[ARIN-consult] Consultation on ARIN Fees

[Glen A. Pearce]

On 03/05/2021 11:03 a.m., John Curran wrote:
> On 3 May 2021, at 10:25 AM, Jeff Tchang <jeff.tchang at gmail.com 
> <mailto:jeff.tchang at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     I'm a 3x-Small organization (literally "the smallest end users" to
>>     borrow Owen DeLong's terminology) chiming in.
>>
>>
>> I am also one of the smallest end users. I obtained resources in 2016 
>> and am a bit surprised how quickly the fees are increasing 
>> (especially percentage wise). As more people adopt IPv6 fees should 
>> decrease due to scale but that doesn't seem to be happening like with 
>> other services. The proposal to increase fees on the smallest users 
>> results in a 150% increase which is drastic in my opinion over such a 
>> short period of time.
>
> Jeff -
>
> You raise an important issue as ARIN definitely wants to both keep 
> fees low as possible and encourage deployment of IPv6.
>
> For an end-user organization that simply has an IPv4 address block and 
> no ASN or IPv6 block, it is true that their fees will increase under 
> the proposed change from $150 to $250 annually.
>
> However, it’s worth noting that many organizations with IPv4 also have 
> IPv6 or an autonomous system number (ASN):  organizations that have 
> either of these in addition to their IPv4 block will see their annual 
> registration services fee decrease from $300 to $250 annually – this 
> is the case for more than 2100 organizations under the proposed 
> schedule.  In addition, several hundred smaller organizations have all 
> three (IPv4, IPv6, and an ASN) and wipe see their annual fee drop from 
> $450 to $250.
>
> In your case, there will be an increase under the proposed schedule, 
> but you will also be able to obtain an IPv6 block and/or an ASN as a 
> result of annual fee for the 3X-small category.   We hope this will 
> actually help promote IPv6 deployment in smaller organizations going 
> forward since there will be no fee impact when an organization seeks a 
> correspondingly sized IPv6 block.

I think my previous suggestion of making the "ASN-only" category in the 
proposed new fee structure a "single resource only" category which would 
apply whether that single resource was an AS, a /24 of IPv4 or a /40 or 
smaller of IPv6 would be the best way to address organizations like Jeff's.

There are probably a lot of very tiny organizations that need their own 
/24 of IPv4 so they can go to a different ISP in future without that 
ISP's availability of IPv4 space being an issue.

This would not necessarily dissuade these very tiny organizations from 
implementing IPv6 as the lack of scarcity in IPv6 means they could get 
IPv6 space anytime they are ready without a problem but still not 
saddling them with higher fees in the meanwhile.  In fact it may not 
even be an obstacle to them implementing IPv6 now as they may be fine 
with using provider assigned space for IPv6 and renumbering the IPv6 
side of their network in the event they change ISPs in the future.  
(After all these are very small networks.) Just they have to have their 
own IPv4 space because that is something they may not be able to get 
from an ISP they move to in the future at all and as small organizations 
it's not like they have a lot of bargaining power when shopping for 
connectivity.  (If an ISP has enough space where they can only serve one 
of two prospective customers they are generally going to choose the one 
with the bigger monthly spend for bandwidth.)

In my case I made the choice to convert to the Registration Services 
Plan and get my own IPv6 space now as it maximizes my flexibility as 
part of a longer term plan.  Some others may have different priorities 
and possibly tighter budgets where the extra $100 a year will make a 
difference to them so it would be important to not put the squeeze on them.

Though the flip side I would like to point out to the other small 
organizations when I was first looking at things prior to free pool 
depletion the smallest Registration Services Plan was $1200 per year 
whether you had a /22 or a /23 or a /24 so the implementation of the 
2X-Small and 3X-Small as well as the price reduction for the X-Small 
category was a vast improvement for organizations of our size.  (I 
somehow missed that there was the separate "end user" fee schedule back 
then...as I said having one fee schedule will be less confusing for new 
people.)  When it was $1200 a year for the smallest category I wouldn't 
have been able to afford it so as long as the categories down to 
3X-Small are maintained things are at least manageable.  But I would 
still be in favor of the "single resource only" category at the 
$150/year level being made a thing so organizations like Jeff's don't 
get hit so hard before they are ready to move up.  Really the important 
part of this move to consolidate everyone onto one fee schedule is about 
some very large "end users" having arbitrarily different fees from each 
other just because they are on different fee schedules.

-- 
Glen A. Pearce
gap at ve4.ca
Network Manager, Webmaster, Bookkeeper, Fashion Model and Shipping Clerk.
Very Eager 4 Tees
http://www.ve4.ca
ARIN Handle VET-17

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