[arin-ppml] simple question about money

[Dean Anderson]

Good comment. Inline

On Tue, 10 Jun 2008, Milton L Mueller wrote:

> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > 
> > 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
> > 
> 
> Owen:
> This is an interesting comment. Brian Reid's comment stated that he had
> heard from Vixie that the pricing policy was designed to support route
> aggregation. And indeed, if the ability of routers to handle route
> announcements is a very scarce resource and needs to be conserved, and
> if a higher price for portable address assignments helps to conserve
> that resource, then few reasonable people would object. 

I think that if router resources are indeed a very scarce resource, that
it is ISPs that ought to set that price/resource policy, not ARIN.  
IPv6 was meant to have essentially infinite space: everyone can have a
block of portable address space.  Of course, it may cost to get it
routed...But that isn't ARINs balliwick, and ARIN has no business
influencing that through allocation policy.  Here also I question what
are the interests of ARIN vs the interests of the Board Members and a
very small group of companies [Nanog] in control of all the Board seats.  
And I note that previously, many in Nanog opposed accepting longer
prefixes from classful /16 (former class B's). Their objection then was
impact on router memory limitations on the routers in their networks;
they would have to spend money to upgrade their routers [particularly
Verio].

> But if you think that is not the case, it raises a question: how would
> one find out what _does_ motivate the pricing policies? Are the economic
> assumptions underlying ARIN fees stated anywhere in ARIN documents? Are
> there archives of discussions regarding that topic? 

You can find the ARIN board meeting minutes through the ARIN website.  
I don't know if you'll find much. 

> A post by M. Dillon indicated that fees were set by ARIN
> members/officers only, which is appropriate enough. However, he also
> expressed an opinion that the topic of address fees was off-limits for
> the public policy list. I would have to disagree with that. 

I'd have to agree with Dr. Mueller. This topic is on-topic for PPML. I
note the Mr.  Dillon is one of the NANOG members whom I often point out.  
In anycase, Mr. Dillon does not select topics for the list, and does not
offically represent ARIN in any capacity, but is just an ARIN member.

> In the emerging environment of v4 depletion, etc., the fees people pay
> (directly or indirectly) for IP addresses will be one of _the_ major
> public policy issues for the next five years or so. It will have a
> major impact on address conservation, route aggregation, the v6
> migration, etc. Of course, discussion of that issue here does not
> constitute some kind of a assertion that fee levels should be set
> here, but as the unclear responses to Brian's original question shows,
> everyone could benefit from a wider discussion of the relationship
> between address utilization and fee structures.

I agree. 

		--Dean

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