1) Summary of the Problem being addressed by this proposal

This policy reserves IPv4 resources for public Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) in the African region, ensuring that there would be discrete IPv4 resources to allow the establishment and growth of future IXPs.

2) Summary of How this Proposal Addresses the Problem

This policy requests AfriNIC to reserve, and publish IPv4 resources, and 2-byte ASNs for use by IXPs only.

3) Proposal

3.1 Introduction

It is widely considered that Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) are one of the critical elements needed for Internet economies to develop. Africa is still in the process of developing these, and is, at the same time, faced with the imminent exhaustion of its IPv4 resources. Not having IPv4 addresses to grow, or start new, IXPs would create unnecessary and unneeded routing complexity for Internet connected networks, looking to peer at IXPs to further their network scope. AfriNIC already has an existing policy to make allocations to IXPs [1], but that policy does not specifically reserve IPV4 space to ensure that there will be such, for future IXPs to grow and develop. Additionally, this policy reserves a set of 2-byte ASNs for use by IXPs for use at IXP BGP Route Servers.

3.2 Distinction between IXP peering and management networks

We distinguish between two kinds of IP address resources needed and used at IXPs. An IXP peering LAN is the contiguous network address block that the IXP would use to assign unique IP addresses to each peering member, for each peering participant to exchange network traffic across the shared peering infrastructure. Best practice has the IXP peering LAN *not* being visible in a view of the global routing table, among other things to reduce the attack vectors for ISP border routers via the IXP.

From a network identification, monitoring and analysis perspective, it is thus desirable, that the "peering LAN" space be provided from a contiguous block. The IXP management LAN is the management network that the IXP uses to provision services at the IXP, like monitoring, statistics, mail, ticket systems, provisioning of transit to DNS Roots, etc.

Management networks, are meant to be reachable globally, for instance to publish data and allow remote access for common good network infrastructure (such as root and TLD DNS servers) and research projects.

3.3 BGP Route Servers use

Typically IXPs use BGP route servers to help manage peering sessions between different participants. The route servers implement IXP routing policy in the form of BGP communities, typically in the form of A:B, where A,B represent A=IXP BGP route server and B=participant ASN. Current BGP implementations utilise 6 bytes for the extended community attribute [RFC5668]. Therefore, an IXP with a 4-byte ASN in use at its route server would not be able to successfully implement the A:B BGP community mapping, if an IXP participant has a 4-byte ASN. This situation is likely to be experienced by more IXPs, as additional 4-byte ASNs are allocated through the current AfriNIC process.

If, IXP route server communities include the IXP ASN and the peer's ASN (expected to be 4-byte), and a total of only 6 bytes are available, it follows that IXP route servers ASN could not be longer than a 2-byte ASN.

3.4 Proposal

To ensure that there are sufficient resources for IXPs to develop, this policy proposes that AfriNIC reserve IPv4 addresses for IXP peering LANs out of an address block marked particularly, and exclusively, for IXP peering LAN use. Assignments for IXP peering LANs must be from one dedicated block, published as such by AfriNIC. Assignments for IXP management addresses should NOT be provided from the same block as the IXP peering LANs.

It is proposed that a /16 block be reserved for future requirements for IXP peering LANs in the AfriNIC service region, and that AfriNIC publish this block as such.

It is further proposed to reserve the equivalent of an additional /16 block for IXP management prefixes, separate from the peering LANs. It is proposed that AfriNIC reserves a block of 2-byte ASNs for use in BGP route servers at IXPs in the AfriNIC service region.

The number of ASNs to be reserved should be the larger of 114, or half of the remaining 2-byte ASNs within AfriNIC's block at the date of ratification of this policy.

AfriNIC will allocate these resources on a first come first served basis.

3.5 Evaluation criteria

This policy does not suggest new evaluation criteria for what determines a valid IXP.

4.0 References

[1] AfriNIC Policy for End User Assignments - AFPUB-2006-GEN-001 http://afrinic.net/library/policies/127-afpub-2006-gen-001 Sections 5) and 6)