Hullo David, Thanks for the perspective, my comments inline:
On 1/14/09, David Conrad <[email protected]> wrote: > On Jan 13, 2009, at 8:26 AM, Bill Woodcock wrote: >> On Tue, 13 Jan 2009, Graham Beneke wrote: >>> IPv6 Allocations to Non-Profit Networks >>> ---------- >>> Many community and non-profit networks exist on the African continent >>> and around the world... Many of these organizations provide the >>> services free of charge and do not have any kind of revenue stream. >> >> I strongly support this policy. > > So, you'd be happy for (say) the Gates Foundation to not pay AfriNIC > while a small two person commercial ISP serving some rural area in the > bush would be subject to full freight? > I certainly wouldn't, and while this isn't the intent of the proposal, it might certainly be the effect. > Also, in my (perhaps dated) experience, few countries had a useful > definition of "non-profit corporation". This is why, for example, > APNIC is actually a for-profit company, at least according to the > Australian government. If this remains the case, this policy would > appear to disadvantage ISPs in countries without a non-profit legal/ > tax status. > > I'm curious: what percentage of the total cost of doing business for > ISPs in Africa is the annual AfriNIC fees relative to the cost of > connectivity, staff, rent, electricity, etc.? > small, but this is for community networks, "ISPs" as we usually think of them. >> This is the model under which the Internet was initially built... > > No it isn't. The model under which the Internet was build (at least > in the context of address registration) was government subsidies. > Before the RIRs existed, the US taxpayers (via the US government) paid > for _all_ address registration services. That time is long past and > we probably don't want to try to revisit it. > Agreed > To be clear, this policy is asking one set of AfriNIC members (for- > profits) to subsidize another set ("non-profits", whatever that > means). Long ago, APNIC looked at the same policy and decided against > it since (a) it was felt yearly APNIC fees were such a tiny proportion > of the total cost of providing Internet service in the AP region that > it was nonsensical to think that waiving those fees would have a > significant impact on the growth of the Internet in the region and (b) > the APNIC executive council had mechanisms by which fees could be > waived. Whether or not these considerations are relevant for the > African region at this point in time is obviously something you all > will need to determine. This seems to be a corner case, and while I am all for getting IPv6 into the hands of community networks and their ilk, I wonder if this can't be done via tunnel brokers making /48 assignments or by other means. In general, I think it is not helpful to write many corner cases into policy. Like Badru, I am on the fence on this one, but currently leaning on the "no" side. -- Cheers, McTim http://stateoftheinternetin.ug _______________________________________________ rpd mailing list [email protected] https://lists.afrinic.net/mailman/listinfo.cgi/rpd
