[arin-ppml] simple question about money

[Owen DeLong]

> To many of the rest of you: there's a difference between being a  
> member of ARIN and a customer of ARIN. At least I think there is.  
> Nowhere in the documentation do I see anything saying that you have  
> to be a member of ARIN in order to get a direct allocation. Of  
> course you can't fund the activities of ARIN with a membership fee  
> that's 1/100th of what it is now, but that's not what I was asking  
> about.
>
Close, but, not quite.

Where you hit the distinction is in the difference between an  
allocation and
an assignment.

An allocation is intended to be subdivided into blocks which are  
delegated
(either as allocations or assignments) to downstream customers.

An assignment cannot be subdivided and is issued to an end user.

In order to receive a direct allocation, you must be a subscriber  
member.

To receive a direct assignment, you do not need to be an ARIN member
at all, and, the fee structure is quite different.

> If IPv6 is going to catch on with the technical public, the process  
> of using it needs to be sufficiently transparent that somebody who  
> spends 3 or 4 hours reading the website to figure out what to do  
> needs to come away with a sense of how to get things done. I didn't.  
> I know that many of you will just respond by telling me I'm stupid,  
> but I really did read what was there and try hard to understand it.  
> Nowhere did I see an explanation that the administration and  
> management of IPv6 is (presumably
> by design) different from that of v4 and that the concepts don't  
> just move over. In particular, the whole supply-and-demand thing is  
> not properly explained or documented. There was a scarce resource  
> (v4). It is priced high, like many scarce resources. Now there is an  
> abundant resource (v6), with millions of times more availability.  
> Conventional economics suggests that the more abundant resource  
> ought to be a lot cheaper because of the principles of supply and  
> demand. It isn't.
>
There is no difference in this respect between the ARIN IPv4 and the  
ARIN
IPv6 policies, actually.  There are some subtle differences in the  
qualification
and metrics used, but, in terms of the differences in fee structure,  
there
are allocation and assignment fee tables for both IPv4 and IPv6.  The
assignment renewal fees for end-users are all $100/year regardless of  
number
of resources or resource type.

The subscriber member fees for IPv6 and IPv4 are different, but, not
substantially so, and, you only pay the greater of your IPv6 or IPv4  
fees,
not the sum.

Finally, I do not believe that the price is set at all as a result of  
routing table
slots, but, as a result of ARINs operating costs, reserves planning,  
etc.
and the number of subscribers, end users, etc.

I do believe that some of the policies on who qualifies for address  
space
are motivated in part by routing table slots and that the result of  
those
policies may affect the numbers that feed into determining fees, but,  
I do
not believe that the fees are directly tied to that issue.

Owen