[ARIN-consult] [arin-announce] Consultation on ARIN Fees

[Owen DeLong]

> On Apr 10, 2021, at 3:40 PM, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
> 
> On 10 Apr 2021, at 3:52 PM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com <mailto:owen at delong.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> I also know that many end-user customers hire consultants to handle their ARIN interactions. While I can’t speak to the competency of all consultants, I can say that the transactions involving my clients tend to go relatively smoothly and with minimal staff time consumption.
> 
> 
> Owen - 
> 
> I suspect that use of consultants are far more the exception than the rule, as ARIN deals with hundreds of requests each month and when dealing with the smallest customers we are facing operations more typically categorized as family operations or sole proprietorships.  Needless to say, these customers are contacting us and expecting to get support from ARIN on what they see are often simple requests (changing their name server, turning on DNSSEC, updating old contacts) and they idea of hiring a consultantt to make such requests would be completely foreign to them. 
> 
>> And yet, as noted, the majority (nearly 5/8ths) of end users will see higher fees under the RSP.
> 
> 60% (4800) will pay more and 40% (3200) will pay less.   

Sure… 60% is nearly 62.5% (5/8).

>> So from those numbers, we can interpret that on average, organizations currently paying under the end-user plan who would end up averaging $860 annually tend to hold less than a /20 while on average present RSP customers tend to hold more than a /18.
>> …
>> How many organizations would be providing this additional $3.8M? I’d expect those organizations to be screaming bloody murder about this relatively soon or at least as soon as they become aware of it.
>> 
>> It certainly isn’t 4800 customers that will see an increase of $200 or less, because that only accounts for $960,000, barely more than 25% of your claimed benefit.
> 
> As noted earlier – of the 4800 seeing an increase, more than half of them will see an increase of $200 or less. 
> 
> The smaller end-users that you reference above are definitely not the ones bearing the brunt of the increase - $2.9M of the potential $3.8M USD change in fees occurs from just 870 of the customers who have larger than a /20 of IPv4 of number resources but are presently paying far less than the RSP customers at ARIN with similar number resource holdings. 
> 
>> I have no problem with ARIN increasing its fees to cover costs. I just want to see it done on an equitable basis and not on the backs of the smallest end users.
> 
> You should be pleased then, as the proposed fee change is not on the backs of the smallest end-users – the average change for those with /20 in IPv4 number resources or less (7130 customers of the 8000)) is an increase of $126 (i.e. approximately $900K of the $3.8M total.) 

Sure… I’ve always felt that there was an equity issue with the larger end-users paying so little, but how is that remaining $2.9M distributed?

Further, while $126/year or even $200/year doesn’t seem like a huge number in absolute terms (which is probably why you keep focusing in that direction), for an end user paying just $150/year, it’s an 84% price annual price hike and even for a user paying $300/year, it’s still a 42% increase in annual costs. The current fee structure was adopted in 2018. This structure is proposed for 2022, so we’re talking about a 4-year cost-of living increase at 3% per year according to your previous statements. That’s roughly 16% (1.03^4-1) overall, so while the brunt of the $3.8M isn’t on the backs of these smaller end users, in reality, they are still suffering a rather steep increase compared to the supposed justification for it.

As such, no, I’m not all that pleased.

Owen

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