[arin-ppml] Fee structures for ARIN

[Owen DeLong]

On Oct 30, 2011, at 10:14 AM, Jeff Wheeler wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 1:51 PM, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
>> Could other folks interested in ARIN improving its IRR services
>> (or not investing here) please speak up?   At the recent ARIN
>> meeting, we heard advocates of those who want ARIN to do more
>> with IRR, but also from those who believe that there's already
>> an abundance of routing registries out there and ARIN investing
>> time and effort in this area makes little sense.  More input
>> from the community on this topic would certainly be helpful.
> 
> Many folks in the ARIN region do not understand how to take advantage
> of IRR, or why it is of particular benefit for the RIR to operate a
> good IRR database.  You have to look at RIPE's IRR, and then compare
> to the data quality in ARIN-region IRRs, to understand what's really
> going on.
> 
People that want IRR services in the ARIN region, by and large, use RADB
and don't bother with the ARIN IRR.

I, for one, am fine with this. RADB has modest fees and operates a decent
system. I wouldn't want to see all ARIN recipients forced to pony up so that
ARIN can reinvent the wheel or become more competitive with RADB.

> All the major north american IRR databases are full of out-dated proxy
> records which should have been deleted but haven't been, data for
> previous holders of now-defunct ASNs, and so on.  This is not the
> fault of the databases, but of the users.  The operators of RADB and
> friends don't have any way to authenticate users against ARIN POCs.
> 
True. I would support the idea of ARIN working to come to some form
of database maintenance arrangement with RADB or one of the other
IRRs and improving the quality of the data in that way. Such an action
could be accomplished under existing NDAs as some form of outsourcing
of the ARIN IRR to one of these third parties. That should be achievable
at little or no additional cost to resource holders. If done right, it should
pay for itself or even save money by eliminating the cost of running the
current ARIN IRR.

> Earlier this year, John discussed some ideas to greatly improve the
> ARIN IRR service, which would make it more user-friendly.  If this
> were done, it could go a long way toward enabling ISPs to correctly
> filter eBGP sessions without implementing RPKI (which has far higher
> cost and risk.)  It could reduce news-making BGP leaks that wreak
> havoc without router vendors having to write any new code, without a
> complex certificate system, and without the political concerns that
> many people have about RPKI.
> 

It could, in an ideal world do all of those things. In the real world, the
odds of most ISPs actually doing so is relatively low.

> It could also be a tool to combat DFZ growth, not through making rules
> or telling any address-holder that they can't inject their routes into
> the DFZ, but through simply preventing mistakes from propagating
> outside their own AS.
> 

I'm not sure to what extent this would help. Do you have any numerical
analysis of this?

Of course I'm also not nearly as convinced that DFZ growth from normal
causes is all that much of an issue any more. The bigger issue, I think,
will come from transfer disaggregation as the market for addresses comes
into full swing. 

Owen