[arin-discuss] Community Consultation: Future Direction for the ARIN Fee Schedule

[Owen DeLong]

On Oct 17, 2014, at 05:15 , John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:

> On Oct 17, 2014, at 12:09 AM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
>> If the level of policy development activity is truly a driving cost, then what about charging relative to the amount of policy work being done. I notice that since the rewrite of the v6 policy a while back, the vast majority of our policy work and virtually all of the controversy is v4. Perhaps v6 should be relatively cheaper as a result and v4 should be relatively more expensive?
> 
> Some cost data by function is provided in Appendix C; registry development 
> (which includes both support of policy development and implementation) are 
> 50% of ARIN's annual expenses.
> 
> Recognize that there will always been some registry development, either for 
> maintenance or driven by requirements other than policy changes, but the 
> level of policy development is something to think about for a long-term model.  
> 
> It's very difficult to consider on shorter times frames or from an incentive 
> basis; e.g. we must lock in the number and size of public policy meetings and
> hotels more than 12 months in advance in order to have availability, staff 
> support slowly changes, etc.  We effectively have to plan for being able to 
> support the present level of policy development short-term unless we are very
> confident that requirements will be different.

Agreed and I fully understand. I think we'll see more, not less attempts to manipulate ^w modify IPv4 policy for various reasons (not limited to fun and profit) after free pool runout and for some time. I think once IPv6 gains traction and IPv4 starts to lose monetary value, we will see a sharp decline in policy development efforts, but it is hard to know how long that will take.

>> I think this is probably a bad idea, but if we are going to talk about policy development as a driving cost, then really most of that drive is about manipulating the IPv4 portable seating apparatus on the deck. 
> 
> A policy development process open to everyone is fairly foundational part 
> of ARIN; my raising the question of long-term cost model was more focused 
> on whether, given the present trajectory, it is possible to build upon an 
> assumption of less policy development either after IPv4 regional free pool 
> depletion or after some number of years given increasing IPv6 deployment.

I wasn't proposing charging admission for the policy process. I was pointing out that IPv4 resource holders (and those acquiring IPv4 resources through various means) seem to be the ones driving the bulk of the policy development. It seems to me that this would justify a higher cost for IPv4 registrations than for IPv6 registrations, potentially.

This would have the additional advantage of creating an increased financial incentive for organizations to at least consider IPv6 and potentially accelerate the demise of IPv4.

I'm not saying I want this to happen, just thinking it could be food for thought among those smarter than I about such things.

Owen