Summary

  • AFRINIC's public cleanup procedure, published on 30 July, says recovered IPv4 space is quarantined for a period tentatively set at 12 months, which may be longer but is never shorter.
  • AFPUB-2026-IPv4-001-DRAFT02 instead proposes a 12-month default that AFRINIC may reduce when available space falls below a /13 or for other operational reasons; the normative text states no minimum reduced period.
  • An impact assessment says staff would maintain 12 months in practice and might adjust to six months, but that operational expectation is not a binding floor in the proposed text.
  • Last Call ended on 31 July. A 3 August objection identified the missing floor, and the co-chair report reproduced it, excluded it from the assessment because it arrived after the cutoff, noted it for Board information and recommended ratification.
  • The inspected record does not prove Board ratification, implementation, an actual shortened quarantine, a released prefix, a later delegation, misconduct, illegality or harm.

The strongest benign explanation starts with operational resilience. A registry needs a knowable point at which policy discussion closes, co-chairs assess consensus and a proposal advances or stops. It may also need room to respond when clean, available IPv4 inventory becomes unusually scarce. A rigid quarantine clock could become difficult if demand rises while recovered space remains held in reserve.

AFRINIC has also published a cleanup process that is more substantial than a simple waiting period. It describes sanity reporting, routing-table and routing-registry checks, DNS and spam-blacklist checks, engagement over unauthorised use, preparation of a clean-resource list, a final review for recent routing changes, movement from Reserved to Available, and community notification. The late objection did not disappear: the report reproduced it and put it before the Board as information.

That account has force. It does not, however, resolve the narrower control problem created by the difference between the operating baseline and the proposed policy text.

The two documents describe different constraints. The 30 July cleanup procedure calls the current quarantine period tentatively 12 months, permits it to run longer and says it is never shorter. Draft02 also begins with 12 months, but authorises AFRINIC to reduce the period when available space is below a /13 or for other operational reasons. The proposal supplies no normative minimum, no exhaustive definition of those other reasons and no required public decision receipt.

This is not evidence that AFRINIC has shortened any quarantine. It is a textual comparison between a public operating procedure and a proposed rule. The procedure is not itself ratified policy, while the proposal had not been proven ratified or implemented in the inspected record. The important point is that the proposal would make a form of discretion available that the procedure says is not part of the current baseline.

The impact assessment narrows the expected practice but does not close the textual gap. It says AFRINIC would maintain 12 months and may adjust to six months if needed. At AFRINIC-37, the proposal's author said an earlier version had set out six months, staff considered that too short and Draft02 changed the default to 12 months while retaining reduction discretion. Staff also said the 12-month approach had worked and that cleanliness, rather than elapsed time alone, was the priority before space entered the available pool.

Those statements help explain likely implementation. They do not make six months a binding minimum. An impact assessment describes staff interpretation and operational expectations; it is not interchangeable with normative policy language. A future decision-maker reading only the proposed rule would find a default, a /13 example and a broad operational-reasons clause, but no stated floor.

The timing of the objection matters because it reveals a second, separate state transition. Last Call opened on 16 July and was scheduled to close at 23:59 UTC on 31 July. The Secretariat published the management and cleanup documents on 30 July, near the end of that window. The co-chairs announced closure on 1 August.

On 3 August, RPD message 015478 raised the precise question of a missing minimum. Its references to three months, one month or immediate release were hypotheticals illustrating the breadth of the wording. They are not evidence of AFRINIC action, intention or outcome. The author asked that the concern be preserved even though it arrived after the cutoff.

That message must also remain separate from RPD message 015477. The latter addressed different utilisation and Subsequent Allocation Window periods. Combining the two would blur distinct mechanisms and would falsely turn a quarantine-floor question into a broader dispute about unrelated time limits.

The co-chair report says it was completed on 13 August and was transmitted publicly to the Board on 19 August. It reproduced the floor objection, marked it “Not considered in this assessment” because it arrived after Last Call, and noted it for Board information. The co-chairs then recommended that the Board ratify Draft02 at its earliest convenience.

“Recommended” is not the same state as “ratified.” Nor are recovered, quarantined, clean, available, allocated, announced and implemented interchangeable. At the evidence cutoff, the current proposal surfaces still displayed “Last call,” and no inspected Board resolution, Draft03, ratified-policy listing or Consolidated Policy Manual integration established a final Board decision.

The public record therefore supports a bounded conclusion. The procedural cutoff was applied, the late issue was preserved, and a ratification recommendation was made. What is not publicly identified is the objection's durable next owner or terminal disposition. “For Board information” records a destination, but not whether the Board must decide the issue, send it to a later draft, assign it to policy implementation review, refer it to procedure, or close it without further action.

That missing handoff is consequential because IPv4 registry state is operational state. Heng Lu's neutral-bookkeeper analysis shows why clerical-looking changes over scarce resources can carry real private power. A registry does not merely describe a recovered block: its records and workflows help determine whether that block is reserved, available for allocation or later visible in operational use.

Lu's principal-agent frame asks who defines scarcity, chooses a shorter period, judges a block clean, approves its release, reviews the evidence and bears the consequences if the record is wrong. His running-code emphasis adds that institutional labels alone are insufficient. What networks and later resource holders inherit is the implemented state change, not merely the vocabulary used to describe it.

This does not turn AFRINIC into a sovereign authority. AFRINIC is a private, membership-based Internet registry. Its Board, Policy Development Working Group, co-chairs, Secretariat and Hostmasters exercise corporate, policy-process, contractual and technical-administrative functions. They do not acquire legislative, judicial, police, punitive or continent-wide public-law authority by managing quarantine and release. The appropriate response to missing fields is therefore a verifiable private decision receipt, not an accusation of unlawful government action.