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

Tue Oct 9 17:06:23 EDT 2007

> -----Original Message-----
> From: arin-discuss-bounces at arin.net 
> [mailto:arin-discuss-bounces at arin.net] On Behalf Of Owen DeLong
> Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 4:01 PM
> To: David Muir Sharnoff; arin-discuss at arin.net
> Subject: Re: [arin-discuss] SPAM-WARN:Re: ARIN Fee discussion
> 
> 
> On Oct 9, 2007, at 11:27 AM, David Muir Sharnoff wrote:
> 
> 
> 	* I can only remind you all that ARIN is a bottom-up 
> organization, not a top 
> 	* down one.  There is no class of members who are 
> victims, only classes of 
> 	* members who fail to participate.
> 
> 	The cost of meaningfull participation in ARIN exceeds 
> one year's tithe.   
> 
> 	Until this discussion came along, it seemed the only 
> meaningful way
> 	to participate in ARIN was to go to one of the ARIN 
> meetings or to
> 	run for one of ARINs director slots.  For most of us, 
> attending one
> 	of the ARIN meetings would cost more than just paying the yearly
> 	fee.  The most we could hope to gain by participating 
> is less than
> 	the cost of participating.  Generally, only 
> organizations big enough
> 	to absorb the costs of participating actually participate.  That
> 	usually ends up being the same thing as top-down.
> 
> 
> I was participating in ARIN meaningfully well before I 
> attended a members
> meeting or ran for AC.  The ARIN PPML has been an effective method
> of participating in ARIN for many years now.  The PPML is for 
> all intents
> and purposes absolutely free. (You pay the cost of sending 
> and receiving
> your own emails, but, I think we can call that effectively free.)
> 
> My initial participation in ARIN was as an individual 
> representative of
> an end-user organization consisting of not more than 4 people.  My
> total investment in said participation was $100/year plus $0 
> additional
> costs to support my email (vs. what I would spend to do other internet
> access anyway).  If you want to count my entire internet costs that
> year, my annual cost was $1,600, so, not much more than an X-Small
> subscriber member's fees.
> 
> While the community does not show consensus for some of my ideas
> on how things should be, I certainly do not feel that my 
> input has been
> ignored or that it has received any less consideration than input from
> organizations like Verizon, SPRINT, AT&T, etc.  Indeed, I believe that
> more of the policies I have drafted have been adopted than those
> drafted by AT&T or Verizon representatives.
> 
> The ARIN-DISCUSS mailing list has expanded that ability to facilitate
> topics which are not appropriate to PPML and to keep an open
> channel for the community (that's right, it's not even limited to
> the membership, it's open to the entire community) to communicate
> their opinions with each other and with the ARIN BoT, AC, and
> staff.
> 
> 
> 	Every year, I read of the list of candidates and look 
> for one that 
> 	has a statement saying something like: "The fees are 
> too high and I will
> 	lower them" or "the fees are disproportionate and I 
> will make the
> 	large users pay more."   So far there has been no such 
> candidate.
> 
> 
> Are you talking about the BoT candidates or the AC candidates?
> 
> The AC candidates can't do anything about fees, so, of course there
> would not be one making such a statement.
> 
> As for the BoT, frankly, I think that this is the first time there has
> been any real discussion of this particular subject.  I don't believe
> that ARIN's fees overall are excessive.  I do think that it might make
> more sense under the circumstances to make the fee structure
> somewhat more topheavy than it currently is (i.e. raise fees on
> the large and x-large orgs.), but, I don't think that would lower
> the fees as much as you expect for the other orgs.  Let's look at
> the math:
> 
> Current:
>            # Members   % Members   % v4 space   % fees
> Xtra Small      390        14.8         0.29       5.7
> Small         1,571        59.8         4.64      42.6
> Medium          518        19.9         8.92      28.0
> Large            71         2.7         6.87       7.7
> Xtra Large       73         2.8        79.28      15.8
> 
> 
> 
> So... Let's say we changed the fee structure so that we 
> doubled the Large
> and X-Large fees and distributed the savings evenly to the 
> other categories
> of membership.
> 
> First, the total amount collected under the current structure is:
> 
> Size # Members Price @ Total Collected
> X-Small   390  1,250   487,500
> Small 1,571  2,250 3,534,750
> Medium   518  4,500 2,331,000
> Large    71  9,000   639,000
> X-Large    73 18,000 1,314,000
> 
> 
> Total 8,306,250
> 
> 
> Now, here's what it would look like if we doubled the fees for
> Large and X-Large members:
> 
> Size # Members Price @ Total Collected
> X-Small   390    462   180,180
> Small 1,571  1,462 2,296,802
> Medium   518  3,712 1,922,816
> Large    71 18,000 1,278,000
> X-Large    73 36,000 2,628,000
> 
> 
> Total 8,305,798
> 
> 
> The additional amount collected from the 144 members
> in those two categories would be 1,953,000.  This
> would be divided amongst the 2,479 other members
> providing an annual savings to each other member
> of approximately $788 each.  The discrepency
> of $452 in the total is the result of rounding
> the savings UP to 788/member in the smaller
> categories.  I think the easiest way to resolve
> that would be to increase the medium fee by $1,
> resulting in a $56 surplus.
> 
> 
> An alternative exercise:  How much would each member
> pay if we simply all paid the same amount without tiered
> pricing based on allocation size:
> 
> 
> Total members: 2,623
> 
> 
> Price per member: 3,167
> 
> 
> So... Medium, Large, and X-Large would, by that method,
> actually pay less, while X-Small and Small would pay
> more.
> 
> 
> I don't believe a flat fee would be fair. I also don't
> believe that linear pricing based on IP resource
> utilization is fair.  I am not sure that the current
> structure is the best compromise between the two, but,
> I think it does come reasonably close.
> 
> 
> 
> 	The only other thing that ARIN could do to make my life 
> easier would
> 	be to publish a better rwhois daemon or an easier API 
> for changing
> 	SWIP/POC delegations.
> 
> 
> Email templates are a difficult API?  Interesting.
> 
> I think that ARIN would rather deprecate RWHOIS at this point.  I know
> that the original author wishes he'd never developed it and would
> like to see it permanently deprecated.
> 
> 
> 	Hopefully this discussion we're having now will result 
> in lower fees
> 	or rebates for most of us.
> 
> 
> I guess the question is to what extent the majority should be allowed
> to penalize the minority on the sole basis that they are 
> running larger
> organizations, have more or larger customers, etc.
> 
> Note, all of the subscriber member organizations I currently work with
> would benefit from increasing the fees on large/x-large and lowering
> other fees.  However, in spite of that, I don't believe 
> either of the fee
> structures I mentioned would be better than what is currently
> in place.  
> 
> 
> Owen

Owen, 

Well, lets also examine that based on fixed fee per resource consumed.

A /13 contains 2048 /24s. Xtra Large fee is $18,000. So, $18000 / 2048 is
$8.79 per /24. That is fair.

>From ARIN reports, I totalled the /24s allocated to ISP from 1999 through
2006 plus 01/07 through 09/07. The total came to 1,148,855 /24s. That
doesn't tell me how many were returned. I couldn't find those stats. But
lets use that as an example. 1,148,855 /24s * $8.79 per /24 is $10,098,435.
Gosh, that is fairly close to the ARIN budget. And of course, then no one
would be able to say, "But they get them for free. How can I compete against
that?"

Michael Thomas
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