Funding - what about the second year?

[Stephen Satchell]

At 11:24 PM -0800 2/17/97, John LeRoy Crain wrote:
>Now if you can guarantee how the Internet will grow in the next three years
>so that people can budgetize correctly for that length of time, I'm sure
>that everybody would find it useful. ARIN must be funded and cannot risk being
>underfunded, a one year budget can ensure that they can adjust in 12 months
>to the situation at that point in time. A three year budget that guarantees
>them enough funding would seem to me very difficult to make while keeping the
>prices down to a realistic level. At the RIPE NCC we keep getting more
>registries but we don't have any way of knowing how long this growth will
>continue. What happens if we budgetise for three years and the growth slows,
>stops or even turns around in year two, I think then the contributors would
>be telling us we should have budgetised for one year.

If there was no track record, I'd agree with you that you couldn't
"guarantee" anything.  The thing is, NSI *has* information about registry
information, and the trends that go with it.

You can plan with a three-year horizon, and adjust every month if you have
to in order to keep things going properly.  Just because you have a
three-year budget forecast doesn't mean that you can't change it month to
month to react to changing conditions.

Growth stopping or turning around is part of the risk of being in any
business, for-profit or not.  That's one of the arguments for this function
to be a part of government:  if the revenue stream slows down, the
government agency can raise taxes.


>It is a shame that individuals who wish to be involved in this and don't have
>a $1000 that they can miss will miss out.  I think this will be a minority,
>most people will be involved for reasons of business, for yourself your
>company would have decided it's not important to your business. I guess it's
>like anything in life there are always those who don't have the resources
>to contribute even when their contribution could be useful.

If this were a standards body consisting in the main of manufacturers, the
US$1K entry fee makes sense.  Indeed, the Telecommunications Industry
Association wanted to see US$2400/yr from me as an individual, with
companies paying around US$10K or more.

This is the Internet, though.  By "soaking" those interested in the
process, ARIN is raising a significant barrier to participation by the
users and (more or less) disinterested parties.  How many people associated
with the Internet do you know that (a) have an interest in the process but
(b) don't derive a profit from the Internet?  The *last* thing I want is
for ARIN to be run by people who have a financial axe to grind.

On the other hand, there is a benefit to wanting people to have some stake
in the process.  That's why in my strawman budget I assumed that the entry
tax would be US$100, not US$1000, per member.  I believe that far more
people would be able to afford to not do dinner and a movie twice in order
to participate in the process.

---
Stephen Satchell, {Motorola ISG, Satchell Evaluations}
<http://www.accutek.com/~satchell> for contact and other info
Opinions stated here are my PERSONAL opinions.