AFRINIC service region IPv4 Soft landing
By Adeola Alain P. AINA
15 August 2023
In may 2022, i wrote a note on what i called Afrinic service region IPv4 conundrum. It discusses how Afrinic has been managing its remaining IPv4 and especially the effect of the implementation of the softlanding policy.
In this note, i will present some data and anaylyis from unique prefix distribution statistics between 2019 to 2022.As a reminder, AFRINIC entered phase 1 of the softlanding on 31th March 2017 and in phase 2 from 13 January 2020. It analyses the distribution and impacts during the phase 2, looking at how things ended in phase1 and are going on in phase 2 2020.
In phase 2, the minimum for both allocation&assignment is of /24 and the maximum is of /22. No limit on number of requests from a member and the allocation/assignment period is of 8 months. Below is the distrubtion per year of total unique IPv4 prefixes.
Fig1: Unique IPv4 prefixes over years
Year 2020 shows a bigger distribution rate as 177 unique prefixes forming a total of 501760 IP addresses were allocated to MTN-CI on 28,February 2020. These allocations sound like approved allocations from phase 1. The next indicator we observe is "new member" vs "old member"."New member" means organisation without any other prior ressources from AFRINIC before the IPv4 prefix.
Fig2: New vs Old members unique IPv4 prefixes over years
If we take out the allocations to the old member mentionned above in 2020,There were more distribution to new members for each of the year. We then observe the indicator of "allocations" vs "assignments". IPv4 to LIR surpasses IPv4 to end-users as it has always been the case. Number of assignments remain steady over years, with an average of 58.
Fig3: Allocation vs assignment unique IPv4 prefixes over years
We also observe the distribution per country. combining distribution for 2021 and 2022, we investigate country-based representation; countries with at least one(01) allocation/assignment in 2021 or 2022 and number of prefixes per represented countries.
We noted that from the fifty-six(56) countries served by Afrinic, only six(06) did not record an IPv4 prefix from AFRINIC.These countries are: CF, KM, GA, ER, YT, ST.
In terms of number of prefixes per country, we noted the Top 10 which are: ZA, KE, NG, AO, TZ, UG, GH, EG, LY. Five (05) of these countries appeared on the list of the Top 10 in terms of total IPv4 address space, which are : ZA, EG, MU, MA, SC, TN, KE, DZ, NG, GH.
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Fig4: Map of IPv4 prefixes per country - 2021&2022
Fig5: IPv4 prefixes per country
We conclude by checking the percentage of these prefixes seen in routing(fully or partially) as to assess their utilisation. At the end of July 2023,we noted that very few of the prefixes are "not routed".Allocations are still need-based and subsequent request requires justification of usage of 90% of previous allocations.
Fig6: Routing status of the IPv4 prefixes
With the change of the minimum allocation size from /22 to /24 in the phase 2, new category of LIRs exist:
Micro '/24' - <'/23' 256 - 511
Mini '/23' - <'/22' 512 - 1023
We counted at the end of July 2023, eighty-eight(88) micro LIRs and sixty-seven(67) mini LIRs. While the reduction of the allocation period to eight(08) months might justify the size of requests,before the phase 2, these organisations wouldnt havequalified for allocations from Afrinic and as downstream providers, might have received sub-allocations or assignments from upstreams. As section 5.5.1.5 of the policy manual still limits the minimum sub-allocation size to /24, some of these LIRs would not be able to make sub-allocations.It is desirable to allow a micro or mini LIRs to make sub-allocations ?
Finally, we look at IPv6 distribution in the five(05) regions by end of year 2022. Afrinic service region records the lowest percentage of IPv6-only members and of members with both v4 and v6 after ARIN service's region.
Fig4: Membership with IPv6 in all regions.
When finalising this note, a look at Afrinic IPv4 exhaustion page indicated:
"We have 1,276,416 available /32 left to hit total exhaustion."
IPv4 registration services at Afrinic is active, the membership still growing with a majority of LIRs from many countries including those with large number of IPv4 addresses.
Sources:
https://stats.afrinic.net
https://www.nro.net/wp-content/uploads/NRO-Statistics-2022-Q4-FINAL.pdf
https://stat.ripe.net/app/launchpad/