Advice on Dues and Fees

[Jeremiah Kristal]

On Sat, 18 Jan 1997, William Allen Simpson wrote:

> > Date: Fri, 17 Jan 97 23:58 PST
> > From: randy at psg.com (Randy Bush)
> > >         current         similar         medium          broader
> > >          ARIN           scaled 4:3      scaled 4:3      scaled 3:2
> >
> > Where are scaled 3:4, 2:3, 17:41, ...?
> >
> I do not understand this comment.  The scaling that you have suggested
> would make larger blocks _less_ expensive than smaller ones.  Perhaps
> you could be more descriptive as to why this is a desirable quality?

I'm not sure that I understand the 3:4, 2:3, 17:41, x:y either, but there
are many reasons that larger allocations should be cheaper on a per
address basis than smaller allocations.  Unless someone were to develop a
new class of router, that could handle many, many more routes than the
current class of backbone routers (mostly Cisco at this time), *and* get
all the backbone ISPs to implement them, there has to be an incentive to
get people to request smaller allocations (/20 or smaller for now) from
their upstream provider.
I'm not sure if ARIN will be willing to give larger allocations to
upstream providers who manage their address space closely, but Internic
sure does.  If ARIN can be convinced to give a /16 to a provider who
may only need a /18 at the present time but has historically managed their
allocations well, i.e. effective use of subnetting and supernetting,
education of downstream customers, active utilization of SWIP, then it
makes things smoother and more scalable for the internet at large.
There is a lot of FUD and innuendo being spread here, and from what I can
see certain people who are spreading it either don't understand that IP
allocations that are too small to be picked up by the backbone providers
are generally worthless, or they're bringing up the $2500 cost of a /24 as
a strawman.  If providers want to tell their customers to get a /24
directly from ARIN, then they can deal with the hassle of explaining why
the customer can't reach sites on Sprint's network.  I would just as soon
see ARIN not even allocate anything smaller than a /19 without a statement
releasing ARIN and the provider from any blame if the allocation is not
globally routable.  Heck, I would like to see ARIN only allocate /19s or
greater.

      ________
      \______/                  Jeremiah Kristal
       \____/                   Senior Network Integrator
        \__/                    IDT Internet Services
         \/                     jeremiah at hq.idt.net
                                201-928-4454