Reglikedomain industry desk

Scrutiny as ICANN warns of compliance review — AFRINIC under

Scrutiny as ICANN warns of compliance review — AFRINIC under

Turmoil at Africa’s Regional Internet Registry is coming to a head.

AFRINIC logo

This site focuses on domain names, but there’s another part of internet real estate that is extremely valuable: IP addresses. Specifically, IPv4 addresses.

They are a scarce resource, which has caused their value on the secondary market to increase significantly.

Escrow.com does a brisk business handling escrow for address sales. Hilco Streambank runs a marketplace that has brokered over 60 million IP addresses for over $1 billion. Seven-, eight-, and even nine-figure transactions occur. A person was sentenced to five years in prison for gaming the system to get IP addresses.

The distribution of IP addresses is handled by Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). ICANN, through the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), recognizes RIRs and allocates blocks of IP addresses to them. They are then tasked with allocating those addresses to organizations within their respective regions.

One of those RIRs, AFRINIC — the registry in Africa — is in disarray. There have been allegations of wholesale misallocation of IP addresses, resulting in substantial profits for private firms.

The history is long and complicated. One person has tried to summarize the downfall of the organization. And one firm is very upset regarding that.

Cloud Innovation, which has been involved in a long-running legal campaign with AFRINIC, sent a cease & desist letter to someone who merely posted a link to the previous article on X. Queue the Streisand effect.

ICANN is actively communicating with the receiver overseeing AFRINIC. It asked the receiver to respond to allegations of issues with recent elections at AFRINIC. It has filed applications with the Supreme Court of Mauritius. It has stated that it might initiate a full compliance review of AFRINIC.

While none of this will undo past alleged misconduct, it could help put AFRINIC on a steadier path going forward.

Also on the wire

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