An update on the AfriNIC situation

Tue Aug 31 01:31:57 UTC 2021

(I'm going to regret this in the morning, but...)

On Mon, Aug 30, 2021 at 8:12 PM Owen DeLong via NANOG <nanog at nanog.org>
wrote:

>
> AFRINIC approves IPv4 for the purpose of leasing every day. It’s what ISPs
> do. It’s the definition of an LIR.
>
>
All of the RIR's do this, yes. Also, yes LIR/ISP allocate space to their
customers. That space may never be actually seen
on the ISP/LIR network and may never be seen on the greater Internet...

> Yes, most LIRs are also in the connectivity business and provide addresses
> (mostly/exclusively) to customers of their connectivity services.
>
>
If you (royal you) were a datacenter operator and allocated ip space to
your customers (machines in racks or vms on machines in racks, etc),
is there a real difference here if the machines/vms never exposed or used
their IP addresses outside if the tiny world they inhabit ? (the rack or
machine)

The want of unique addressing is not uncommon, the need for this in the
face of M&A or other business requirements isn't new.
Yes, these addresses may not be used outside of the datacenter, or the rack
or the machine, but they are still accounted for in:
  1) the RIR (to the LIR)
  2) the LIR (to the customer)
  3) the customer (on machine/vm)

It's a resource that the LIR/datacenter operator must account for, and must
have capacity planning bits/pieces in place to handle.

I think the discussion about 'with connectivity services' is a bit
orthogonal. I also think that if there were such a policy requirement
all RIR and LIR would be in violation of that requirement immediately, so I
don't imagine that there's going to be one forthcoming.

> However, there’s no such policy requirement in the AFRINIC governing
> documents.
>

I don't think you can safely deploy a policy like this Owen (which perhaps
you mean here as well).

-chris
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