Dear Colleagues, In light of the recent development in the Internet environment and relayed by different media coverages and reports on what some characterised as “Internet Doomsday” predicted to be within the first quarter of 2011, at AfriNIC we find it important to provide our community some clarifications and information related to the situation allowing everyone to have a little bit more information on what they can except during the coming months in our region.
Recently, the central IPv4 address pool managed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has dropped to its last seven /8 blocks (less than 3% of the total pool). Two of these blocks are expected to be allocated soon, making us reach the threshold that should trigger an equal distribution among the five RIRs including AfriNIC as per the global Policy AFPUB-2009-v4-1: http://www.afrinic.net/docs/policies/AFPUB-2009-v4-001.html However, and even after the total exhaustion of IANA’s IPv4 address pool, we would like to reassures our members and our community at large that according to current allocation trend in our region we will be able to continue to serve IPv4 needs for few more years (3 to 4 years) after the central pool exhaustion. AfriNIC will continue to allocate and assign IPv4 and IPv6 based on its current policy until we each our final /8. As soon as that threshold is reached, the IPv4 Soft Landing policy that has recently reached consensus form our community at the recent AfriNIC-13 meeting in South Africa will take effect. See http://www.afrinic.net/docs/policies/AFPUB-2010-v4-005.htm for more information. In addition to that, at AfriNIC we still strongly stand behind our campaign to encourage operators to review their NAT usage practice which in many cases unnecessarily complicates networks design and could make the IPv6 transition more complex. At this point of time there is no reason to extensively implement NAT (as we have sees several time) and not to request needed public IPv4 addresses from AfriNIC. It is time to review your network topology and address planing in order to request the amount of IP address that you need to properly run your network an offer efficient service to your customers. the AfriNIC Internet Number Resource Analyst team will be happy helping you through such process. While we are emphasizing on the fact that there is no reason at this point of time to react in a panic mode, we are also urging the operators to swiftly take the necessary measures and actions for IPv6 readiness and implementing the new protocol on their infrastructure. It is important to note that the two versions of the protocol will have to coexist and work both together for a while. Through our IPv6 program our members can access to IPv6 resources without any additional membership fees. You can request your IPv4 & IPv6 blocks through the same regular application process and start deploying it as well so to be ready for future evolution. IPv6 is clearly the only long-term solution we see for a sustainable growth of the Internet Business particularly in region like ours. During 2011, AfriNIC will be focusing more on its IPv6 program through several activities that encourage and support its deployment throughout the region. The African IPv6 Task Force we are supporting will certainly help LIRs, Private companies and Governments to develop a clear roadmap for Pv6 deployment. This is critical for us and is a high priority in our next year activity plan. We would like you to stay tuned and follow us in the upcoming moths. To finish, I would like to use this opportunity to wish you all a very happy new year 2011 from all the AfriNIC team. Sincerely ----------------- Adiel A. Akplogan Chief Executive Officer AfriNIC, www.afrinic.net
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