[ARIN-consult] What do the ASN fees go to?

[John Curran]

Steve -

As I responded to you on this same assertion on this same list in April 2018 -

"Steve -

As discussed perviously on several ARIN mailing lists with you, ARIN does prevent parties with no clear association with a resource from making changes.  I believe that the specific issue has been cleared up in your case, but recognize that ARIN is also subject to parties attempting to hijack resources and thus is somewhat pedantic in this regard. "

There’s quite a bit to contest in your assertions, but suffice to say that ARIN provided services throughout the time and complied with policies as set by this community – if you believe that you were not provided everything entitled, the agreement contains provisions for handling disputes as necessary.

Best wishes,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers

On 10 May 2021, at 2:38 PM, Steve Noble <snoble at sonn.com<mailto:snoble at sonn.com>> wrote:

Hi Adam,

You make my point exactly, I will follow up in-line.

Adam Thompson wrote on 5/10/21 11:01 AM:

Steven, that feels like a deliberate mis-characterization to me.

It is not, but you may not have history about how I was refused service by ARIN for multiple years.

You're right, you are not guaranteed to receive service, in much the same way you are not guaranteed to receive a payout from your car insurance if you don't have an accident.  Or that you aren't guaranteed to watch CBS content even though it's included in your cable bundle: you're paying for (among other things) the right to access it on demand.

As far as I know, however, paying your fee does guarantee that ARIN services will be available to you if and/or when you need or want it.

That is incorrect, John can confirm that I was not allowed to use any services from ARIN for my ASN for a few years due to an issue with their database.  I was still required to pay the fee but I was not given access to the services i.e. I couldn't even update the mailing address, which I believe you are required to keep updated.

We pay for many, many things where we do not always take full advantage of the service we're paying for, because the provider has fixed costs regardless.  Your local cableco charges a fixed amount for packages, regardless of which channels in that package you watch.  When you stay in a hotel, you pay the same fee regardless of whether you spend 10 minutes in the room, or 16 hours.  Both examples, like ARIN, are where there are fixed costs to providing you *any service at all*, so the consumer is expected to defray those.  (Insurance isn't so much a fixed-cost example, rather it's a "mutual" or "pool", but it works out much the same in the end.)

If my cable company did not provide service to me for a year, I would expect that I would get that money back, so to your point, I should expect ARIN to pay me back for the time that they refused to provide services?  Since ARIN does not guarantee that the objects are usable, we are not paying for that, we are paying for services.

I don't see how this is substantially different from any other provider with fixed costs - we shoulder their entire cost, we don't get to pick and choose.  Where we do get to, the overhead is then baked into each and every price, and each and every one of us gets a raw deal.  I shudder to think what per-second hotel billing would look like.

It isn't and hence ARIN like all of the above named entities would be required to compensate any individual/organization that was denied service.

-Adam Thompson
 athompso at athompso.net<mailto:athompso at athompso.net>


On 2021-05-10 12:43, Steve Noble wrote:


John Curran wrote on 5/10/21 9:47 AM:

Steve -

As noted earlier, ARIN provides many operational services for all of the resources in the registry – and these services are provided even for number resources that have no requests pending or when there are requests pending to change information but that lack proper documentation.

The consultation that is now underway is with regard to a fee change proposal that does not change the maintenance fees for ASN's (although it will make them go away for many end-user customers with IPv4 or IPv6 holdings due to their migration to the Registration Services Plan with ASN registry services already included :-)

Hi John,

Since paying the fees does not guarantee that you will receive service, it seems clear that the fees should be based on usage, not on resources.  If ARIN does not provide the services, then the fee should be reduced or removed.

--
Thank you,
Steven

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--
Thank you,
Steven

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