[arin-discuss] neophyte IPv6 inital allocation and fee question

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> I'm going to avoid the minimun end user allocation/assignment issue.
> I've seen that argument rage back and forth a few times on this and
> the PPML list.  So in the interest of avoiding that occuring again,
> I'll ignore any consideration of need for the moment.

Unfortunately, this is fundamental to IPv6 architecture. In order for 
IPv6 to work as planned, everyone must receive far more addresses than
they need.

> The crux of the issue is that the minimum allocation size by NRPM
> doubles our annual fees to ARIN, yet ARIN's own pricing structure for
> ISP's includes listings for smaller allocations.  This leads me to two
> points.
> 
> 1) The lack of consistency is a little confusing. 

Good point. ARIN really should stop publishing a fee schedule with
everything
in it because people misinterpret it as a price list where you can go
shopping.
It is misleading. Instead ARIN should publish separate fee schedules for
separate classes of member in order to make things clearer.

> If the consensus of
> the majority is that more IPv6 adoption is a good thing, shouldn't we
> try to minimize confusion?

Yes. And it would be good if the ARIN website had some clearly worked 
examples of how an IPv4 ISP can add IPv6 addressing and the implications
for annual fees.

> As a small ISP who really can't afford such an increase should we just
> stop worrying about IPv6 at this time?  (honest question, I have
> plenty of other issues with which to be concerned.)

Yes.
Not everyone has to get ready for IPv6 right now. In particular if you
are dependent on upstream providers who have not yet made IPv6 service
available to you, then there is nothing wrong with putting it off.
Ideally
you wouldn't totally ignore it but get your technical people to do some
experimenting with ULA addresses or a tunnel to he.net when they have
some spare moments.

It is the national providers and large regional providers who have the
biggest
risk in not being ready with IPv6 when IPv4 runout occurs.

--Michael Dillon