[arin-discuss] SPAM-WARN:Re: ARIN Fee discussion

[Bill Woodcock]

On Oct 9, 2007, at 10:54 AM, Owen DeLong wrote:
> Lee, is it possible to get some idea of what percentage of ARIN's
> annual costs are fixed and what percentage are incremental per
> allocation.

This is something I've chatted with Lee and others about, and the  
consensus has been that that's a pretty gray area.  Not because the  
numbers aren't available; they are, in spades...  But because it's  
almost completely subjective as to which would be amortized per  
allocation, and which would be counted as overhead.

The reason I've been asking the same question you are, Owen, is  
because I'd like to see ARIN move toward a fee model wherein all  
overhead costs, like the cost of maintaining whois, maintaining the  
in-addr, holding meetings, keeping the office doors open, et cetera,  
would be paid for from an endowment, while all transactional costs,  
like the cost of an IP analyst responding to a request for an AS  
number, would be billed to the recipient of the service, at cost.

That would get completely away from the misimpression that there's a  
per-IP-address cost, and make the cost of ARIN's services, regardless  
of whether they're provided to a small member, a large member, an end- 
user, or a legacy-holder, completely fair and transparent.

Or at least, that's my take on what would be fair.

Anybody have any thoughts on that?

                                 -Bill



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