[arin-discuss] tweak to proposed fee schedule

[Owen DeLong]

On Apr 12, 2013, at 05:40 , John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:

> On Apr 11, 2013, at 8:15 PM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
>>> Are you suggesting that they should not be allowed to request 
>>> a /36 IPv6 block at all, contrary to present policy?  If so, 
>>> this should raised on the Public Policy mailing list (ppml) 
>>> for further discussion.
>> 
>> If you take out the fee incentive to do so, I think the policy issue is largely moot.
> 
> Owen - 
> 
>  It is very important to have a fee schedule which is "complete";
>  i.e. covers the entire range of possible address holdings.  It is

Having a tier or tiers which is ≤/32 would do that just fine.
In the case of tiers, it would be important that these not be differentiated
based on smaller IPv6 holdings in order to avoid creating an incentive
for harmful policy.

>  also good for the Board to be clear regarding the corresponding
>  fee expectations for all ranges. The fee schedule should not be
>  constraining the community discussion in any manner, and it would
>  not be appropriate for the ARIN Board to use the fee schedule to 
>  preempt discussion of policy, including the proposed change in 
>  Draft Policy ARIN-2013-3 "Tiny IPv6 Allocations for ISPs" 
>  <https://www.arin.net/policy/proposals/2013_3.html>.

I don't see it that way. I see it as the entire reason 2013-3 exists is because
the board created a problem by implementing a fee-structure which
contains bad policy incentives. I realize this happened with the best
of intentions.

There is a relatively broad perception in the community (which is
admittedly not 100% correct) that the policy process is open to everyone,
but fee discussions are limited to members and the board sets fees
without any requirement to take community input into account.

I say not 100% correct because there are avenues for the community
to provide input and because I believe that the board is unlikely to
ignore community input even though it is within the board's purview
to ignore it if they so choose.

However, this means that once the board makes a decision on a fee
structure, a perception begins to develop (again, not 100% accurate)
that the clearest path to desirable results is to find that best result that
can be achieved within the limits of the PDP and aim for that.

This perception is the reason that the initial version of 2013-3 proposed
issuing /48s to ISPs. It wasn't until statements were made indicating that
the board would be very likely amenable to moving the XX-Small
boundary to /40 that acceptance of moving the policy proposal from /48
to /40 began to gain acceptance.

As such, from my perspective, the board would not be pre-empting
discussion on this policy proposal, the board would be addressing
a problem they (accidentally) created. The policy proposal is an
inferior attempt to address that same issue. I assure you that if
the community does not think that the board's solution is better
than what is in the policy proposal, it will in no way inhibit discussion
or preempt the proposal.


>  The community should have the opportunity to consider the various
>  of aspects of any proposed policy, including any fairness or technical 
>  concerns, and come to a conclusion regarding support or lack thereof.

Nobody is proposing otherwise. However, in this case, the proposal is
an attempt to shoe-horn a correction to the fee structure into a corner
of policy  where it really doesn't belong.

Owen