[arin-ppml] {Spam?} Re: Open Letter Regarding 650% Rate-Hike for Legacy Users

Fri Sep 17 14:21:53 EDT 2021

While everyone is worried about their fee increase, maybe it is time to 
look at the other side of the ledger and find out exactly what is being 
paid for, and if things can be done to help control those costs.

Is there a breakdown of exactly what are the things that our fees pay for, 
and are they all related to management of our resources?

Also, are all the things listed consumed by everyone with number 
resources?  If not, maybe those costs not used by everyone should be borne 
by ONLY those that are using these services. For example SWIP is not 
needed by those who do not provide assignments above the minimums or not 
at all.

If billing and collection is a big item, maybe we should have a base 
customer charge like utility companies that cover only those billing 
charges.  Also, maybe al larger base customer charge for those that must 
have a mailed statement, instead of an electronic statement.

Have we ever really taken a good look at these costs, with a mind to 
controlling costs?  We might find some things that cost a lot are not 
really that important.

20% is a good chunk of change.  What costs have gone up that are driving 
this increase, and what is the driver of that need for more revenue?

Albert Erdmann
Network Administrator
Paradise On Line Inc.

On Fri, 17 Sep 2021, David Farmer via ARIN-PPML wrote:

> The lines between what is an end-user and what is an ISP are getting very blurry these days. Is there really a difference between a data center, a
> university campus network, an enterprise network, and a small ISP each with a /20? 
> No, this isn't revenue neutral for ARIN, but they have been running deficits the past few years, and need additional revenue anyway.
> 
> Reguaring who made up the the fee structure review panel, see slide 3 of the following; 
> https://www.arin.net/vault/participate/meetings/reports/ARIN_32/PDF/friday/curran-fee.pdf
> 
> As for outreach;
> 
> The creation of the fee structure review panel was announced at ARIN 31, and on at least one mailing list, if not more.
> https://lists.arin.net/pipermail/arin-discuss/2013-April/002699.html
> 
> The fee structure review was discussed at several ARIN meetings and final report was discussed extensively online and at least one ARIN Meeting;
> https://www.arin.net/vault/participate/meetings/reports/ARIN_34/PDF/friday/curran-fees.pdf 
> 
> You know the saying, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can make it drink." Well unfortunately, there is a corollary, "some people don't pay attention,
> until they get the bill."
> 
> I'm not sure I completely agree with all the decisions, but there has been a lot of outreach and the series or decisions that lead us here hasn't been done
> in secret, as far as I'm concerned it all has been above boards.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> On Fri, Sep 17, 2021 at 11:32 AM Mark McDonald <markm at siteserver.com> wrote:
>       John,
> I just came across your spreadsheet of fee increases.  It pretty much summarizes what I’ve been saying - this isn’t a neutral harmonization of fees,
> it’s a 20% rate hike on roughly 40% of ARIN’s customers that disproportionally affects ARIN’s smaller customers, with Large being the middle tier in
> ARIN’s fee schedule, while targeting end users that use a fraction of the services of an ISP.  In nearly 20 years we’ve opened 5 ticket and in all
> cases, chose to better optimize IP space rather than pull from a finite resource (IPv4 address space).  That works out to about $1000/ticket - does it
> really cost ARIN more than $1000 to respond to a ticket?
> 
> It would be nice to show in that spreadsheet how many IP’s are represented in each Category - both RSP and End User.  My assumption, and I could be
> wrong, is that these fees are going towards users who are already paying 30-40x more than those utilizing the most resources.  The previously proposed
> $800/object almost seems like a bargain compared to what’s being proposed for us.  This isn’t about the money, it’s about the principal of what users
> ARIN is raising fees on.
> 
> I’m curious as to who made/makes up ARIN’s Fee Structure Review Panel and why wasn’t outreach done back then?  I was sure notified from 3 different
> departments when ARIN blasted out fee increases of 650% so it seems capable of better communication.
> 
> What should happen is ARIN truly engages it’s customers and if it needs 20% more revenue so badly, perhaps look at taking it from the companies that
> have profited most from the services you provide and who already pay a tiny fraction of what smaller users do for the resources (IPv4 addresses) they
> consume.
> 
> I need to get back to vendor negotiations.  I’m trying to get Verisign to reduce our domain renewal rates by 99.61% because we only use their API and
> don’t consume even a tiny fraction of resources of what a retail customer does and they only discount our rates by like 8% - crazy right?!  They’re
> pushing back stating that domain names are a limited resource and we’re going to make a boat-load of money off of my proposal by buying nearly every
> domain at 3/10ths of 1% of their normal customer but they simply don’t understand the volume we’ll be able to bring.  I’ll keep you posted on how my
> negotiations go.
> 
> -Mark
>
>       On Sep 17, 2021, at 4:36 AM, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
> 
> On 17 Sep 2021, at 3:52 AM, hostmaster at uneedus.com wrote:
>
>       Some have suggested the fee should not have a relationship to the number of addresses, but I strongly disagree.
>
>       For the most part, the more addresses you have, the more SWIP transactions and reverse lookups and customer service transactions are
>       going to take place, so it is quite proportional.  
> 
> 
> Albert – 
>
>       This is incorrect – i.e. the assertion that ARIN’s costs are proportional to the span of address space represented by registry
>       objects – and it is also likely beyond the possibility of physics (as noted below.)
> 
> Larger entities almost always have dedicated personal who knowledgable of ARIN and our processes – while they may make some additional
> customer services transactions (due to acquiring additional resources or using more advanced services), it would be highly unusual for any
> of them to make hundreds of more frequent customer service requests, let alone the thousands, or hundreds of thousands, that you suggest
> and would be necessary for ARIN to bear a proportional cost burden due to servicing such organizations. 
> 
> There are significant fixed costs of operating the registry and these fixed costs are predominately related to the number of organizations
> that must have billing relationships with ARIN and the number of resource entries in the registry – they are _not_ proportional in any
> manner to the size of the address space span represented by the registry objects.
> 
> Note – In 2014, the previously mentioned Fee Structure Review Panel looked at an approach that sought recover a fixed amount per registry
> object and use rather significant transactions fees to correspond more directly to the level of effort for recovering costs of
> registration service requests (aka Proposal #7 “Transaction Fee Proposal” in the previously referenced report.)  It was clear that such an
> approach would quite significantly penalize the smaller registry users, as it results in per registry object fees of more than $800 per
> object per year and larger  transaction fees. The fact of the matter is that ARIN’s present geometric registry fee scale burdens
> organizations with the largest number resource holdings far in excess of their imputed costs to ARIN, and while this is obvious, it was
> also felt to be overall reasonable because the _benefit_ obtained could also be deemed to be disproportionate. 
> 
> 
> FYI,
> /John
> 
> John Curran
> President and CEO
> American Registry for Internet Numbers
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> --
> ===============================================
> David Farmer               Email:farmer at umn.edu
> Networking & Telecommunication Services
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