Intelligence
Latest Articles
Latest intelligence on infrastructure operators, policy decisions, market moves, and digital power shifts.
Creators
Eric Dumazet and the small queues that support the Linux server economy
A busy server can deliver excellent performance figures while still losing time, memory and CPU capacity behind its own packets. Eric Dumazet's work on TCP Small Queues, fair queueing, pacing and cache-sensitive structures helped Linux account for those hidden costs with more…
Creators
Eric Dumazet and the small queues in Linux server economics
A heavily loaded server can look excellent on a throughput chart and still waste time, memory and CPU behind its own packets. Eric Dumazet's work on TCP Small Queues, fair queueing, pacing and cache-conscious data structures helped Linux account for these hidden costs more…
Creators
Eric Dumazet and the small queues inside the Linux server economy
A busy server can look excellent on a throughput plot while wasting time, memory and processor capacity behind packets that have not yet left the machine. Eric Dumazet's work on TCP Small Queues, fair queueing, pacing and cache-aware data-structure layout has helped Linux account…
Creators
Eric Dumazet and the small queues inside Linux server economics
A busy server can appear healthy on a throughput chart while wasting time, memory and processor capacity behind its own packets. Eric Dumazet’s work on TCP Small Queues, fair queueing, pacing and cache-aware data structures helped Linux account for those hidden costs more…
Creators
Stephen Hemminger and the commands that make Linux networking operable
Stephen Hemminger’s long stewardship of iproute2 sits between Linux kernel capability and operational control. The suite’s commands make routes, queues, bridges, sockets and devices inspectable, while carrying decades of compatibility and maintainer obligations.
Story
Three seats were enough on paper: AFRINIC’s disputed quorum repair
A five-seat review body lost two members while three appeals needed somewhere to go. AFRINIC’s Board answered with a temporary permission: the three survivors could carry on. They answered in turn that they would not. That compact reversal exposes a larger institutional…
Story
AFRINIC’s one-sentence election decision and the missing public version receipt
On 20 January 2021, AFRINIC’s Board said in a single sentence that it had reviewed the Election Processes and Guidelines and adopted the new text “as amended”. Beneath that economical corporate act lay a much more elaborate public mechanism for nominations, screening, voting and…
Story
Resolution 202104.602 and AFRINIC’s Twenty-Four-Hour Appointment Bridge
On 9 April 2021, AFRINIC’s Policy Liaison named Vincent Ngundi and Darwin da Costa as the Policy Development Working Group’s consensus choice but left their term lengths unresolved; on 10 April, the Board crossed that remaining gap by assigning Vincent two years and Darwin one…
Story
AFRINIC ended a technical committee. The missing question is what survived it
Resolution 202101.594 may have been an entirely sensible corporate sunset: an inactive committee had, the Board said, finished its original work and drifted into matters better owned by operations. But ending an organ is not the same as demonstrating that its useful controls…
Story
What Changed When AFRINIC Consulted on Its Mailing-List Terms?
AFRINIC’s Board approved mailing-list Terms of Use for implementation on 20 January 2021, AFRINIC opened comments from 2 to 28 February, and the Board unanimously approved a stated revised proposal on 3 March. Yet the surviving public page comparison reveals only a repaired…
Story
The order that kept AFRINIC’s membership switch from deciding the case
On 29 March 2021, a Judge in Chambers of the Supreme Court of Mauritius restrained AFRINIC from terminating, suspending or revoking Cloud Innovation’s membership as an AFRINIC Resource Member while the application remained pending. The intervention preserved an operating state…
Story
The Gate Before the Ballot: AFRINIC’s 2021 Geography Rule
On 20 January 2021, four appointments turned a short bylaw restriction into a practical gate: before AFRINIC members could vote for Board candidates, geography had already helped decide who was allowed to sit on the committee that would shape the choice put before them.
Story
The Decision Before the Invitation: Resolution 202101.595 and the Order of Consent
AFRINIC’s mailing-list rules acquired two approval dates and one public comment window. The awkward fact is that the first approval came before the invitation to comment. That does not make the consultation worthless, but it does change what the consultation can honestly be said…
Academics
Kathleen Nichols and the queue delay a fast link cannot hide
Kathleen Nichols’ best-known work changed the variable used to judge a network queue: time, rather than packet count. CoDel made persistent waiting measurable, while leaving deployment dependent on bottleneck placement, responsive senders and maintained implementations.
Story
The Resolution That Opened the Ledger — and No More
On 20 January 2021, AFRINIC’s Board approved publication of a report that put numbers against weaknesses in the registry’s public word. The decision made part of the institution’s bookkeeping open to inspection, an important act in a system where operators and outsiders may rely…
Creators
Poul-Henning Kamp and the performance discipline of doing less
Poul-Henning Kamp’s systems work is held together by a suspicion that software becomes slow and fragile when several layers keep the same state or repeat the same task. His record shows what doing less can gain—and which responsibilities it transfers.
Story
The mailbox test that entered a meeting without a defined consequence
AFRINIC’s sixth Abuse Contact Policy Update arrived with a precise timetable for checking contact records but no operative answer to the most consequential question: what, exactly, would follow a failed check? Its passage through an online meeting exposed why delivery, response…
Story
What AFRINIC’s 2019 Audit Assured—and What It Left Open
In June 2020, AFRINIC’s Board approved annual accounts carrying an unmodified BDO opinion while a separate investigation into alleged allocation malversation was already under way. The importance of that juxtaposition lies not in a sensational claim that the two records…
Story
What USD 71,217 Can — and Cannot — Prove About AFRINIC’s RPKI Priority
In June 2020, AFRINIC’s Board chose to move a single total of USD 71,217 from the MyAFRINIC and infrastructure budgets to the RPKI project. The precision of the sum makes the choice inspectable, but it does not turn an approval into delivery: the consequential story lies in the…
Story
Consensus could move Draft 2. It could not create the power the draft assumed
In September 2020, AFRINIC’s co-chairs declared consensus on a second draft about Board prerogatives in the Policy Development Process. That procedural judgement could move an identified text through a private coordination process. It could not answer the prior question that…