[afnog] afnog Digest, Vol 265, Issue 14
Roderick Beck
roderick.beck at networksourcing.net
Fri May 29 07:49:27 UTC 2026
Might be of interest to the group:
https://subseacables.blogspot.com/2026/05/more-details-on-2africa-cable-design.html.
More details on 2Africa's design and segment fibre pairs.
Regards,
Roderick.
On Thu, May 28, 2026 at 11:12 PM <afnog-request at afnog.org> wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. In Memory of Alan Barrett (nancy dotse)
> 2. Remembering apb (was: In Memoriam: Alan Barrett
> (Geert Jan de Groot)
> 3. Re: Remembering apb (was: In Memoriam: Alan Barrett (Randy Bush)
> 4. Re: Remembering apb (was: In Memoriam: Alan Barrett
> (Seun Ojedeji)
> 5. Re: Remembering apb (was: In Memoriam: Alan Barrett (Lucy Lynch)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 28 May 2026 16:36:48 +0000
> From: nancy dotse <nancy at ghana.com>
> To: Afnog <afnog at afnog.org>
> Subject: [afnog] In Memory of Alan Barrett
> Message-ID: <aac7baf9923f2f6dc9bb526181ac048d at ghana.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; Format="flowed"
>
> Dear colleagues
>
> AfNOG Secretariat is deeply saddened by the news of the passing of Alan
> Barrett.
>
> Alan had been part of AfNOG from the very beginning and his Company -
> CEQURUX then was the Local Host for the
>
> very first AfNOG Workshop and Meeting in Cape Town, South Africa in May
> 2000. He was also the Lead Engineer
>
> and Instructor for the AfNOG Scalable Network Infrastructure Workshop
> for many years.
>
> He was awarded the 2013 Network Information & Infrastructure (NII)
> Service Award for his commitment to capacity
>
> building and Internet development in Africa.
>
> Alan was a good Engineer who worked quietly behind the scenes. He paid
> his dues to the Africa Internet Ecosystem
>
> and will be sorely missed.
>
> The AfNOG community express our deepest condolences to his family and
> loved ones during this difficult period.
>
> May his soul rest in perfect peace.
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>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 28 May 2026 19:31:56 +0200
> From: Geert Jan de Groot <geertj at nsrc.org>
> To: afnog <afnog at afnog.org>
> Subject: [afnog] Remembering apb (was: In Memoriam: Alan Barrett
> Message-ID: <3c200d9f-3e34-4a6e-a90f-b30159db7468 at nsrc.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> Hello,
>
> Today's sad news came as a total shock to me and first of all, I would
> like to offer my condolences to his family, friends and the Internet
> community.
>
> I wonder if it makes sense to share a few stories to remember Alan in
> his role as instructor.
>
> I met apb (his login, but also his nickname) in 1994. Between 1993 and
> 2000, the Internet Society had an annual conference and the week before
> the conference, ISOC would organize workshops to bring knowledge about
> Internet technology to people from places that would benefit from our
> workshops.
> These were intense hands-on workshops, not slide-slapping but intense
> exercises to make people use what they just learned and they ran the
> days till deep in the night.
>
> We sometimes had challenges to build the setup for the workshops (and,
> in some cases, the conference itself) and I remember apb using quite
> some "interesting" ways to make things work.
>
> It was also during these conferences I hear apb speak about his ideas
> for a regional Internet registry for Africa, what became later AfriNIC.
> While we were having fun doing technical stuff, I remember in addition
> to the workshop stuff he got very busy at times on his regional registry
> plans. And all of this next to his ISP work and later, his other work.
>
> With the ISOC workshops ending in 2000, there was another initiative
> starting to use the same model to do workshops for the African ISP
> community in Africa under the AfNOG umbrella.
> We had worked together for some years already and he called me to ask
> whether I'd be interested to join an effort to do workshops in Africa
> and this was the start of the AfNOG workshops.
>
> For a number of reasons, doing workshops in Africa brought many new
> challenges and for instance, I remember the day we decided to remove a
> VSAT-dish and re-install it, this time upside-down (literally!) to work
> around some limitations the meeting venue had brought us to get our
> Internet working.
> See
>
> https://www.ws.afnog.org/afnog2007/pictures/mtinka/16th-april-monday/index.html
> for some pictures of apb doing engineer work on a very hot hotel roof
> mid-day in Abuja.
> No challenge was too big and ingenuity had a very high level; we also
> had a lot of fun doing this.
>
> Alan was excellent, excellent in automating what could be automated.
> Preparing workshop exercises could be quite intensive, apb would not
> rest until an exercise was fully automated, and "make" would generate
> all the instructions, all the handouts and all the tools for an
> exercise. He could spend many hours on this, but "if it is done right,
> then we don't need to worry about it". Some of his exercise tools have
> been used for 15 years or so.
>
> With the workshops, you may know that we handed out out training
> materials and in order to do so, Alan came with the idea to create a
> CDrom (later: USB stick) with all the training materials on them so the
> workshops could be reproduced and shared.
> Alan worked a lot on automating the content generation (again:
> "automating all that can be automated"): one would just upload the
> materials and indexing and linking was done automatically. More
> important, his tooling also made lists of broken links and the like and
> he worked with the people who had trouble to deliver their materials for
> the CDrom / USB stick / website.
> At the end of workshop week, after an intense week of preparing training
> materials, doing training, doing exercises and the rest, with very
> little sleep, we'd only have to tell his tools "next build run is the
> last one, please" and have all the materials ready, master-images
> created, for distribution after his tools finished the final run.
>
> The workshop-materials websites https://www.ws.afnog.org and
> https://www.isocws.isoc.org were built with his tools.
>
> Alan also had excellent political skills and when workshop things didn't
> go the way we wanted, his steps to fix things were invaluable to the
> instructor team.
>
> In later years, when he took up his job of CEO of AfriNIC, we saw that
> his workload was intense, very intense, and he was juggling to do the
> workshop things he liked to do next to the responsibilities that came
> with his official role.
>
> In 2019 he stepped down as AfriNIC CEO and we all saw that his work has
> had a huge impact on him. I know his life changed quite a bit after
> that; because of things like Corona stopping the classic workshops our
> contacts became less, though I heard he had changed his life and was
> doing well.
>
> Alan, memories of us working together brings smiles and a lot of
> sadness. May your family find the strength to overcome the loss. We all
> miss you!
>
> Geert Jan
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 28 May 2026 11:41:48 -0700
> From: Randy Bush <randy at psg.com>
> To: Geert Jan de Groot <geertj at nsrc.org>
> Cc: afnog <afnog at afnog.org>
> Subject: Re: [afnog] Remembering apb (was: In Memoriam: Alan Barrett
> Message-ID: <m2se7bl6kz.wl-randy at psg.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
> Date: Thu, 28 May 2026 08:24:58 -0700
> From: Randy Bush <randy at psg.com>
> To: Mirjam Kuehne <mir at zu-hause.nl>
> CC: ripe-list at ripe.net
> Subject: [ripe-list] Re: In memoriam: Alan Barrett
>
> [ because most folk do not know ]
>
> Alan was an early developer and promoter of the network in Southern
> Africa. He was the system administrator at the University of Natal in
> Durban when the first IP connections came into South Africa at the end
> of the '80s. He was part of the original triangle for TCP/IP, UND,
> University of Cape Town, and the hub, Rhodes university. I once visited
> him in Durban; but to be honest, all I remember is the jacaranda and my
> first introduction to KwaZulu culture.
>
> In 1991 RAINet (Portland) had an advertising agency as a customer and
> they had a growing rack of Macintoshs serving their customers' web
> sites. Alan hacked NetScape to listen on in_addr(any). He wrote it up
> as a paper for INET '92 in Kobe. The rest is history. [ for the non
> geeks, this hack is at the core of Apache and other multi-site web
> servers ]
>
> Alan, Chris Pinkham[0], and Paul Nash[1] went on to form the first
> African commercial ISP, TICSA, which was quite successful. Then on to
> lead Cequrux, a software house which developed an enterprise security
> appliance.
>
> From there to AfNOG, AfriNIC, and the stories most folk know.
>
> He was a gentle soul. We miss you, Alan.
>
> ---
>
> [0] Who went on to develop EC2, the first cloud, and now sails the
> world with Christine
>
> [1] Who died fron a series of strokes a few years back in Toronto :(
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 28 May 2026 14:19:25 -0500
> From: Seun Ojedeji <seun.ojedeji at gmail.com>
> To: Randy Bush <randy at psg.com>
> Cc: Geert Jan de Groot <geertj at nsrc.org>, afnog <afnog at afnog.org>
> Subject: Re: [afnog] Remembering apb (was: In Memoriam: Alan Barrett
> Message-ID:
> <
> CAD_dc6gTRN3h+YXCtqpR5jq9vVUO8Lt4Mg1b4j9L37asVFx34A at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Thanks for sharing this rare history Randy. May his soul continue to rest
> in peace.
>
> Regards
>
> ----
> Sent from my mobile
> kindly excuse typos
>
> On Thu, 28 May 2026, 2:12?pm Randy Bush, <randy at psg.com> wrote:
>
> > Date: Thu, 28 May 2026 08:24:58 -0700
> > From: Randy Bush <randy at psg.com>
> > To: Mirjam Kuehne <mir at zu-hause.nl>
> > CC: ripe-list at ripe.net
> > Subject: [ripe-list] Re: In memoriam: Alan Barrett
> >
> > [ because most folk do not know ]
> >
> > Alan was an early developer and promoter of the network in Southern
> > Africa. He was the system administrator at the University of Natal in
> > Durban when the first IP connections came into South Africa at the end
> > of the '80s. He was part of the original triangle for TCP/IP, UND,
> > University of Cape Town, and the hub, Rhodes university. I once visited
> > him in Durban; but to be honest, all I remember is the jacaranda and my
> > first introduction to KwaZulu culture.
> >
> > In 1991 RAINet (Portland) had an advertising agency as a customer and
> > they had a growing rack of Macintoshs serving their customers' web
> > sites. Alan hacked NetScape to listen on in_addr(any). He wrote it up
> > as a paper for INET '92 in Kobe. The rest is history. [ for the non
> > geeks, this hack is at the core of Apache and other multi-site web
> > servers ]
> >
> > Alan, Chris Pinkham[0], and Paul Nash[1] went on to form the first
> > African commercial ISP, TICSA, which was quite successful. Then on to
> > lead Cequrux, a software house which developed an enterprise security
> > appliance.
> >
> > From there to AfNOG, AfriNIC, and the stories most folk know.
> >
> > He was a gentle soul. We miss you, Alan.
> >
> > ---
> >
> > [0] Who went on to develop EC2, the first cloud, and now sails the
> > world with Christine
> >
> > [1] Who died fron a series of strokes a few years back in Toronto :(
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > afnog mailing list
> > https://www.afnog.org/mailman/listinfo/afnog
> >
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> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Thu, 28 May 2026 12:50:06 -0700
> From: Lucy Lynch <llynch at civil-tongue.net>
> To: Geert Jan de Groot <geertj at nsrc.org>
> Cc: afnog <afnog at afnog.org>
> Subject: Re: [afnog] Remembering apb (was: In Memoriam: Alan Barrett
> Message-ID: <F5D015C9-E343-46B4-AC29-F5779BD2CD06 at civil-tongue.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>
> Such a sad day. Alan was a stalwart not just of the African Internet
> community but of the real (big I) Internet as a whole. I?ll add two
> personal memories that haven?t been touched on yet:
>
> That tiny smile that always seemed like both an internal laugh at this
> absurd world and a shared joke.
>
> That zen like ability to handle any question not with a pat answer but
> with another question that lead you to your own best answer.
>
> Sensi - you are missed already.
>
> Lucy
>
> > On May 28, 2026, at 11:00?AM, Geert Jan de Groot <geertj at nsrc.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > ?Hello,
> >
> > Today's sad news came as a total shock to me and first of all, I would
> like to offer my condolences to his family, friends and the Internet
> community.
> >
> > I wonder if it makes sense to share a few stories to remember Alan in
> his role as instructor.
> >
> > I met apb (his login, but also his nickname) in 1994. Between 1993 and
> 2000, the Internet Society had an annual conference and the week before the
> conference, ISOC would organize workshops to bring knowledge about Internet
> technology to people from places that would benefit from our workshops.
> > These were intense hands-on workshops, not slide-slapping but intense
> exercises to make people use what they just learned and they ran the days
> till deep in the night.
> >
> > We sometimes had challenges to build the setup for the workshops (and,
> in some cases, the conference itself) and I remember apb using quite some
> "interesting" ways to make things work.
> >
> > It was also during these conferences I hear apb speak about his ideas
> for a regional Internet registry for Africa, what became later AfriNIC.
> > While we were having fun doing technical stuff, I remember in addition
> to the workshop stuff he got very busy at times on his regional registry
> plans. And all of this next to his ISP work and later, his other work.
> >
> > With the ISOC workshops ending in 2000, there was another initiative
> starting to use the same model to do workshops for the African ISP
> community in Africa under the AfNOG umbrella.
> > We had worked together for some years already and he called me to ask
> whether I'd be interested to join an effort to do workshops in Africa and
> this was the start of the AfNOG workshops.
> >
> > For a number of reasons, doing workshops in Africa brought many new
> challenges and for instance, I remember the day we decided to remove a
> VSAT-dish and re-install it, this time upside-down (literally!) to work
> around some limitations the meeting venue had brought us to get our
> Internet working.
> > See
> https://www.ws.afnog.org/afnog2007/pictures/mtinka/16th-april-monday/index.html
> for some pictures of apb doing engineer work on a very hot hotel roof
> mid-day in Abuja.
> > No challenge was too big and ingenuity had a very high level; we also
> had a lot of fun doing this.
> >
> > Alan was excellent, excellent in automating what could be automated.
> Preparing workshop exercises could be quite intensive, apb would not rest
> until an exercise was fully automated, and "make" would generate all the
> instructions, all the handouts and all the tools for an exercise. He could
> spend many hours on this, but "if it is done right, then we don't need to
> worry about it". Some of his exercise tools have been used for 15 years or
> so.
> >
> > With the workshops, you may know that we handed out out training
> materials and in order to do so, Alan came with the idea to create a CDrom
> (later: USB stick) with all the training materials on them so the workshops
> could be reproduced and shared.
> > Alan worked a lot on automating the content generation (again:
> "automating all that can be automated"): one would just upload the
> materials and indexing and linking was done automatically. More important,
> his tooling also made lists of broken links and the like and he worked with
> the people who had trouble to deliver their materials for the CDrom / USB
> stick / website.
> > At the end of workshop week, after an intense week of preparing training
> materials, doing training, doing exercises and the rest, with very little
> sleep, we'd only have to tell his tools "next build run is the last one,
> please" and have all the materials ready, master-images created, for
> distribution after his tools finished the final run.
> >
> > The workshop-materials websites https://www.ws.afnog.org and
> https://www.isocws.isoc.org were built with his tools.
> >
> > Alan also had excellent political skills and when workshop things didn't
> go the way we wanted, his steps to fix things were invaluable to the
> instructor team.
> >
> > In later years, when he took up his job of CEO of AfriNIC, we saw that
> his workload was intense, very intense, and he was juggling to do the
> workshop things he liked to do next to the responsibilities that came with
> his official role.
> >
> > In 2019 he stepped down as AfriNIC CEO and we all saw that his work has
> had a huge impact on him. I know his life changed quite a bit after that;
> because of things like Corona stopping the classic workshops our contacts
> became less, though I heard he had changed his life and was doing well.
> >
> > Alan, memories of us working together brings smiles and a lot of
> sadness. May your family find the strength to overcome the loss. We all
> miss you!
> >
> > Geert Jan
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > afnog mailing list
> > https://www.afnog.org/mailman/listinfo/afnog
> >
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Subject: Digest Footer
>
> _______________________________________________
> afnog mailing list
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of afnog Digest, Vol 265, Issue 14
> **************************************
>
--
Roderick Beck
Network Capacity Sourcing - Broker
Hungarian Mobile: 00-36-70-605-5144.
Estonian Mobile: 372-5855-6840.
Email: roderick.beck at networksourcing.net
Articles: https://subseacables.blogspot.com/
Telegram: @RoderickBeck
Tallinn & Budapest.
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