[arin-discuss] IPv6 as justification for IPv4?

[rlc at usfamily.net]

I continue to be amused by the responses to the topic of per-ip pricing.  There
seems to be a prevailing attitude that ARIN's existing pricing model is
sacrosanct.  Methinks that depends upon which side of the curve you are on.
Based upon the revenue "needs" of ARIN of $8 per IPv4 Class C equivalent, I
prepared a little table below (please check my math, it is a little shaky when
done while writing an email).  Note that the curves cross at about a /14.

It illustrates what a ridiculous advantage the big players have over the small
players.  We used to go up against them once in a while and would run into
situations where prospective customers would say "But XXX will allocate me a
much larger subnet, why won't you?  We would have to respond that their 3 PC's
and one server really couldn't justify a subnet 4x as large as they actually
needed."  So, these "well-run" big players who have spectacular record-keeping
were busy giving away excessive ip address space we couldn't justify.  We
actually had to play by ARIN's rules.  Well, I guess that's ok, because pretty
much everybody thinks they are great guys and deserve a discount.

Some on this list seem to think that we don't "pay for ip's" because they are
not our property.  Well, sort of.  It would seem that the Legacy Holders do, in
fact, own theirs.  The rest of us are just renting them.  In any case, fees
shouldn't based upon the number of ip's, right?  Except they are (if they
aren't what are all those strange pricing categories about?).  The "volume
discounts" are just structured in way to give large ISP's advantages.  But, we
all know that the pricing cannot be linear, because, it just wouldn't be fair
to those big companies.  They can barely make ends meet.  Whereas us rich
little guys are rolling in cash, so a few grand to ARIN every year means
nothing.

I'm one of those little guys who hasn't requested a new allocation for nearly 5
years.  But I'm not paying for ip's, I'm paying for services?????  That's not
the way my ARIN invoice looks.

I have no suggestion at this time on IPv6 pricing except that any annual fee
should be deferred until the adoption level reaches some reasonable threshhold.
 I suppose it is quantified somewhere, but it would be interesting to see
statistics on the percentage of email addresses, nameservers, and web sites
accessible directly via IPv6.



             Pricing
       $8/"C"      Current

X-Small
/24        $8       $1,250
/23       $16       $1,250
/22       $32       $1,250
/21       $64       $1,250

Small
/20      $128       $2,250
/19      $256       $2,250

Medium
/18      $512       $4,500
/17    $1,024       $4,500
/16    $2,048       $4,500

Large
/15    $4,096       $9,000
/14    $8,192       $9,000

X-Large
/13   $16,384      $18,000
/12   $32,768      $18,000
/11   $65,536      $18,000
/10  $131,072      $18,000
/9   $262,144      $18,000
/8   $524,288      $18,000
          ...