[arin-discuss] Suggestion 2010.1 -- Initial Fee Waiver for IPv6 assignments to LRSA signatories

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

michael.dillon at bt.com wrote:
>> I agree - however ARIN already is HEAVILY stacked in favor of 
>> the large holders.  Check out the cost-per-IP address, it 
>> drops like a rock as the number of IP addresses you obtain 
>> from ARIN grows.
>>
>> Since we are already stacked in favor of the large holders, 
>> adjusting the initial fee to bear more heavily on the large 
>> holders as I advise actually brings ARIN to LESS of a point 
>> of favoring one segment of address holders over another.
> 
> Are you nuts? He who pays the piper calls the tune.
> If we "adjusted" fees so that the members with the biggest
> allocations paid a fee per IP address, then a few large
> organizations would control ARIN to their benefit. All other
> ISPs would get table scraps if anything. In fact, they will
> probably just eliminate the small fry altogether.
> 

And immediately run afoul of the Sherman anti-trust laws (at
least in the US) and anti-trust laws elsewhere.

Why do you think that Microsoft injected 100 million into
Apple a few years ago when Apple was about ready to tank?
Apple is a competitor of theirs!!!

The large players in any industry have discovered over
the last 50 years that when you try a scorched earth policy,
the governments will kill you, or come very close to.
Microsoft learned that when the DoJ came within inches of
splitting the company in half, that is why years later they
were propping up their competitor.

The other think the large players have learned is that they
are a lot better at marketing than at creating.  They need the
small companies out there to act as "skunkworks" for new
ideas.  Every year there are hundreds of small companies who
create new products and only a handful of those new products
ever catch on - whereupon they are immediately purchased by
the large companies, who then turn around and market them to
the world and make a mint.

It's much cheaper than the large companies running their own
R&D.

Name me ONE innovation in the last 10 years on the Internet
of any consequence that started at a large ISP instead of
a VC-funded startup or small org.  Name me FIVE Internet
companies in the last 10 years who started in a garage and
are the size of Google now.  You'll find it very hard to do
because the Internet has operated as a professional market for at least
a decade now.  You have to go back in time when the Internet
was operating like an amateur club to find innovations that
were born in a garage and grown into huge companies.

> Talk about serving up your own head on a platter...
> 

Not at all.  The large companies need the small companies
for innovations, the small companies need the large
companies to force customers into a standardized market.
It is a symbiotic relationship.

Have you ever wondered why milk all over the US is either
1%, 2% or 3.8% fat?  Why not sell milk that is 2.5% fat
or 5% fat?  It is because the large players all agreed on
the standards, and they did it so that when a company manufactures
a food product with milk in it, they are assured that the
ingredient is unchanged from month to month, so they are not
having to fiddle with their recipies all the time.

IPv6 is just such an example, it's why anyone proposing
an "extended IPv4" or some such is quashed - the large players
decided to standardize on IPv6 so that's where we are going.
It wasn't that an "extended IPv4" wouldn't work, it probably would.
It's because everyone on the Internet needs a unified standard
so years ago back in a smoke-filled room a bunch of network
wonks smoking ceegars decided that we are gonna put the Internet
on IPv6, and the check-signers running large companies may
not know the difference between IPv6 and IPv4 but they know they
need a standard.

> 
>> A blanket fee waiver continues to bias the costs more towards 
>> the smaller orgs with less numbers, which is what you claim 
>> you want to avoid - your logic is highly inconsistent here.
>>
>> Either you just don't realize the cost issues involved or 
>> your being disingenuous.
> 
> There are no cost issues. ARIN has enough money. ARIN can afford
> to waive IPv6 fees for LRSA signers precisely because there are
> no material cost and funding issues. 
> 

For small ones, yes.  I'm not disputing that.

> However, what ARIN does need are more members with legacy resources
> in order to ensure that all stakeholders are represented in the
> organization.
> 

And the large orgs with large legacy IPv4 allocations who need the giant 
IPv6 allocations do not need any monetary incentive to go to IPv6 since 
they know they need to go there for the reasons I just outlined.  Thus,
there is no reason to hand it to them for free since they have plenty
of incentive already.

You yourself have argued before that the large orgs are the ones who
need IPv6 due to subnet mathematics so why on earth are you arguing that 
they need "extra" incentive like a fee waiver?  geeze!

Ted


> --Michael Dillon
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