Intelligence
Latest Articles
Latest intelligence on infrastructure operators, policy decisions, market moves, and digital power shifts.
Story
The Gate and the Missing Receipt: AFRINIC’s USD 100,000 Board Checkpoint
Resolution `202006.559` placed a clear numerical gate in AFRINIC’s banking process: a bank transaction above USD 100,000 required Board approval. The gate is intelligible and defensible, yet the public record leaves open the practical questions that decide whether any transaction…
Story
The two-page contract behind a shared registry
Five private regional registries signed a two-page instrument because a globally shared registry can fail at the seams between regional administrators. AFRINIC’s Board first authorised its chief executive to sign; the five organisations then accepted four duties and extended a…
Story
AFRINIC 32 and the virtual policy floor without a denominator
When AFRINIC moved its public policy meeting online in September 2020, it kept a consequential private coordination process alive; it also made the quality of access, identity, speaking order and public evidence inseparable from any claim about what the virtual room meant.
Story
The Board Could See the Risk. Draft 1 Asked Whether It Could Act
AFRINIC’s Board might have been right to notice a danger to the company or to network continuity. That observation did not, by itself, tell the Board whether it could originate policy, alter community text, stop deliberation, veto an outcome or direct somebody else to act. The…
Story
The emergency ledger: what Resolution 202006.556 proves—and what it leaves unauditable
In June 2020, AFRINIC’s Board placed a numbered decision in its corporate record: Resolution `202006.556`, adopting an organisational contingency policy. The decision could represent sensible preparation. A registry should not wait for systems, credentials, staffing or essential…
Story
One resolution, two proof burdens: what AFRINIC had to preserve in 202002.552
One resolution, two proof burdens: what AFRINIC had to preserve in 202002.552 intelligence summary explains the development, the public evidence available to readers, the organisations involved, the regional context, market exposure, and the infrastructure consequences that may…
Story
The USD 200 Question: What AFRINIC’s Communications Reimbursement Needed to Show
In May 2020, when remote board work could make ordinary connectivity an institutional necessity, AFRINIC’s directors authorised communications reimbursements of up to USD 200 per director per month. The ceiling was modest, but that is what makes Resolution 202005.553 revealing: a…
Story
A Confidential Poll at the Gate
On 12 February 2020, AFRINIC’s Board used a confidential poll, a tie-break and an uncontested nomination to appoint the four people who would shape the candidate field before members saw a ballot. The minutes disclose the five first-round vote totals, the second-round result and…
Story
Before the Ballot: What AFRINIC Resolution 202001.547 Put in Place
In January 2020, AFRINIC’s Board adopted a new Election Processes and Guidelines rulebook covering the path from nomination and candidate screening to voter eligibility, proxies, electronic and paper ballots, counting, ties, disputes and publication of results. Resolution…
Story
The Policy Compliance Dashboard appeal tested reviewability of a non-consensus assessment
The Policy Compliance Dashboard looked like an administrative instrument, but its classifications sat upstream of notices and potentially serious registry actions. When the co-chairs concluded that significant objections remained, the ensuing appeal posed a more important…
Story
The date that made the appeal: Draft 4 and the limits of internal review
On 7 October 2020, after a last call begun on 21 September and amid disagreement over whether changes in Draft 4 had received enough final review, the co-chairs said consensus was maintained. The two appeal records that followed did not ask the Appeal Committee to choose whether…
Story
When ‘No Consensus’ Must Give Reasons: The 2020 RPKI AS0 Draft 2 Appeal
In 2020, a proposal for a machine-readable routing-security signal was halted by a distinctly human judgement: AFRINIC’s co-chairs assessed that its second draft lacked consensus. The ensuing appeal put the negative decision itself under scrutiny. Its enduring significance lies…
Story
The dashboard that could reveal a difference but could not create a punishment
A proposed MyAFRINIC screen promised to put payment records, documents, contact history, routing-adjacent signals and transfer questions in one private view. That convenience could have made registry records easier to correct. It also risked making fundamentally different kinds…
Story
The Fee at the Prefix Boundary: What Resolution 202001.546 Actually Authorised
In January 2020, AFRINIC's Board drew new Mini and Micro membership-fee lines around IPv4 prefix bands. The lines were easy to state, but the surviving evidence does not show the economic bridge from a member's recorded prefix to the charge it was expected to bear. That…
Story
Before the Ledger Moves: What AFRINIC Resolution 202002.550 Required
AFRINIC’s February 2020 disclosure matters less as a scandal notice than as a test of sequence: when an internal record appears wrong, the registry must preserve the evidence, refer suspected wrongdoing to competent investigators, keep its live register accurate and repair the…
Academics
Sally Floyd made congestion control accountable to evidence
Sally Floyd linked router queues, transport feedback, traffic models and standards into a discipline of shared-network responsibility. Her legacy lies less in one celebrated algorithm than in a method for testing throughput, delay, fairness, stability and deployment assumptions…
Story
The Six-Month Return Clock: Draft 8 and the Limit of AFRINIC’s RSA Power
For an operator, six months is not an abstract grace period. It can be the interval between an adverse registry finding and the forced unwinding of part of a live address portfolio: customer migrations, reverse-DNS changes, routing-security dependencies, transfer choices, legal…
Story
The Penalty Draft 4 Left Undefined
AFRINIC’s fourth abuse-contact proposal looked softer because it erased an elaborate failure ladder and its express route toward revocation procedures. Yet the shorter text preserved the power that mattered most: discretion to warn a resource holder and block unspecified services…
Creators
Massimo Candela and the interfaces that turn routing data into action
From BGPlay and RIPE Atlas interfaces to BGPalerter and geofeed monitoring, Massimo Candela has built tools that turn partial internet measurements into something operators can investigate. Their value depends on preserving the sources, thresholds and maintenance ownership behind…
Story
Two Clauses, One Broken Bridge
AFRINIC’s third draft of its Resource Transfer Policy changed only two provisions: section 5.7.3.2 imposed a twelve-month post-transfer restriction on a source seeking more AFRINIC IPv4 space, and section 5.7.4.3 preserved the legacy status of transferred legacy resources.…