[arin-ppml] Policy Change Request: IP Address Assignment to Educational and Non-Commercial Organizations

[David Farmer]

Hello Christopher,

Thank you for your interest and participation. 

But first, I'm interested in knowing why a student network administrator from 
a high school in Germany is interested in ARIN's fee structure for non-profit 
organizations?  

I believe you would get your IP addresses and other number resources from 
RIPE NCC.  

http://www.ripe.net/

Please do not think I am implying you are not welcome to participate, 
everyone is welcome to participate in policy discussions on PPML.  However, 
it is rather unusual, and I'm interested if there is a specific reason you are 
interested in ARIN's policies even thought they probablly wouldn't apply to 
you?  

So now to the actual discussion;

The fee structure that ARIN charges is set by the ARIN Board of Trustees to 
recover the costs of ARIN's operations.  The fee structure itself is not 
normally considered a policy matter for discussion on the PPML mailing list.  
However, it is sometimes difficult for people to separate the fee structure 
from the resource management policies that are intended to be discussed on 
PPML, so the subject does frequently come up in discussions on this list.  

As Scott says the intent is for smaller organizations, commercial or non-
profit, to get their IP addresses from upstream service providers.  Having 
smaller end-users get their addresses from service providers promotes 
aggregation and helps to maintain the Internet Routing table at a 
manageable size.  Some may argue it is way beyond a manageable size 
already, but if every small organization had its own address assignment from 
ARIN or the other RIRs, it would be many times if not an order of magnitude 
larger than it is today.

As someone who is from a large non-profit end-user of IP addresses (the 
University fo Minnesota), I believe the current fee structure provides cost 
effective access to necessary resources for both commercial and non-profit 
end-users that are large enough to receive resources directly from ARIN.

End-users that are large enough, pay a one-time fee based on the amount of 
resources received and a $100 annual maintenance fee associated with 
each end-user organization, regardless of the total amount of resources they 
use.  Whereas, service providers pay a one-time fee based on the amount of 
resources received and an annual maintenance fee to base on the total 
amount of resource they use.

Medium to large end-users typically receive a comparable amount of 
resources to smaller services providers, sometime even more.  An equitable 
balance needs to be maintained between these medium to large end-users 
and the smaller service providers.  I believe ARIN's current fee structure 
properly balances these issues.

Thank you.

On 28 Nov 2009 Scott Leibrand wrote:

> Christopher,
> 
> Generally, smaller education institutions, non-profit organizations, and 
> small business get their IP addresses from their upstream ISP.  It is 
> generally only necessary to get IPs directly from ARIN (and pay ARIN 
> fees) if you intend to multihome with BGP and your own ASN.  Can you 
> provide some specifics regarding what kind of connectivity these high 
> schools, colleges, and smaller universities are using that requires 
> provider independent space from ARIN, rather than provider allocated 
> space from their ISP?
> 
> Thanks,
> Scott
> 
> Christopher Mettin wrote:
> > To the American Regional IP Network Community,
> >
> > Don't you think that current ARIN fees exceeds the true value of IP
> > addresses? Actually, they are just numbers, and ARIN is in charge by IANA to
> > assign these IP's to people in all North America. For commercial companies
> > with revenues of several Million Dollars a year these IP address blocks ARIN
> > assigns are affordable. But smaller non-commercial organizations and even
> > schools cannot pay for them.
> >
> > Especially for high schools, colleges, and smaller universities such prices
> > can mean a harm to their classroom project, thus they mean a harm to
> > education.
> >
> > ARIN should change their policies to waive the fees for educational
> > institutions and non-commercial organizations.
> >
> > Thank you.
> >
> > Sincerely yours,
> > Christopher Mettin
> > Gymnasium Querfurt High School



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David Farmer                                      Email:farmer at umn.edu
Office of Information Technology
Networking & Telecomunication Services
University of Minnesota		       Phone: 612-626-0815
2218 University Ave SE		       Cell: 612-812-9952
Minneapolis, MN 55414-3029	       FAX: 612-626-1818
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