Comments on ARIN

[Jon Lewis]

Having just talked to our NSP today and found that after the address space
allocation they gave us today, we will have to go to Internic/Arin
(whichever is running the show when the time comes) to get our next
address blocks, I decided it was time to have another look at the ARIN
site.

First, I got sidetracked by www.arin.org (hmm...doesn't look like the
right place).  Then found the right site and read through the proposal.  I
think it could have been worded more clearly.  Section 2.3 is not exactly
clear in that ISP's/NSP's requesting blocks do not pay both a registration
fee and a yearly maintenance fee.  I had to wade 60% through the 1mb+ file
which is the first section of the list archive to find a definitive
looking quote from someone at internic.net saying ISP's don't pay the
registration fee, just the maintenance fee.

If the list is archived in some sort of threaded format rather than 2 mega
text files, the arin.net site should have a pointer to it.  We don't all
have T1's to our houses.  Downloading 600kb of text over a 28.8 shared
with another computer to get the answer to a simple question is
ridiculous.  With all the questions people must have about ARIN and what
it means to them, a searchable archive of the list would be a bonus idea. 

So...when FDT does ask ARIN for a /18 (in 6-12 months probably), we'll
have to start shelling out $5k/year...plus another $1k/year if we want any
say in things, want to send a rep to meetings, or have a vote.  Is it too
much to ask that those entities who are paying (subsidizing) ARIN for
registry maintenance are automatically granted membership? 

I'm not sure where the numbers and cutoffs for fees came from...but it
looks like they were trying to figure out just how much the market would
bear rather than what might be reasonable.  $5k/year won't kill us...but
it will hurt.  Why should we pay the same amount as an ISP/NSP 4 times our
size?  The difference in cash flow must be enormous between ISP's of such
different sizes.  i.e. for a small ISP with a /19, monthly payments on the
$5k ARIN fee might be >10% of their gross montly income...while for an ISP
4x that size in a /16, it might only be ~2% of their gross monthly income. 

Will fees be collected at the beginning or end of each year?  Can they
be spread out over the year (monthly payments?) or must they be paid all
at once?  What methods of payment will be accepted?  What happens if we're
late on a payment or just don't pay for some reason? 

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