[arin-ppml] [was Re: Millions of slashdotters are idle]

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Howard, W. Lee [mailto:Lee.Howard at stanleyassociates.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 12:42 PM
> To: Ted Mittelstaedt; Stephen Sprunk; Ron Cleven
> Cc: ppml at arin.net
> Subject: RE: [arin-ppml] [was Re: Millions of slashdotters are idle]
> 
> 
> > > ARIN's job is not to
> > > establish market-based incentives for anything.
> > > There's nothing inherently wrong with doing so, it's just 
> that we'd 
> > > need community consensus that we should do so.  To date, 
> > there has not
> > > been member consensus that ARIN should increase fees by 
> order(s) of
> > > magnitude in order to drive organizations away from IPv4.
> > > 
> > 
> > It is disingenuous to claim that ARIN's job is not to
> > establish market-based incentives for anything.  ARIN already 
> > engages in this, the IPv6 fee waiver a market-based 
> > incentive, and the "greater of IPv4 or IPv6 costs" 
> > registration policy is also a market-based incentive. 
> 
> I was pretty careful with my words there.  
> You could not fairly say, "ARIN's job is to establish 
> market-based incentives." 

Did I say this?  No.

> You could argue that ARIN should 
> (or should not) make use of such incentives in pursuit of 
> ARIN's mission.  You may say that ARIN has used that 
> particular tool in the past, but use of that tool is not 
> ARIN's primary objective.
> 

Is your goal to define the term disingenuous? ;-) 

> 
> >  And as
> > I recall both of those were from the ARIN board, not from the 
> > membership.
> 
> No, both were clearly requested (you could say demanded) by 
> the community, mostly by the members.
> 

Welllll....

As I recall, I was one of the ones who pointed out the uncertainty
of a waiver.  But you probably are correct that the suggestion on
most cost was from the membership, I had thought the board suggested
it though and the membership liked it and ran with it.

> > In addition, the sliding fees on IPv4 are also a market-based
> > incentive, although you may deny this, the fact of the matter 
> > is that on a per-IP-address basis, the larger allocations are 
> > cheaper.  ARIN favors the larger ISPs and networks in this manner.
> 
> That is an adventitious artifact of the intent of the fee 
> schedule, which was to roughly recover costs without creating 
> too complex a cost-recovery mechanism.  
> 

And this is exactly why a flat tax isn't used for the federal
income tax in the US - the rich get the bulk of the benefit of
the federal government largess, so they should pay more.  It is
a theme that the current US population is rediscovering at this
very moment, as a matter of fact, for those who are following
the current US federal election race.

IMHO there is no question that the larger ISP's benefit more
from the existence of ARIN than the smaller ISPs.  For starters
the obvious - a small ISP that does not qualify for direct
allocation must go to a large ISP for numbering, thus they pay
what the larger ISP decides they pay, not what ARIN or the ARIN
community decides is fair.  But even for the ISP's that are not
so small and do qualify for allocation, those ISP's simply are
not grossing as much money off selling Internet access as the
larger ISPs because they have fewer customers.  Sure, you can
have inefficient large ISPs who cannot control their margins who
lose money - witness AOL for example - but it's a lot easier to make
a larger profit if your gross is higher.  That's fundamental
business 101.

Yet, the smaller ISPs pay more per IP address.  This is fundamentally
unfair and is only tolerated because the yearly cost on IPs
is in the pennies.

But, the people wanting to mine the legacy holders for saleable IPv4
are engaged in scratching up pennies.  I am amazed they are so
gung-ho to dig up loose /24's here and there yet ignore this
issue.

> > Further, the requirement that orgs go to upstream providers
> > for IP numbering unless they are large is also a market 
> > incentive for the org to become large before obtaining a 
> > portable allocation.
> 
> That's a policy requirement, not a market requirement.  
> Nobody would increase their customer base just so they could get a 
> postable allocation--that's backwards.
> 

I'll give you that one.

> > Also, as I understand it, fee amounts are not set in the NPRM
> > and there is thus no mechanism for the membership to have any 
> > consensus on fee amounts.
> 
> Fees are set by the Board, not the members directly.  That's 
> because the Board pays close attention to the organization's 
> finances, and while some members pay attention to ARIN's 
> finances, it would be unreasonable to expect all 3000 members 
> to pay as much attention.  Many of you do, and I appreciate it.
> 
> 
> ARIN-discuss is the mailing list for members.  The Finance 
> Committee of the Board of Trustees has discussed every fee 
> proposal that has been sent, whether via the formal Suggestion 
> Process, by email to individual FinCom or Board members, or 
> discussed on an ARIN mailing list.  
> 
> The fee structure is intended to recover costs, because that's 
> what the members told the Board to do a long time ago.  If 
> members want to direct the Board to do something else, it might 
> be interesting for a member to raise the issue on ARIN-discuss.
> 

Hint taken.

Ted