[arin-ppml] [arin-discuss] x-small IPv4 ISPs going to IPv6

[James Hess]

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 1:08 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm at ipinc.net> wrote:
> On 5/3/2010 10:28 AM, Owen DeLong wrote:
>> On May 3, 2010, at 10:14 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>>> ARIN is a non-profit and thus cannot make a profit, the "IPv6 x-small
>>> windfall" must therefore be returned in fee decreases, or spent
>>> on increased operations.
>> Or held in a reserve or...
> Reserve is nothing, if you put the next 5 years of .8Mil increases
> in reserve then you end up with 4 million and then the question is
> what are you going to spend it on?  The question is no different than
> what are you going to spend the .8 Mil on this year?  This is just
> evading the point.

Well, ARIN doesn't have a crystal ball.   But it can probably be held
in reserve almost indefinitely,  until the reserve is large enough to
justify a fee decrease for members or it gets spent,  the point is
just that ARIN's not bound to return it,  and there is an actual
decision to be made if/when there is such a windfall.

>>> I'll point out that outreach is already being paid out of the current
>>> budget, and that it will not be needed once the majority of ISP's
>>> get the message about IPv6.

You assume moving to IPv6 is going to be the only area where ARIN
would possibly conduct outreach?

> Or are you advocating they run at a deficit for another 5-6 years and use
> the windfall to cover it?

Right now the notion of an 'IPv6 windfall'  is highly theoretical: it
wouldn't be very prudent for ARIN to  operate at a deficit for years
based on the expectation of an IPv6 windfall.

> If the ARIN community's response to the x-smalls is to just suck it
> up and pay the extra money if you want IPv6, or to disparage their
> finances and claim that the thousand bucks a year is peanuts and
> they shouldn't be bitching about it, then I think that I speak for
> the majority of x-smalls when I say that their response is
> going to be something along the lines of "IPv6? We'll get to it when
> we need it and we just don't need it right now"

Only  X-Smalls  themselves are  really in a position to judge whether
it is "peanuts" or not.

To XX-large organizations, implementation costs  for moving to IPv6
are high, and ARIN fees are peanuts.    To small organizations,
implementation costs for IPv6 may be almost zero,  but an added ARIN
fee is huge.

To quantify this, you need to compare the ARIN fees  versus the
typical revenues of various sizes of organizations based on their
addressing requirements.     If  fees were as expensive to XX-Large
organizations as they were relative to X-Small organizations,  then
your XX-Large members should be  paying  at least  a few million a
year.


I would say that for what X-Smalls need in terms of quantity of
address space, what they are getting, $1000/year  is not peanuts,  and
it is unwarranted for ARIN to charge them extra to  get IPv6.

Discouraging  IPv6 adoption even in minor ways   can have a negative impact.

-- 
-J