[ARIN-consult] Community Consultation: Future Direction for the ARIN Fee Schedule

[John Curran]

On Oct 11, 2014, at 12:00 AM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:

> I was very disappointed to see my 2012 campaign platform of no fees
> for IPv6 in the short term completely ignored by the review panel.
> Were you asleep? Seriously, I got half the votes I'd have needed to be
> elected to the board on that platform. Is even that not enough for you
> to evaluate the notion, even if only to state the reasons you think
> it's a bad idea?

Bill - 

  The panel had no obligation to respond to each idea that was 
  suggested for evolution of fees; they chose to work on set of 
  proposals which they felt were of interest to the community 
  and would aid discussion. You are also encouraged to bring forth 
  any proposal you feel would be appropriate to the discussion.

> I'd like to see the cost of IPv6 reduced to $10/year or less for the
> first assignment or allocation to an organization regardless of size
> *until* IPv6 replaces IPv4 as the dominant protocol on the Internet.

  For clarity, presently ISP's pay an annual fee based on the category 
  which accomodates their IPv4 and IPv6 address holdings.  This is 
  written in Appendix A1 in the document (as well as ARIN's web site) 
  Are you proposing that IPv6 holdings not be considered for purpose
  of this calculation, or some other approach to determination of fees?
  I would be happy to model your proposal if I can gain a clear 
  understanding of its characteristics.
  
> ...
> In IPv4 I'd like to see a cost schedule tied to the number of IP
> addresses allocated. Perhaps not linearly, but it should diverge by no
> more than a single order of magnitude across the range of allocations.
> So, if a /24 costs $100 per year (39 cents per address) then a /8
> should cost *at least* $655,000 per year (3.9 cents per address). Or
> turn it around: if a /8 costs $32,000 per year (0.2 cents per address)
> then a /24 should cost no more than $5.12 (2 cents per address).

  There are several proposals in the review document with similar
  properties, including linear and algorithmic.  Have you reviewed
  these?  Also, are you proposing that such fees should apply to 
  end-user IPv4 address holders as well?

> When the cost per address diverges by not one or two, but three full
> orders of magnitude (1000 times) between the largest address hoarders,
> excuse me, address holders and the smallest, the system has a pretty
> severe fairness problem.

  To be clear, the fees we are referring to are not "for an allocation",
  they are simply a share of ARIN's total costs recognizing the benefit
  to the community in having a registry for the region.  For example, 
  a large ISP which transfers a /8 (in accordance with policy) from 
  another resource holder may indeed in doing so incur costs of millions
  of dollars, but that is completely orthogonal to imputed costs to ARIN's 
  maintaining the corresponding registry entries.

FYI,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN