Version 1 | November 2015

1. Purpose of this Service Level Commitment

In our quest to serve the community in the most professional manner and in accordance with our industry highest standards, AFRINIC, as an RIR is publishing this Service Level commitment (SLC) in respect of its Number Resources Management services. This covers Registration and Customer Services, Database and public online services, Reverse DNS, Billing and services infrastructures. This Service Level Commitment is AFRINIC’s pledge to the community for the provision of high-quality service as per their needs and expectations of members. AFRINIC will strive to serve the community in a timely and efficient manner in all issues relating to our core activities. AFRINIC aims to provide high quality and reliable services based on its own infrastructure and capacity as described in section 4. Although AFRINIC will be unable to provide service level commitments in respect of any third party suppliers, we will strive to ensure that our own commitment is reflected in all our business relationships with third-party suppliers that may affect our core services.

2. Working days and Working Hours

AFRINIC Operations are located in Mauritius and our working hours are 09:00 to 17:30 (UTC+4) from Monday to Friday. Our office remains closed during Saturday and Sunday as well as during public holidays in Mauritius. The list of these public holidays is published at the beginning of every year on our website at www.afrinic.net/about-us/office-hours. A seventy-two (72) hours notice will be sent by mail at  announce@afrinic.net before any public holiday. This will also be published on AFRINIC’s website. For service continuity to its valued members and community, AFRINIC Operation Team will ensure that both database and public online services and services infrastructure as defined in section 4. (iii) and section 4 (iv), remain available 7d/7 and 24h/24.

3. Service availability

3.1. Infrastructure and Online Service availability

AFRINIC commits itself to a 99.8% uptime per service and for its network i.e. its servers being physically switched on and with an internet connection to running services. Note: Any calculation of network and service availability shall not include any unavailability resulting from (a) scheduled network and/or server maintenance; (b) third party unavailability; (c) end-user connectivity issues; or (d) any other issue outside of the control of AFRINIC and constituting force majeure as defined in the annexe to this document. However, AFRINIC will endeavour to provide resilient and redundant services on a best-effort level.

3.2. Response to queries and service requests

AFRINIC Operations Team is committed to providing an effective response (Cf Annex) on all queries addressed to it, within two (2) working days.

4. Scheduled and Unscheduled Maintenance

AFRINIC undertakes regular maintenance in order to improve its services infrastructures. Regularly scheduled maintenance time shall be communicated at least one (1) week in advance of the maintenance time to members if related to services addressed to AFRINIC Members only. For services related to the whole community, such communication shall be found at announce@afrinic.net.

AFRINIC Services subject to maintenances are:

1. Registration and Customer Services
2. Billing Services
3. Database and public online services
   • WHOIS
   • MyAfrinic
   • Services Websites
   • Internet Routing Registry
4. Services Infrastructure
   • DNS
   • DNSSEC
   • Mail
   • RPKI

AFRINIC, at its own discretion, may take the service down for unscheduled maintenance due to incidents and in that event, it will notify the community in advance before completing this issue resolved. Such unscheduled maintenance will be counted against the uptime guarantee.

5. Resolution Of Complaints

It is mainly through members’ and the community’s feedback that AFRINIC is able to review and keep improving the overall service it provides.

5.1. How can a complaint be made?

In case you are not satisfied with the level of any service delivered to you, you have the right to seek a review of the decision by using any one of the following means.

• telephone AFRINIC Customer Service on +230 403 5100 during working hours as defined above
• email to complaints@afrinic.net
• write to AFRINIC Customer Service, 11th Floor Raffles Tower, Cybercity, Ebene, Mauritius

To avoid any delay, you are advised not to send service-related correspondence to an individual employee's email address.

5.2. Who is in charge of your complaint?

Your complaint is handled by the AFRINIC Management and will ensure to resolve the matter on time and in a good manner. Your privacy and confidentiality will be respected and protected.

5.3. How long will it take to respond to your complaint?

Once a complaint has been received by telephone or email complaints@afrinic.net AFRINIC Management will respond to such a complaint within two (2) working days excluding public holidays observed in Mauritius.

5.4. What can you do if you are still not satisfied?

If your complaint is not resolved to your satisfaction, you are invited to escalate the matter by writing to admin-escalate@afrinic.net, explaining that you wish the matter to be escalated. Please provide all the useful information needed to address the issue including your service ticket number. Managers at the highest appropriate level will deal with all complaints. AFRINIC will respond to such a complaint within two (2) working days excluding public holidays observed in Mauritius.

6. Amendment

This Service Level Commitment may be amended by AFRINIC at its own discretion but only after giving thirty-day advance notice. Notices will be sufficient if provided to the community (a) as a note on its main website www.afrinic.net, or (b) by email to the subscribers through mailing lists.

7. Exclusion of Sandbox and Beta Accounts

AFRINIC test environment, Beta services are expressly excluded from this or any other service level commitment.

8. Compliance

AFRINIC SLC complies with

• Consolidated Policy Manual (CPM)
• AFRINIC Internal services procedures
• AFRINIC Registration Service Agreement (RSA)
• AFRINIC Bylaws
• Laws of Mauritius

9. Annex

Definition

• Force majeure refers to total or partial strikes, slowdowns, labour unrest, lockouts, epidemics, insurrection or civil disorder, war or military operations, an act of terrorism or sabotage, national or local emergency, acts or omissions of government, or other competent authority, compliance with law, regulations or demands of any government or government agency, fire, lightning, explosion, floods, including water damage, earthquake, subsidence, the weather of exceptional severity including cyclones, acts or omissions of persons for whom AFRINIC is not responsible or any other cause beyond its control and any such event or circumstance that may be considered as force majeure.
• Response time refers to how quickly AFRINIC will respond to any issue being raised via phone, email, or other methods.
• Resolution time refers to how long it takes from the time an issue is logged until it is fully resolved
• Statistics on the resolution of queries from our ticketing system can be found at https://stats.afrinic.net/