[afnog] A typical case of abuse of our resources!!!

Wed Sep 17 15:30:15 UTC 2014

Hi All,

I speak here entirely under my own name and what I am saying should in no way be construed as the position of the AfriNIC board or any other organisation and/or company that I am associated with.

While I understand the views expressed by Kofi, I have said many times, there is a solution to the problems if the community believes they exist, and that is the policy process.

The current rules as defined by policy are pretty clear, space may be allocated to any organisation duly constituted on the African continent.  There is absolutely nothing in current policy, as defined and agreed by the community, to restrict space allocation based on where the space would be geographically used.  The rules state that the institution must be constituted in the service area and that is that.

The exception to this is in the soft landing policy which places geographic restrictions on the use of IP space.

Now, the arguments for and against geographic restrictions go both ways, keep the space in Africa and stop it getting pillaged for use outside is the argument for geographic restrictions.  The argument against geographic restrictions (which I personally subscribe to) states that large African companies expand beyond the service region and need space, and hence should be able to use their Afrinic space in their expansion.  This serves the continent economically and in various ways since African entities can then freely grow into large world wide organisations (and I point out that companies such as MTN, Debeers, Anglo etc have all gone down the expansion route, and there is NO space available beyond the borders under than on the secondary market).

But at current, IF the application was made by a legitimately constituted African company, there aren’t any rules to stop this type of behaviour. If people want rules, the policy development process is there to create them.

I also point out that once space has been allocated, geographic announcements aside, how space is used by the applicant is not really relevant, so long as it is announced, and being used by infrastructure on the global internet, what the uses are beyond that are not the business of the RIR and I would argue should not ever be the business of the RIR.  The RIR’s job is to allocate space, not to police its uses after that.  In the case of spam and other dodgy/illegal activities the countries where the actions are being committed should have laws and legal ways to deal with these.

Thanks

Andrew Alston
Group Head of IP Strategy
[cid:4653FDA0-EB40-41E0-99AC-D33AF2B39D18]
Sameer business Park, Block A, Mombasa Road. Nairobi, Kenya
T: +254 205000000 -  M: +254 733 2222 04 - E: andrew.alston at liquidtelecom.com

From: Daniel Kofi ANSA AKUFO <kofi.ansa at gmail.com<mailto:kofi.ansa at gmail.com>>
Date: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 at 6:15 PM
To: rpd List <rpd at afrinic.net<mailto:rpd at afrinic.net>>, "afnog at afnog.org<mailto:afnog at afnog.org>" <afnog at afnog.org<mailto:afnog at afnog.org>>
Subject: Re: [afnog] A typical case of abuse of our resources!!!

On 17 September 2014 18:16, Phil Regnauld <regnauld at nsrc.org<mailto:regnauld at nsrc.org>> wrote:
Daniel Kofi ANSA AKUFO (kofi.ansa) writes:
>
> I don't have an issue where IPs are used but my concern is when huge
> resources in the order of /12 are issued to virtual ORGs and they tend to
> abuse it for spamming and other activities. A typical example is the /16
> block which was issued as part of /12 to an ORG last year.
>
> http://bgp.he.net/net/154.87.0.0/16#_dns

        For reference:

        http://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/members-discuss/2013-November/001382.html
        http://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/members-discuss/2013-November/001429.html

        Things vary on a case by case basis, but in this particular one, there
        is supporting evidence that the blocks in question are being announced.
        How much of it is allocated to real services is unknown, but first we'd
        have to agree on a definition of "wasting the resources".
Phil

In IMHO it is not about how much is announced or even where ... but how much of the content served using these resources is beneficial to the service region the IPs were assigned ...

Nevertheless the fact remains these virtual ORGs manage to secure such blocks due to the selfish corrupt practices of a few.

A lot of questions to be asked

Are the RIRs so much in need of revenue? Are the potential members and ORGs not consuming the resources? Are there double standards? Do the so called management who want to sign off on these allocations have their own processes?

K.

        Cheers,
        Phil

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