[ppml] ARIN IP conservation and FREE IP Addresses

[Stephen Sprunk]

Thus spake "Jason Schiller" <schiller at uu.net>
> On Sat, 6 Oct 2007, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
>> The point is that right now, all your (VZB's) new addresses are
>> _free_ from ARIN because you use/waste so much of them.
>> That gives your sales people _no_ reason not to give customers
>> as much as they want at no extra charge other than the general
>> practice of squeezing them for as much as possible. This _is_
>> used as a competitive tactic -- mega-ISPs will give address
>> space to customers at no extra charge as one way to win deals
>> because their smaller competitors have to pay up to $5/yr/IP to
>> ARIN (which they have to add to the customer's bill, one way or
>> another, unlike you) just to get the same space.  Instead of
>> encouraging customers to conserve, a mega-ISP encourages
>> customers to waste by giving them free IPs -- which they may
>> never even use.  If the mega-ISPs actually paid for their
>> addresses, they'd be encouraging customers to conserve like
>> their smaller competitors are forced to.
>
> I don't know about other ISPs, but we require customers to justify
> all of thier IP space.  This way it is possible to get IP space from
> ARIN when we need it.  Our customers conserve IP space
> because we uphold ARIN policies.

That's a very loose definition of conservation.

It also completely fails to address the point that you get IPs free from 
ARIN while your smaller competitors pay up to $5/yr/IP, which gives you a 
significant competitive advantage.  If you had to recover per-IP fees from 
your customers, they (and you) would be more interested in real conservation 
(i.e. above what ARIN policies require).

> Verizon Business does not charge for space, so our customers
> do not get as much as they can pay for.  Instead they get only as
> much as they can justify.

In theory.

> I do understnd your point though.  When customers pay for
> address space, they feel entilted to as much address space as
> they pay for.  And since sales people want to sell as many
> services as possible, they are likely to they and pile on extra
> IP addresses to raise the cost.

And if the customer doesn't actually _need_ those addresses, whether or not 
they're "justified" under ARIN rules, they'd turn them down.  Today, your 
salespeople throw addresses at them for free and the customer has no reason 
to conserve because it costs them nothing -- because waste costs _you_ 
nothing.

>> > The question I have is do we want to limit the use of IP
>> > addresses based on address utilization or based on the
>> > amount of money an org is willing to pay for each address?
>>
>> The utilization requirement still applies.  Requiring payments
>> in addition to (not instead of) encourages people to use less
>> than they can justify, i.e. conserve.
>>
> As I said above using payment as a justification (even in part) for IP
> addresses muddies the waters.

I never said money should be involved in the justification process. 
However, you seem to have no problem with your smaller competitors having to 
pay per IP _in addition to technical justification_, so why shouldn't you be 
required to as well?

S

Stephen Sprunk         "God does not play dice."  --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723         "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS        dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking