIC CEO advised that AfriNIC will enforce the policy from the respective former RIR of the member, until this policy is adopted by AfriNIC.

During the policy discussions, some members raised the issue about the need for a policy to recover unused resources in the AfriNIC region. This issue will be addressed by the policy working group.

The provided text is an excerpt from the AFRINIC 2 meeting report.