[ppml] Revision to 2008-3

On Apr 4, 2008, at 8:29 AM, Jay Hennigan wrote:

> Owen DeLong wrote:
>
>> I know of community networks held together by a collection of WRT-54s
>> and donated 72xx hardware.  The minimum LIR fee to ARIN is $1,250
>> per year, which, vastly exceeds the hardware budget of most community
>> networks I know.
>
> For 100 users that's just about $1 per month each.  I'm not trying  
> to be
> Scrooge here, but this really doesn't seem out of line compared to  
> what
> one would pay an ISP or telco/cableco.
>
You're assuming facts not in evidence.  First, you're assuming that  
there
is a defined user community for the network which is paying something
in the first place.  In many cases, this simply isn't true.  In many  
cases,
they are operated by a handful of people who donate time/resources
and serve an unknown user population on a free basis.

It's one thing for me to donate an insignificant part of my connectivity
and some inexpensive one-time cost hardware to a community network
and let 100s of unknown people use it for free.  It's entirely another  
to
ask me to pay $1/month per user I don't know.

>> As to transit, many of the community networks I know get transit  
>> donated
>> from various organizations or pay very little for it through various
>> discount
>> arrangements.  Even if that is not the case, however, adding $1,250  
>> or
>> more per year to the annual costs usually exceeds the excess revenue
>> of any of the ones I am familiar with.
>
> Might it be possible (and better for the Internet community as a  
> whole)
> for the smaller community networks with substantially fewer than 100
> users to also get address space SWIPped from those transit providers?
>
They aren't necessarily operating with fewer than 100 users and they
aren't necessarily so small.

> If there is a bona-fide need for a hardship or not-for-profit fee
> structure for freenet-style LIRs, I'm all for it.  I also fear the
> slippery-slope addressed by others in this discussion regarding
> agenda-driven organizations taking advantage.  I'm personally not
> convinced that such is needed unless I'm missing something really  
> out of
> whack between the number of users represented in the definition of an
> LIR and the number actually splitting the bill.
>
You are, indeed, missing something along those lines.  The people paying
for freenets are often _NOT_ a significant portion of the user  
population.

Owen