Spotlight on AFRINIC's Member Services
AFRINIC's Member Services Department is the first point of contact for many AFRINIC members or those seeking to become a member.
The department has expertise in Customer Services Support and Internet Number Resource (INR) Management.
The Customer Services Support is handled by the Customer Service Coordinators and focuses on membership requests' administrative verifications, member account management support to AFRINIC members and recruitment of prospective members, while Internet Number Resource (INR) Management is handled by the Hostmasters and focuses on all aspects of Internet number resource request evaluation, assignments and allocations in line with the current policies as proposed and accepted by the AFRINIC community, they also offer technical support for Reverse DNS, Internet Routing Registry (IRR) and Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI).
Committed to Excellence
As part of AFRINIC's quest to serve the community in a timely and efficient manner on all issues relating to its core activities, the Service Level commitment (SLC) was published.
The SLC describes the level of service that can be expected from staff and covers Registration and Customer Services as well as Database and public online services, Reverse DNS, IRR, RPKI, Billing and services infrastructure.
It also aims to ensure that all parties (members, community and AFRINIC staff) have the same understanding of various issues. It further:
Simplifies complex issues
Reduces areas of conflict
Encourages dialogue in the event of disputes
Eliminates unrealistic
expectations
Dealing with Requests
The department received around 8,087 support tickets in the Hostmaster queue and 386 tickets in the new-member request queue this year (see Ticket Statistics for more information). So far, 74.07% of tickets received each month were responded to within an average of 48 hours, complying with the AFRINIC SLC which demands that we respond to queries within 48 working hours.
New Membership
The first two quarters saw 386 tickets in the new-member request and out of which, 100 new members were recruited, representing 5% growth in total resource membership from last year for the same period.
IP Resource Management
Internet Number Resource Registration is AFRINIC’s core activity and the Department had a busy time in the first two quarters of 2020. Below is a highlight of our key activities and achievements.
Resources Allocation at end of Quarter 2 of 2020
- 955,648 /32s IPv4 addresses allocated
- 39 /32s IPv6 address space allocated
- 94 ASNs assigned
- 0.12 of /8 IPv4 address space remaining at June 2020
More on AFRINIC Resources statistics.
IPv4 Exhaustion
We are currently in a soft landing phase 2. This means:
- Minimum allocation/assignment size will be /24 and the maximum will be /22 per allocation/assignment. There is no explicit limit on the number of times an organisation may request additional IPv4 address space during the Exhaustion Period.
- The IPv4 needs for only up to 8 months are considered.
- LIR or End User must have used at least 90% of all previous allocations or assignments in order to receive additional IPv4.
- AFRINIC resources are for AFRINIC service region and any use outside the region should be solely used to support connectivity back to the AFRINIC region.
Resource Transfers
After ratification of the policy that allows the transfer of resources, the implementation of the policy now allows transfers between two organisations within the AFRINIC service region as long as they are compliant with the transfer policy. You can access full policy text here.
For the year 2020, we have concluded one (1) request for policy transfers and 14 requests for mergers and acquisitions. See detailed statistics on transfers
AFRINIC, therefore, encourages the current membership to request for additional IPv4 resources “within the boundaries of the policy” and speed up their IPv6 deployment.
You can read more on what Phase 2 of the exhaustion phases means.
Proposal for Enhancements requests from the membership
Enhancements to the members portal, MyAFRINIC, is currently going on. To enhance the user experience, we have been receiving feedback from members. But we are still keen on more feedback especially on what features you would like to be included, its usability and performance.
We invite Resource Members to fill in the survey and propose any enhancements they would like to see on the revamped MyAFRINIC members portal.
Find out more about the Member Services Department and how to become an AFRINIC resource member.