JAWUG helps shape African Internet policy
JAWUG ManCom member Graham Beneke will be traveling to the 11th AfriNIC policy conference in Dakar this week. AfriNIC is the organisation responsible for allocating IP addresses to Internet organisations in the African region.
One of the issues under discussion at the conference will be a draft policy that will allow Wireless User Groups (WUGs) and other non-profit networks to receive global unicast address blocks. These address blocks are sometimes referred to as public addresses and will allow the community networks to move off the private address ranges and have globally unique addresses.
Having globally unique address has many benefits for the WUGs. It will allow them to use IP addresses on their networks without having to worry about clashes with other networks on the same addresses. This also opens the door to possible interconnections with other networks on the global Internet such as educational and academic networks and even local ISPs.
A similar policy has recently been accepted in the ARIN region which covers North America and surrounding areas. AfriNIC uses a ‘bottom-up’ policy development process where the man-on-the-street can participate in all debates to ensure policies are in place that benefit all Internet users. It is hoped that the draft policy will be finalised before the conference ends.
Many of the issues under discussion at AfriNIC-11 are also related to the imminent depletion of the free pool of IPv4 addresses in less than two years. The roll-out IPv6 is extremely important to ensure that the growth and innovation of the Internet is not stalled. JAWUG feels that it has an important role to play in the migration to IPv6. As an ideal research, experimental and educational network JAWUG hopes to drive the adoption of IPv6 in the coming months.
JAWUG & Internet policy – discussion
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