An update on the AfriNIC situation

Mon Aug 30 23:29:48 UTC 2021

Um, Mike, no… That’s neither a fair nor accurate characterization of the current
situation.

AFRINIC has been given access to the equivalent of two months of operating costs
from their bank accounts in a recent court ruling, so they are nowhere close to shut
down. All of the chicken littles running around claiming otherwise notwithstanding,
no, AFRINIC was never actually shut down.

Further, the registries are not engaged in the daily operations of the internet. They
come into play for adds and changes, primarily and those transactions while important
are not generally urgent. Were AFRINIC unable to staff its offices for some period of
time, I’m quite certain that the other RIRs would be able to take up those key functions,
either by loaning personnel to AFRINIC or by taking over those necessary roles as
needed either temporarily or permanently.

So while having the system react strongly to such a threat would be understandable,
that’s a very overblown and inaccurate characterization of the threat in question.

Owen

> On Aug 30, 2021, at 11:00 , Mike Hale <eyeronic.design at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> But to be clear, if this was a simple court case I don't think anyone
> on this list would have an issue with simply sitting back and letting
> the court decide.
> 
> You have to remember though that CI in this case has essentially
> forced one of the major registrars to virtually shut down.  That's a
> direct attack on the system that is of fundamental importance to the
> proper running of the Internet.  Having the system react strongly to
> such a threat is entirely understandable.
> 
> On Mon, Aug 30, 2021 at 10:40 AM Sabri Berisha <sabri at cluecentral.net> wrote:
>> 
>> ----- On Aug 30, 2021, at 6:29 AM, Rubens Kuhl rubensk at gmail.com wrote:
>> 
>>> And that's why carpet bombing those IP blocks might be needed so the next
>> 
>> entity that ends up with those IP addresses long after CI has gone into
>> oblivion will have its engineers debug odd routing issues for years. We all
>> know that people regularly fail to update their manually entered filters on
>> at least a few of their routers.
>> 
>> The learned people on this list do not strike me as the kind of person to
>> go out and engage in vigilante justice if a court decides against them. The
>> very fabric of our civilized society depends on us resolving our conflicts
>> in court, not out on the (virtual) streets. You may disagree with a ruling
>> but I implore you to respect it.
>> 
>> Rules... Without them we'd live with the animals.*
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> Sabri
>> 
>> *(c) John Wick
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0