ARIN Policy Proposal 2002-7

[Member Services]

ARIN welcomes feedback and discussion about the following policy
proposal in the weeks leading to the ARIN Public Policy Meeting
in Eugene, Oregon, scheduled for October 30-31, 2002. All feedback
received on the mailing list about this policy proposal will be
included in the discussions that will take place at the upcoming
Public Policy Meeting.

This policy proposal discussion will take place on the ARIN Public
Policy Mailing List (ppml at arin.net).  Subscription information is
available at http://www.arin.net/mailing_lists/index.html

Richard Jimmerson
Director of Operations
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)

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Policy Proposal 2002-7: Micro-Assignments for Multihomed Organizations

Arin should reduce the current minimum IP allocation requirement to /21
-/24 if an organization is multihomed and actively using AS number(s).
Arin may periodically inquire and verify that the multihomed organization
is actively using AS number(s). ARIN may reclaim its IP's from
organizations that no longer are multihomed and/or stop using AS
number(s).

The following new fee schedule for /21 - /24 should be implemented as
follows (based on the current fee schedule with a smaller minimum):
	$400.00 per year for /23 - /24
	$1000.00 per year for /21 - /22

1. ARIN's current minimum IP allocation policy has a direct correlation
with the size of a company. Generally a company that uses a  /20 IP
allocation has a larger network and customer base, therefore they would be
considered in the category of large size companies. This policy currently
discriminates, puts a small business at a disadvantage and promotes and
helps to monopolize large ISP's and upstream providers.

2. Currently, many ISP's and upstream providers are in bankruptcy and/or
have gone out of business; therefore, getting IP's from upstream
providers is no longer a good solution since small businesses will have
the disadvantage of returning and re-numbering their IP's.

3. Once a small business obtains IP addresses from their upstream
providers, upstream providers are able to hold that small business
"hostage" and increase their rate without any consequences, because the
level of difficulty to move to another upstream provider is great and
could put the small company out of business.

4. The global routing table and its minimum allocation requirement must
be investigated by several third party technology companies, who are
non-partial and do not benefit from ARIN's decision in any way. They
could determine what is the best minimum requirement in order for the
Internet to run at its optimum and without any routing table problems.

5. ARIN's current policy of the minimum requirement of /20 addresses
promotes IP usage and reduces the ability to conserve IPs, such as
virtual hosting, for web sites. Companies now have to come up with
wasteful uses for IPs that they don't really need, just to qualify for the
current policy minimum.

6. ARIN's current policy automatically qualifies a multihome
organization to obtain an AS number. There isn't any minimum IP
requirement to obtain AS numbers and AS numbers have the direct effect of
increasing the global routing table.

7. Regarding the global routing table issue, memory is very inexpensive
now, and Cisco is introducing new router models with a larger D-RAM size,
that are reasonably priced and affordable by small businesses.

8. Theoretically, there are 4 billion IPv4 addresses available.  Out of
that, only a small fraction of them (Approx. 100 million) are being used
and approx. 2.3 billion are being allocated. This makes the current
minimum allocation policy not practical. Large organizations are sitting
on an exorbitant amount of IP addresses that they are not using and/or not
capable of ever being used. As an example, there is a company that owns
approximately 7 million IP addresses and has roughly 153,000 employees
(employees as of Nov, 1999). What is the justification for receiving
such large IP space, when a small business is not allocated any IP space?

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