[ARIN-consult] Consultation on ARIN Fees

[Owen DeLong]

> On May 10, 2021, at 05:00, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
> 
>  On 10 May 2021, at 7:11 AM, Glen A. Pearce <arin-consult at ve4.ca> wrote:
>> 
>> I'd have to say that I agree with Owen here that organizations with an RSA and a LRSA should only have to pay the higher of the two fees for their LRSA IPv4 resource (price cap included) or their RSA IPv6 resources rather than both added together even if they are under 2 separate contracts.   So in Owen's case this would mean paying $250/year (based on his /48 of IPv6) until the capped fee on his legacy IPv4 creeps over that.
>> ...
>> I think this is a reasonable accommodation for people that didn't actually have to pay anything but stepped forward to pay what at the time they thought was a reasonable amount towards keeping the registry running.
> 
> Glen - 
> 
> Those who stepped forward received the numerous benefits including clear rights via contract and access to enhanced services developed by investment from this community.  The also received a significant cap on their fees compared to all other registry customers, and have been benefiting from that for more than a decade. 

As one of those who stepped forward, I will say:

Clear contractual rights have little value to me in this case. I was not living in fear of ARIN revoking my legacy resources. 

The so-called enhanced devices include primarily things I would classify as “mostly harmless at best” such as RPKI.

The one and only resource I didn’t (couldn’t due to paperwork snafu) bring under RSA (which I am now grateful escaped this process) means I can’t actually use the new IRR anyway (my ASN is not under RSA), so even though I’ve been paying my share of its development, I’m precluded from using it. 

RDAP: sure, it’s an incremental improvement over Whois, and has been a long time coming, but I hardly think it was worth the amount I’ve paid. 

> 
>> I tend to think of legacy registrations as the "native land" of the internet, at least that's the analogy I use when explaining it to someone.
> 
> Alas, legacy resource assignments were more akin to placement on government-controlled reservations absent any actual legal rights and/or mechanism for self-rule…

That’s not entirely true, but the mechanism was definitely less formal. Self rule back then was largely through the IETF and the IANA functions. Addresses weren’t perceived to have monetary value and the community was a lot smaller and generally more cooperative and cohesive.

I’m not saying it’s necessarily bad that changed, nor do I say it is good. I think it was inevitable as the internet left the laboratory and started to scale to most of humanity. 

I am saying, however, that there was a lot less controversy over address policy, and self rule was mostly accomplished over beers and a hand shake or some humming. 

>  the formation of ARIN was specifically so that Internet community could engage in self-determination over their IP number resources; "Creation of ARIN will give the users of IP numbers (mostly Internet service providers, corporations and other large institutions) a voice in the policies by which they are managed and allocated within the North American region” [1] 

Isn’t it amazing how that incorrect assumption still gets quoted even today. ISPs, and large corporations and institutions may hold the majority of space under ARIN management, but they are far from the majority of IP users. Indeed, the vast majority of IP users in the ARIN region don’t even know that ARIN exists or that they could have a say in it. The vast majority of IP users are customers of the ISPs that are well represented in the ARIN community. 

>> Ultimately in the far future when IPv6 is dominant and IPv4 is only used for the niche of "retro-computing" and it's users have to tunnel IPv4 over IPv6 to use it none of this will really matter as everyone will either have to pay for their IPv6 space or make do with space assigned by their ISP and any IPv4 space, legacy or otherwise, won't have much use outside that small niche.
> 
> 
> ARIN's present provisioning of basic registration services without contract or fee for IPv4 legacy resource holders is not assured into “the far future” and (as has been raised during this consultation) is probably worth revisiting once we’ve achieved consistent fee schedule for all customers.  It would not surprise me to ultimately find out that those legacy resource holders who stepped forward and entered into the LRSA (including its significant cap of total annual fees) may actually prove to be far more shrewd in the end than you imagine.

It would surprise me, but it would not be my first LRSA surprise. It would be the first semi-pleasant one. 

Owen

> 
> Thanks for the feedback! 
> /John
> 
> John Curran
> President and CEO
> American Registry for Internet Numbers
> 
> [1] https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=102819 - "Internet Moves Toward Privatization / IP numbers handled by non-profit”
> 
> 
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