[arin-ppml] The annual limit on total maintenance fees for legacy number resources under the ARIN fee schedule

[hostmaster at uneedus.com]

Sorry for the typo, the block is 192.68.112.0/24.  I am used to RFC1918 
space, and that block number is NOT RFC1918 space. I typoed the netblock.

I am aware of Berea College, and know that they do not pay for this legacy 
block.  I did notice another block associated with them when I just did a 
lookup, but seeing as it appears to be part of Google Cloud, I am assuming 
this block is being used by Google to support their school, and Google 
therefore shows it associated with their ASN.

The school effectively does not charge tuition, and pays its expenses from 
an endowment that it has.  However, it would appear that does not include 
the expense of paying ARIN anything for their legacy block from that 
endowment, choosing instead to spend it on their students. I believe that 
they have avoided the fees by not signing.

The shoehorning of 7+ billion people into 3.2 billion IP addresses has 
left us with a have and have not situation, where those with the luck to 
obtain large class "A" blocks or otherwise obtain early address space or 
have lots of cash to buy space have better connectivity then those who 
have come to the network later.

This is why I like IPv6, since it totally eliminates the shortage of space 
and brings us back to the days before address conservation was a thing 
because everyone effectively gets a block larger than those early class 
"A" blocks, and NAT, CIDR, and other such hacks to conserve address space 
are no longer needed.

The majority of my network traffic travels via IPv6, and this is because 
most of the sites on the internet with the most traffic have placed AAAA 
records, and therefore their traffic counts in the IPv6 column.

If we could just get the total a bit higher, we might reach a tipping 
point that would drive universal IPv6 adoption.  However I do believe that 
there are forces that are actively working against IPv6 adoption, because 
it is a threat to their internet dominance, as well as the money these 
players have poured into buying IPv4 space.

Widespread adoption of IPv6 WILL crash the value of those IPv4 
investments.  What is good for the community, which is a universal 
network with plenty of address space available to everyone goes against 
the position of others that would like to turn the internet back into a 
one way service like Compuserve or AOL.

However that widespread adoption of IPv6 helps in other ways to the 
majority, lowering costs and allowing more voices to join the network. A 
more open and available network I think is the answer.  I think money is 
better supporting an expanded IPv6 network, rather than trying to figure 
out how to shoehorn even more users into 3.2 billion address block by 
worrying how to "recover" that legacy space.

Albert Erdmann
Network Administrator
Paradise On Line Inc.


On Thu, 14 Apr 2022, Owen DeLong wrote:

>
>
>> On Apr 12, 2022, at 22:05, hostmaster at uneedus.com wrote:
>>
>> Does there not still exist some legacy addresses that pay NO fees? 
>> While there are those legacy blocks without contact addresses, there 
>> also appear to be addresses who have updated contacts, but are not 
>> paying fees to ARIN.
>>
>> For example, 192.168.112.0/24 is a legacy block controled by Berea 
>> College. To the best of my knowledge, they do not pay for this block. I 
>> became aware of this block because this school, like myself does not 
>> have a street address, a problem I ran into in the past when a major 
>> ISP was insisting on a unique street address for every public transit 
>> bus with a static address assignment be provided in SWIP, which of 
>> course is not possible. They would not accept all busses being 
>> registered to the street address of administrative entity that ran the 
>> bus system, as they wanted a unique street address for all 500+ busses, 
>> and not one address for all.
>
> That can’t possibly be the accurate block address you are referring to. 
> Nobody pays fees to any RIR for RFC-1918 space.
>
> However, there are many legacy holders that were smart enough to avoid 
> signing the LRSA and do not pay ARIN fees. In the interests of an 
> accurate registry, non-contract legacy holders are able to update their 
> contact information and certain other details in the database.
>
>> How much legacy space is like this /24 that does not pay, but still has 
>> valid contact information on file?
>
> I don’t know, ARIN would need to answer that question.
>
>> How much legacy space is like other blocks discussed that have NO valid 
>> contact addresses at all, and therefore is not paying either?
>
> You make an invalid assumption here that lack of valid contacts 
> necessarily means not paying. I suspect that there are some 
> organizations that continue to pay annually (accounting department), but 
> have no idea that their contact data is out of date (technical 
> department).
>
> However, there are also probably a great many organizations which are 
> defunct, or otherwise not paying or whatever that don’t have valid 
> contact information as well.  The ones that signed an LRSA or RSA with 
> ARIN will have their space reclaimed. The ones that did not will likely 
> exist in perpetuity in the database.
>
>> I personally think this great search for IPv4 space is becoming more 
>> pointless every day.  4 billion IPv4 addresses with a world population 
>> of 7+ billion alone shows the pointlessness of IPv4 space recovery.
>
> It’s worse than that… When you subtract out RFC-1918, Loopback, 
> 240.0.0.0/4, 224.0.0.0/4 (multicast), and a few other reservations I 
> don’t remember off the top of my head, you’re left with about 3.2 
> billion unicast addresses.
>
>> I would hope that eventually this fixed address shortage will be dealt 
>> with by most operators by the simple act of using IPv6.  So much effort 
>> has been done toward the recovery of every possible IPv4 address, which 
>> effort would be better placed toward using a protocol that is available 
>> today, supported by nearly every operating system and router on the 
>> planet, and provides even the smallest network with more addresses than 
>> they can ever use.
>
> Not to mention squeezing as many users as possible into each IPv4 
> address creating an unnecessary and undesirable dichotomy between 
> consumers and suppliers of information on the internet.
>
>> ARIN has made IPv6 available for no extra charge for all but some 
>> corner cases.  Even then, most of those corner cases can still join the 
>> IPv6 community by obtaining a block of IPv6 addresses from their 
>> upstream at little to no charge. Those cases appear to be mostly legacy 
>> IPv4 holders like Berea College who can receive IPv6 space with their 
>> circuits for little or no additional cost.
>
> Uh, I don’t quite buy that assertion, especially in light of the current 
> discussions.
>
>> To me, it looks like certain parties do not want to move to IPv6 
>> because wide spread adoption will crash the values of their IPv4 
>> holdings that they keep expanding, like it is some kind of investment.
>
> There’s probably some of that, certainly.
>
>> However it is time to adopt, as trying to continue to build networks on 
>> IPv4 with CALEA requirements with less than 1 address per person on the 
>> earth cannot be sustainable. All kinds of effort and money are being 
>> spent to remain IP4 only such as CGnat and Logging, rather than simply 
>> using this money to move to IPv6.
>
> Yep.
>
>> We have the tools for network address growth, and it is called IPv6. 
>> Lets use it.
>
> I couldn’t agree more.
>
> Owen
>
>
>