[arin-ppml] Draft Policy ARIN 2020-3

[Andrew Dul]

On 10/12/2020 4:43 PM, scott at solarnetone.org wrote:
> Hi Andrew,
>
>>> This applies, however, only to those who do not subscribe to the
>>> Registration Services Plan, if I understand correctly, as subscribing
>>> to said plan converts one from End User to ISP automatically. 
>>> Needless to say, there are organizations that are end users by
>>> functional definition here, but subscribe to the service plan, and/or
>>> choose to be an ISP for other reasons.
>>
>> My understanding is that subscribing to 'Registration Services Plan'
>> does not change you from an end-user to ISP, it just gives you access to
>> the services available under that plan and the resulting fee schedule. 
>> You can presumably decide to go back to classic 'pay by the resource
>> option' as an end-user if you didn't need the extra services or
>> preferred the alternate fee calculation.
>>
>>
>
> From https://www.arin.net/resources/fees/fee_schedule subsection 'End
> Users with Registration Services Plan':  "Organizations that choose to
> convert to the Registration Services Plan will be evaluated as an ISP
> from a policy perspective when requesting future Internet number
> resources from ARIN."  While this _may_ be intended to indicate that
> they will be billed based on the ISP fee schedule for additional
> resources, it in effect can (and may be intended to) indicate that in
> all number policy related matters, they will be viewed as an ISP.

Well, the one-way aspect of this choice to move to the End User w/
Registration Services Plan and the reevaluation as an ISP for policy
purposes is additional information to me in this discussion.

JS, is the one-way option documented publicly (other than where you just
did so on PPML) ?

I can see why from a $ perspective this may be valuable to an
organization at one point in time.  I can also see where down the road
it could go the other way for an organization. 

In general, I don't think its probably a good idea to reclassify
organizations as "ISPs" for policy purposes when they do so primarily
for fee purposes, especially with regard to IPv6 policy.  

For example, an "end-user" organization had some IPv4, an ASN, and an
IPv6 /48.  And at some point opted to be a Registration Services Plan
End-User.  Now suppose they wanted to get another /48 for a different
distinct location (non-connected, but also multi-homed), well that would
not be permissible under policy because they are now an ISP, and they
would need to get a least a /36 under current policy and they probably
wouldn't qualify for anything because the subsequent allocation
requirements for ISPs in 6.5.3 are quite high.

There seems to be some unintended potential long-term negative
consequences to the one-way option with end-user registration services
plan and force application of ISP policy onto primarily end-user
organizations.


Andrew