[arin-ppml] Draft Policy ARIN-2013-3: Tiny IPv6 Allocations for ISPs

[Matthew Kaufman]

On 4/7/2013 1:24 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
> On Apr 6, 2013, at 19:58 , John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
>
>> On Apr 5, 2013, at 9:37 AM, Seth Mattinen <sethm at rollernet.us> wrote:
>>
>>> I see no reason to have a policy motivated strictly by fees to remain after fee changes that may or may not negate it, and to determine that it should go back through the PDP. Otherwise we're just cluttering the NRPM with irrelevant policy.
>> Seth -
>>
>> The ARIN Board has often lowered the fee schedule as the
>> financial circumstances allow, and in general this has been
>> independent of number resource policy changes.
>>
>> The Revised Fee schedule is much improved over the existing
>> fee schedule with respect to organizations being able to
>> cost-effectively make use of IPv6 (as it is lower than the
>> existing fee schedule's smallest IPv6 category today.)
> Unless you are an end-user in which case adding IPv6 is still
> a (potentially significant percentage) increase over your IPv4
> fees.

Even more if you're a legacy IPv4 holder.

>
>> If the community does not support 2013-3, then smaller ISPs
>> will still have the current option of receiving a /36 of IPv6
>> (if they wish); this will put them in the x-small fee category
>> of $1000 per year.
>>
>> If the community supports 2013-3, then some very small ISPs will
>> gain an option of taking a /40 allocation of IPv6 space, which
>> will put them in the xx-small fee category with fees of $500 per
>> year.
>>
>> If very small ISPs receiving /40 of IPv6 space does not make good
>> technical sense, then the community should not support the draft
>> policy... it's that simple. (These ISPs will still have lower fees
>> under the Revised Fee schedule, just not as low as they might have
>> had otherwise...)
> It's not that simple because we have to balance differing tradeoffs
> as a result of the fee structure.
>
> If we don't support the policy, then we create a disincentive to deploy
> IPv6 at all among these smaller ISPs.

But only a little, because the fees are still going down for the smaller 
ISPs... doing nothing with numbering policy and keeping the price change 
is a net win for them and doesn't break the future Internet.

>
> If we support the policy, then we create an incentive to do things which
>   do not make good technical sense in order to avoid creating a
> disincentive to deploy IPv6.

This *does* break the future Internet. I think I'd rather avoid that, 
even if it slows IPv6 adoption a little due to the appearance of bad 
pricing decisions (which are still lower than they were previously).

>
> The current fee structure creates a Sophie's choice in policy. IMHO,
> the board seriously erred in creating this situation and should do
> whatever is possible to have a correction ready to present prior
> to the discussion of 2013-3 in Barbados.

+1 on that.

>
> One possible way to distinguish ISP size for IPv6 would be to use
> annual gross revenue instead of total address holdings. I don't know
> if that would be an improvement or not. I realize it would be more
> complex to calculate and enforce. I think it would likely be more fair.

More fair would be everyone pays the same. Or everyone pays based on the 
amount of service they actually require from ARIN.

Basing it on amount of space *or* gross revenue isn't "fair"... it is 
just a way to extract extra revenue from those who (in theory) have more 
to send to ARIN, which gives ARIN the opportunity to lower prices at the 
other end to keep the masses happy, or to just increase its overhead to 
ensure the money gets spent.

But we see this all over the world these days, so it isn't like I'm 
surprised that they would behave this way. At least they're not creating 
additional address registries and then telling people they need to 
register their addresses there too in order to protect their trademarks, 
like some other winners of the 
how-can-we-charge-for-things-that-were-free game that the Internet 
played some years ago.

>
> I would like to hear about other creative ideas on ways to measure
> size and/or appropriate metrics to be used for fee determination.

Each email or call requires a fee payment above and beyond a tiny fee 
which everyone pays and which is equal for all. Or, worst case, a tiny 
fee per database row.

Matthew Kaufman