[ppml] ARIN Policy Proposal 2002-9

[George Cottay]

Based on my limited knowledge and experience, Policy Proposal 2002-9
seems to address a potentially real problem in a perhaps
less-than-efficient way.

2002-9  seems to address the problems of at least one company being
asked to pay what at least one person seems as excessive fees for
address space. My operating assumptions are that the problem does in
fact exist and that more than one organization is paying excessive
charges. 

Before any remedial action were taken, it would seem wise to have in
hand 1) some reasonably accurate research indicating the fees new being
levied for address space,  and 2) some collective agreement on the
reasonable changes for netblocks of various small sizes.

If customers were, for example, being charged $50 or even $100 a year
for the legitimate use of a /28,  I would see no need for action.  That
seems like a reasonable fee for local administration and the shared
support of ARIN's overall work.

Here in the world of one smallish ISP, only a few of our customers have
use for more than two or four public  /32s. We charge them a small fee
and all is well. Sometimes a bit of education has been  required, but
most find themselves happy with using 10.x and 192.168.x for their
appropriate purposes. One client in particular was sure they needed at
least a couple  /24s. Their actual need was for a /30.  

If the present fee structure were found onerous, perhaps 2002-9 would be
beneficial, even with the obvious increase in ARIN workload and
resulting legitimate fees that would be faced by /24 applicants. I have
my doubts, but the initiations acknowledged in graph one are still
present so no particular wisdom is changed.

If there is a significant problem found, perhaps it would be wiser for
ARIN to set a cap on what organizations granted an allocation may charge
their downstream customers for the use of address space.  This would
give ARIN-related customers protection against overcharge, and provide
responsible providers some potential relief from customers with a firm
belief in netspace as free lunch.