IPv6 Allocations to Non-Profit Networks - AFPUB-2009-v6-001

Incentive

Define criteria for non-profit and community organisations to be recognized for membership of AfriNIC and to allow them to request resources. Define criteria for organisations to qualify for blocks of IPv6 PI address space and define a membership category that can be charged under an appropriate fee structure.

Background

Many community and non-profit networks exist on the African continent and around the world. These networks have goals including providing on-net and local community services and the exchange locally hosted Internet content. They provide a platform for local skills development in IP, SysAdmin, Software Development and other ICT related skills.

Many of these organisations provide the services free of charge and do not have any kind of revenue stream. These networks generally consist of hundreds or thousands of consumer-grade network devices often linked though license exempt radio networking technologies.

Current financial policies only recognise academic institutions to receive discounted rates for their numbering resources. Other suitably defined community organisations also need ways of obtaining affordable addressing resources.

These networks are generally addressed using private IPv4 (RFC1918) address space with NAT technologies used at locations on the network where gateways are required to link certain internal services to the Internet.

IPv6 ULA (RFC4193) addresses are also used on these networks when deploying services over IPv6. NAT however does not exist for IPv6 and thus it is not possible to connect these ULA based networks to the global Internet. Announcements of these ULA blocks over private peering arrangements to large public AS's is often not feasible due to the many bogon filters that would need to be updated.

The current IPv6 PI allocations policy requires that the address blocks handed out by AfriNIC be announced within 12 months of allocation. This puts an expectation that the prefix is visible on a number of public looking glasses. While the organisation may have have a number of settlement-free peering arrangements with a number of public AS's it is possible that the organisation would never be able to purchase/obtain transit for its prefix and would thus never be globally routable or visible.

The lack of publicly addressable IP space for these community networks prevents them from participating on the public Internet more actively. While IPv4 address space is finite and likely to increase in cost/value as supply and demand changes over the immediate future - sufficient IPv6 address space exists for responsible allocations to be made to these organizations at a low cost.

Definitions

(a) A non-profit network is a network run within a local geographical area for the purposes of free or low-cost network services within this particular area. Legal responsibility for the network must be held by an organisation running as a not-for-profit entity and recognised as such by the laws governing that particular country or region.

Allocation Size

Organisations that qualify to become members under this policy may apply to AfriNIC for a /48 IPv6 address allocation. This is the only size of allocation the non-profit organisation may request. Once an HD-Ratio of 0.94 has been reached with respect to subnet utilisation then the organisation may make application to AfriNIC for additional addressing resources and provide justification for this.

Allocation Criteria

• The organisation must not be an existing LIR.
• The organisation must not hold an assignment of globally unique IPv4
  address space.
• The organisation may qualify for an allocation even if they do not
  plan to announce it globally.
• The organisation should provide details of peering arrangements with
  at least 2 public AS's when applying for the allocation.
• The organisation must announce the allocation in an aggregated way.
  The organisation may not sub-allocate portions of the address space.

Summary
This policy seeks to make it as easy as possible for non-profit entities to obtain IPv6 addressing resources and drive the deployment of and demand for IPv6 services through this.

Additionally the policy seeks to limit the way in which these addressing resources are used to avoid abuse by Internet service providers and other commercial users of Internet addressing resources.