An update on the AfriNIC situation

Fri Aug 27 16:50:01 UTC 2021

There are two sides to every story…

On Fri, 27 Aug 2021 at 09:44, Lu Heng <h.lu at anytimechinese.com <mailto:h.lu at anytimechinese.com>h <mailto:jcurran at arin.net>.lu at anytimechinese.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear John:
> 
> The statements you made are very misleading.
> 
> Here are some clarifications:
> 
> Cloud Innovation is disputing AFRINIC’s claim that Cloud Innovation is
> in breach of the agreement. Cloud Innovation maintains that we are a
> compliant member.
> 
> 1. While I make no comment regarding the justification of our
> resources. we have rights just like any other registrant to keep our
> justification material confidential. We would like to share some
> public data here:
> Cloud innovation accounts for 80% of all AFRINIC whois updates in 2021
> to date and in AFRINIC whois,  over 10  million (roughly 10% of all
> AFRINIC space) IP addresses whois information has not been updated in
> more than 10 years. 40million (roughly 40%) IP addresses have not been
> updated in more than 5 years. Have all of them been required to
> provide re-justification while they don’t bother to update whois?
> 313 out of 1800 members have not made a single assignment in their
> allocations more than a year after receiving. 641 member registered
> show less than 50% utilization, while AFRINIC’s CPM 5.5.1.9 requires
> at least 50% utilization. All of those member are in violation,
> including several major telecoms.
> However according to one press we saw, AFRINIC only audited 15 member
> and terminated 5 of them,  Cloud Innovation being the most compliant
> member in terms of whois update and utilization data provided to
> AFRINIC as data shows above.
> 
> 2. I did go to ARIN for resource, ARIN requested customer personal
> information down to street names, personal address, all of which we do
> not collect in our business from end users due to data privacy
> concerns. I have mentioned in one of ARIN’s meeting and received a
> consistent answer that it must be provided before the resources can be
> allocated. While I later understood it is part of ARIN policy, I still
> believe that it is an unwise policy which puts ARIN in possession of a
> large collection of personally identifying information (PII).
> So abandoning our ARIN application for resources after RIPE ran out,
> was a legitimate business decision and IMHO, a morally correct one
> made in order to protect the privacy of our customer’s.
> John's statement is misleading at best. John himself has repeatedly
> stated that ARIN does not deny requests, but that applicant’s often
> abandon requests when they are unwilling or unable to provide the
> requested data. That’s exactly what happened here. Contrary to John’s
> claim, that ARIN refused the application in question, the actual facts
> of the matter are that Outside Heaven chose to abandon its request
> rather than compromise the confidentiality of its customers and trust
> ARIN with such a significant amount of customer PII.
> 
> 4. Cloud Innovation's utilization is global, roughly 30% Asia and 30%
> US, with rest equally spread throughout Europe, AFRICA, and Latin
> America. There is nothing in AFRINIC policy manual which restricts
> usage of resource anywhere. And it is also common practice of several
> large US firms to use ARIN space either globally or across multiple
> regions at least.
> 
> 5. Unless ARIN admits it has been given the justification submitted to
> AFRINIC by Cloud Innovation in past years, we don't think it is within
> ARIN’s mandate to comment whether it is being used for the same
> purpose or not. John, please clarify, have you  received the
> justification material we submitted to AFRINIC? Do you have any inside
> knowledge about it? We would be very keen to know if AFRINIC has
> disclosed our private data to a third party in this process in
> violation of the very agreement they (unjustly) accuse us of
> breaching.
> 
> 6. We find your discussion of the RIR stability fund most interesting…
> Please correct us if we misunderstand, but our understanding is that
> the fund requires the unanimous consent of all 5 RIR CEOs in order to
> be utilized. As such, it appears you are attempting to mislead the
> community by making a 20% promise as if it were a 100% assurance.
> 
> For the above reasons, we think that Mr. Curran has not provided a
> balanced or fully accurate representation of the facts to the ARIN
> community here and we hope that the above clarification will help
> members of the community come to a more fully informed opinion.
> 
> Finally, while we realize that this is inappropriate for PPML, as it
> does not really touch on any ARIN policy discussion, we believe that
> Mr. Curran’s post could not be allowed to stand without rebuttal.
> Since he chose to make such a non-policy post to PPML, we felt that
> our posting of the rebuttal here was justified.
> 
> Unless Mr. Curran or other ARIN staff member(s) choose to further
> engage on this topic here, this will be our only post on the matter to
> this list. We would also welcome the opportunity to take the
> discussion to a more appropriate ARIN list if Mr. Curran prefers that
> alternative.
> 
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