[ARIN-consult] [arin-announce] Fee Schedule Change Consultation

[John Curran]

On Nov 14, 2012, at 2:27 PM, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:

> Be very carefully what you wish for...

(and apparently one should also be very careful using spell checkers... :-)

> As it turns out, the actual effort related to providing those services is 
> _not_ proportional to the number of IP addresses, but rather to the address 
> block entry itself.  (Folks should be very thankful for such, since if there 
> ever were any costs actual proportional to number of addresses, no one 
> would ever be able to afford to be issued an IPv6 address block... :-)

FYI - For folks interested in ARIN's costs based on a functional (as opposed
to the typical departmental budget model), I presented a breakdown at the ARIN 
Philly meeting -
 <https://www.arin.net/participate/meetings/reports/ARIN_XXVIII/PDF/friday/curran_cost_breakdown.pdf>

> So, the reality is that each issued IPv4 and IPv6 block (and to some 
> extent each issued AS number) imputes very similar costs on ARIN as an
> organization.  Note also that if we really wanted to be fair regarding
> costs, we should treat ISPs via the same model as end-users, and the 
> annual maintenance fees per block would be higher due to the lack of 
> the indirect subsidy of these costs by the ISP members, and the costs
> for a typical ISP would drop significantly.

One reason that having disproportionate costs on the ISPs (to the benefit
of end-users) is that ISPs are more likely to obtain some benefit from our 
significant registry development efforts (consisting of both the policy
development process as well as the software changes to support same) and
our Internet governance outreach activities.  While it is not a direct
alignment of fees to costs/benefits, it is a reasonable correlation and
avoids the introduction of numerous fees that would be necessary if we
tried to directly align the fees with the costs/benefits received.

FYI,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN