[arin-ppml] Using fees to encourage route aggregation

[Kevin Kargel]

Regarding fees for behavior modification:
ARIN properly charges reasonable fees for services provided.  This is well
and good.  When ARIN starts to act like a government by emplacing mandatory
taxes (artificial fees) to regulate behavior it will be bad.  Be careful not
to outgrow your britches.  Remember that ARIN works only because of
voluntary cooperation by the community.  That cooperation exists because of
the wonderful work done thus far ensuring that compliance is not too onorus
a task and fees are not excessive.  If you change either of those people
will start finding ways around ARIN to avoid either the excessive fees or
the onorus tasks.  

In fact people already do this.  There are companies (some rather large
corporations) using "public" IP networks not assigned to them for internal
routing.  The only penalty for doing so is that they cannot communicate with
the rightful network.  So long as they pick a network rightfully "on the far
side of the earth" the impact of their policy is negligable.

ARIN does not have an Army or direct force of law to police it's policies.
What it does have is the support and cooperation of the community.  Members
correctly and voluntarily agree not to route networks operating outside of
ARIN policy.  Members voluntarily pay reasonable fees for services rendered
and commit to policy agreements.

I completely and enthusiastically support this methodology.  It is the best,
most effective and most efficient way to manage a global network possible.
So far we have done a great job.  Let's not muck it up now with taxes thinly
veiled as economic incentives.

We also need to think of the economy that everyone is complaining about.  We
should be working to find ways to make internet operations less costly, not
dreaming up artificial fees to make it more expensive.  We can directly
affect the state of the economy.  We can choose whether to make it better or
worse.


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