[arin-discuss] Fee proposal (was Re:Alternativetoarbitrarytransfers)

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: arin-discuss-bounces at arin.net 
> [mailto:arin-discuss-bounces at arin.net] On Behalf Of Alexander, Daniel
> Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 8:26 PM
> To: arin-discuss at arin.net
> Subject: Re: [arin-discuss] [arin-ppml] Fee proposal (was 
> Re:Alternativetoarbitrarytransfers)
> 
> 
> I am going to try and roll my reply into this one note rather 
> than reply to each individually. This is not to dismiss any 
> other comments, but just trying to cut down on the email. 
> John, Joe and Ted all have valid concerns. The evolution of 
> the Internet has resulted in behaviors by some that are less 
> than efficient.
> 
> One concern I have is that the conversations need to move 
> past the scope of computers connecting to web sites as the 
> primary consumers of IP address resources. I'm sure I'm not 
> saying anything you all don't already know, but there are far 
> more televisions and video subscribers than there are 
> Internet subs, and even more wireless handhelds than the both. 
>

All of the devices that can do this are computers, they are
just specialized computers.  People surf the web on their
playstation and watch TV on their computer.  The much-talked
about computer/tv convergence has basically happened, IMHO.
 
I use the terms "computer connecting to the Internet" when I
discuss this as a generic term to mean all the things your
talking about.  Mainly because any time I get called to check
out some device like an IP-Fax machine, or IP phone or
whatever, the first thing I do is unplug the device and
jack in with my laptop and try to pull up a website.

> Take a look at the efforts in Tru2Way, WiMax, LTE, DOCSIS 
> 3.0, etc. and it becomes very obvious that the landscape is 
> changing. Comcast has almost twice as many video subscribers 
> as they do Internet subs.

This is due to sheer inertia.  These days you an get a Comcast
cable Internet connection and pretty much watch any TV show
that is normally on cable.

Case in point, my son loves to watch Clone Wars.  Clone Wars is
only broadcast on cable (or dish)  We don't pay for cable or
dish because he can surf to the clonewars website on DSL and watch
the episodes there.  They are a week behind, but so what?

I cannot understand the finances behind this one because I
know that the "broadcast" episodes are stuffed with tons of
commercials, and the website ones have no commercials.  (well,
practically none)

I suspect as years pass more and more people will be migrating
away from separate video/phone/internet feeds into their homes
to an IP-only feed.  They can get local TV channels free over the
air and all the stuff on cable and dish over the Internet, they can
rent movies on the Internet and run Vonage or other IP-phone on the
Internet if they want land-lines, and most don't since they are yarding
around cell phones.  What do they need separate video and telephone lines
for?

> Sprint/Clearwire has an FCC 
> requirement to try and provide broadband to 30M subs by 2010. 

Sprint is already using IPv6 on their cell phones that have
websurfing capability.

> Countries like India, China, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, 
> and so many others are completely bypassing the legacy 
> problems crippling the United States, and deploying DOCSIS, 
> and 4G solutions to their citizens. 
> 

Well, first your talking layer 2 here, not layer 3.  You can
run IPv4 over DOCSIS just fine - and cable providers are
doing it right now.  It's still the primary means of connecting
their customers computers/IP phones/playstations/whatever to
the rest of the world, in the US at any rate.

If all the cable providers in the US were to agree to start
providing IPv6 to their subscribers that would be a fine thing
that would really advance IPv6 deployment in the US.  I don't
see this happening soon, though, DOCSIS or no DOCSIS.

As for 4G, I think all of them ARE running IPv6.  I personally
don't consider these as "advanced" deployments, though.
If the US Government were tasked to pay for every US
citizen getting a free Internet feed, they wouldn't use cable or
DSL.  They would use 4G because infrastructure and
provisioning is cheap.

China may have a technically advanced Internet on 4G, very
much faster for it's citizens to use, and very much cheaper.
They also use it to snoop on their own citizens and regularly
toss the ones they don't like into their jails.  They can
do this precisely BECAUSE their Internet is NOT structured
like the US where there's many multiple, smaller ISPs.  4G
by it's nature demands a centralized, national company that deploys
it. If you want to say this is advanced, go ahead.  To me it sounds
like Chinese users are the ones being crippled here, while
the US users are HELPED by the "legacy" network.

In any case, however, if I go buy a Sprint 4G USB wireless
card and shove it in my computer, I get an IPv4 address.
NOT an IPv6 address.  How exactly is this "advanced"?

> You all make valid points about better utilizing a /29 or 
> /24, but in the end it wouldn't make more than a few months 
> of difference. 22 /8's have been allocated to the Registries 
> in the past two years. There are 32 /8's left, and the growth 
> rate continues to increase regardless of any recession.
>
> I will stop with one final point. This conversation started 
> with the premise that fees are needed to drive IPv6 
> deployment. I'm guessing this is from the assumption that 
> organizations are not deploying IPv6, nor do they want to. I 
> am quite confident that this is not true.

How many Tier 1 & Tier 2 networks in the US offer IPv6 to
their customers who wish to run IPv6 natively?

When the answer to this is "some of them" then I don't
believe that orgs are serious about IPv6 deployment.
And this is how things are now. 

When the answer to this question is "most of them" then I
would be confident that all of them ARE serious about
IPv6.

> Of course you are 
> not going to see wide-scale IPv6 deployments. IPv4 resources 
> are still readily available. IPv6 deployment is not a 
> technical issue, it is an issue of financial planning. Most 
> ISP are working on IPv6 deployments. They just aren't going 
> to tell their competition. Raising fees would not avoid IPv4 
> depletion by spurring IPv6 deployments. IPv4 depletion is 
> needed for IPv6 deployment and raising registration fees 
> would just be passed to the consumer until IPv4 depletes anyways. 
> 

Fine with me.  Let's raise fees on IPv4 and then the ISP's will
offer either the more expensive IPv4 to their customers or the
cheaper IPv6.  That would speed IPv6 deployment immensely.

Ted

> That's just my opinion.
> Dan
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ted Mittelstaedt [mailto:tedm at ipinc.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 8:45 PM
> To: Alexander, Daniel; arin-discuss at arin.net
> Subject: RE: [arin-discuss] [arin-ppml] Fee proposal (was Re: 
> Alternativetoarbitrarytransfers)
> 
> Hi Daniel,
> 
>   I work for an ISP and I play an end user on TV too.
> 
>   The issue on IPv6 transition is thus:  Yes, ISP's benefit 
> by transitioning to IPv6 because IPv4 is running out.
> And I daresay that for most ISP's now, the cost isn't so much 
> in equipment as it is in time spent configuring and testing.  
> The problem though is that IPv6 transition is not something 
> that an end user is going to want to do.
> 
> If you have an end user running a single PC running Vista on 
> a bridged cable modem or DSL line, no sweat - you hand out 
> IPv6, they take it, things work. (on the IPv6 network,
> anyway)
> 
>   With XP it's a bit more work but still pretty easy.
> 
>   With people on DSL modems that have embedded translators, 
> big time problem.  Same for people on embedded translator 
> boxes on cable modems.
> 
>   And if you think that's bad, try small business customers 
> who have firewalls and such they bought which don't support IPv6.
> 
>   So, we are going to have a situation post IPv4 runout where 
> new customers are going to be selecting their ISPs and if 
> their ISP tells them they must upgrade to get connected, they 
> aren't going to go with that ISP if the ISP down the street 
> still supports IPv4.  Every ISP knows this.
> 
>   Now, supposedly the utilization requirements instituted 
> years ago make this fair for all ISPs.  In short, if all 
> ISP's utilize their netblocks then all are screwed over at 
> the same time when the last IPv4 address is assigned, and 
> this forces the end user to upgrade - because no ISP will 
> have available IPv4 to hand out.
> 
>   But in reality a large ISP can "hedge" in a variety of 
> ways.  They can assign /29's to customers that ask for a 
> SINGLE static IP number then subnet that later.  They can 
> assign IPv4 to 
> remotely-controlled-and-configured-and-upgradable CPE devices 
> like cable modems with embedded NAT's in them, or cell 
> phones, then later on upgrade those units to IPv6 and install
> IPV6-IPv4 proxies.  They can assign /24's to customers who 
> ask for them at extremely low prices then later on raise 
> prices which will cause some customers to resubnet and return 
> some IP numbering.
> 
> Granted, for a single customer, this kind of hedging doesn't 
> put a lot of IPv4 in "reserve"  But with a large ISP it 
> multiplies out to quite a lot.
> 
> Small ISP's cannot do this and store up enough IPv4 to make 
> it worth while.
> 
> So, after IPv4 runout, FOR A WHILE the large ISP's who have 
> been hedging will be able to institute reclamation programs 
> that will free up IPv4 and will thus be able to avoid 
> deploying IPv6 for a longer time than the small ISP's who 
> aren't able to hedge.  So the small ISP's end up stuck with 
> serving out NAT to their customers and begging their 
> upstreams to please for God's sake start selling me native 
> IPv6 - and the large ISP's they are buying service from are 
> fiddle-faddling around and telling them to go to tunnel 
> brokers.  And in the meantime the business customers who find 
> it cheaper to buy Internet service by buying it on routable 
> IPv4 since they don't have to upgrade, are being forced into 
> going to those large ISPs.
> 
> Obviously, all good things come to an end and even if every 
> ISP pulls these tricks, eventually all will run out of
> IPv4 no matter how much hedging they do, end users who want a 
> routable IP address will have nowhere to go and must go to 
> IPv6.  But, damage will have been done.
> 
> I am not accusing large ISP's of doing this right now, or 
> even ANY ISP's of doing this right now.  I am saying that the 
> ARIN fee structure encourages IP consumption in that the more 
> IP you consume, the less you pay per IP.
> 
> See https://www.arin.net/fees/fee_schedule.html
> 
> /16, 2^16  65535 numbers, $4500  6.8 cents per IP per year
> 
> /14  2^18  262144 numbers $9000  3.4 cents per IP per year
> 
> /13 2^19 524288 $18000      (same)
> 
> /12  2^20  1048576   $18000  1.7 cents per IP per year
> 
> and so on.
> 
> Thus, an ISP that decides to hedge is effectively being 
> rewarded financially for doing it.
> 
> 
> 
> Ted
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Alexander, Daniel [mailto:Daniel_Alexander at cable.comcast.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 4:08 PM
> > To: arin-discuss at arin.net; Ted Mittelstaedt
> > Subject: RE: [arin-discuss] [arin-ppml] Fee proposal (was Re: 
> > Alternativetoarbitrarytransfers)
> > 
> > Ted,
> > 
> > Let me start with the usual disclaimer that this is my own 
> opinion and 
> > not the position of my employer. Registration fees are not the key 
> > factor in whether or not to deploy IPv6, nor are they the 
> key factor 
> > in the efficiency in which IPv4 address space is utilized.
> > 
> > The largest consumers of IP address space are ISP. The 
> reason they use 
> > these IP resources is not because they are cheap, or easy 
> to come by.
> > It is because they are connecting end users (I assume you are one of
> > them) to the Internet. The growth, and very existence of an ISP is 
> > based on the services they provide and the revenue these services 
> > generate.
> > 
> > The fact that IPv4 is running out is the single largest 
> incentive any 
> > ISP needs to deploy IPv6. The lost revenue, because you 
> don't have the 
> > IP resources to add new customers and services, far outweighs any 
> > increase in fees that ARIN could impose. Another thing to 
> consider is 
> > that historically, an increase in fees are rarely born by the 
> > provider, and are more often passed along to the consumer. 
> It is the 
> > end user who would most likely bear the burden of the fee 
> "incentive"
> > you propose.
> > 
> > Again, this is my own opinion.
> > Dan Alexander
> > ARIN AC
> > 
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: arin-discuss-bounces at arin.net
> > [mailto:arin-discuss-bounces at arin.net] On Behalf Of Ted Mittelstaedt
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 2:14 PM
> > To: 'John Tobin'; 'Lee Howard'; 'Brian Johnson'
> > Cc: arin-discuss at arin.net
> > Subject: Re: [arin-discuss] [arin-ppml] Fee proposal (was Re: 
> > Alternativetoarbitrarytransfers)
> > 
> > 
> > All I am asking is that anyone who cares anything at all about 
> > transitioning to IPv6, be aware that a fee incentive exists for the 
> > largest holders to NOT transition.
> > 
> > As I don't work at a large holder I do not know if the fee discount 
> > for large IPv4 holdings actually influences decisions.  If it does 
> > not, because the IP address registration fee is such a 
> small part of 
> > total business expenses, then perhaps the fees should be adjusted 
> > until they do start to influence decisions.
> > 
> > Just a thought.
> > 
> > Ted
> > 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: John Tobin [mailto:JTobin at origindigital.com]
> > > Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 8:01 AM
> > > To: Ted Mittelstaedt; 'Lee Howard'; 'Brian Johnson'
> > > Cc: arin-discuss at arin.net
> > > Subject: RE: [arin-discuss] [arin-ppml] Fee proposal (was Re: 
> > > Alternative toarbitrarytransfers)
> > > 
> > > 
> > >  All, this thread is hard to follow... What are you asking me?
> > > 
> > > 
> > > John Tobin	
> > > Director Of Information Technology
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 300 Boulevard East
> > > Weehawken, NJ 07086-6702, U.S.A.
> > > 
> > > E: jtobin at origindigital.com   | C: 732-616-8780 | V: 
> > > 201.272.8451 |  F: 201.272.8400 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
> > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
> > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
> > > This message contains information which may be 
> confidential and/or 
> > > privileged. Unless you are the intended recipient (or 
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> > > 
> > > 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: arin-discuss-bounces at arin.net
> > > [mailto:arin-discuss-bounces at arin.net] On Behalf Of Ted 
> Mittelstaedt
> > > Sent: Monday, April 06, 2009 6:52 PM
> > > To: 'Lee Howard'; 'Brian Johnson'
> > > Cc: arin-discuss at arin.net
> > > Subject: Re: [arin-discuss] [arin-ppml] Fee proposal (was Re: 
> > > Alternative to arbitrarytransfers)
> > > 
> > >  
> > > 
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net
> > > > [mailto:arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net] On Behalf Of Lee Howard
> > > > Sent: Monday, April 06, 2009 3:09 PM
> > > > To: Brian Johnson; ARIN PPML
> > > > Subject: [arin-ppml] Fee proposal (was Re: Alternative to
> > > > arbitrarytransfers)
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > ----- Original Message ----
> > > > > From: Brian Johnson <bjohnson at drtel.com>
> > > > >
> > > > > If viewed by cost/IP, then the cost/IP for larger orgs
> > > > (ISPs generally
> > > > > speaking) is less than for smaller orgs. This has been long
> > > > standing
> > > > > policy. If you want to change this. Make a proposal and get
> > > > consensus.
> > > > > Don't degrade one group to make yourself feel better.
> > > > 
> > > > Probably suggestion process, not policy process.  The 
> suggestion 
> > > > doesn't have to be for a specific fee structure; rather,
> > you[1] want
> > > > to change the principle by which fees are
> > > > set: instead of setting fees based on ARIN's cost, you
> > want to set
> > > > fees based on a per-address cost.
> > > > https://www.arin.net/app/suggestion/
> > > > 
> > > > Probably requires member consensus.  Probably belongs on
> > > arin-discuss.
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Lee,
> > > 
> > > It was not my intent to trigger a discussion on fees.
> > > 
> > > But, since we are discussing them, adjustments to the fee
> > structure do
> > > not have to be made to increase the money paid to ARIN.  You can 
> > > reduce the discount to larger players, collecting more money from 
> > > them, and reduce the fees for smaller players, collecting
> > less money
> > > from them, and end up with the same money coming in - just
> > a different
> > > distribution among the bearers of the fees.
> > > 
> > > In any case, I will direct your attention to the ARIN staff
> > comments
> > > on 2008-7, posted to arin-ppml on 3/23/09:
> > > 
> > > "...An annual re-registration of all POCs (~223,000 
> currently) will
> > >       likely result in a vast increase in workload,
> > particularly with
> > >       the follow up work and research involved when a POC 
> does not 
> > > reply
> > >       within 60 days. ..."
> > > 
> > > An increase in workload will mean having to hire more
> > people at ARIN
> > > which will increase costs.  Thus increasing fees under 
> the existing 
> > > principle.  Since increasing fees to the largest 
> consumers of IPv4 
> > > would increase incentive of those consumers to more efficiently 
> > > utilize IPv4 and thus defer additional IPv4 requests, which would 
> > > affect the largest amount of available IPv4, it would be 
> completely 
> > > logical to do this rather than increase fees across the board.
> > > 
> > > Ted
> > > 
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > 
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> 
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