A wild stab at the umbers

[David R. Conrad]

Stephen,

I want to publicly express my gratitude for you actually coming up
with numbers, as made of straw as they might be.  They are extremely
useful in that they provide a starting point for discussions.

A couple of points, however:

>First off, in looking at the original proposal, I see that the *sole*
>function of this registry is to allocate IP addresses to those who apply
>for them,

Almost -- registries allocate space to organizations which demonstrate
need.  A very significant difference when it comes to computing
staffing costs (see below).

>Staff salaries:  you need two clerical types ($30K/year), director
>($60K/year), policy co-ordinator ($40K/year), on-site repair and sysadmin
>($60K/year), and a receptionist ($25K/year).

Nope.  In order to demonstrate need for IP addresses, you need
technical staff capable of reading and understanding network
engineering plans.  They must also understand the explanations
provided to them by the requestors when they call up to explain why
they need a /16 for 2000 hosts.  Then there is AS number request
justifications.

Note, that people with this kind of knowledge are in quite high demand
at this point in time.

As an aside, the time necessary to understand a requestor's network in
sufficient detail to justify allocation tends to be bimodal -- the
clueful only take an hour or two, the aggressively clueless can take
weeks (note that this is APNIC's experience, InterNIC's may be a bit
less as there are less language issues that need to be dealt with).

Currently, I believe InterNIC has something like 10 full time staff
handling request reviews (Kim will correct me if I'm wrong).  RIPE-NCC
is approximately similar.  APNIC has 2 staff who do the reviews, but
we're dying for additional staff and our load is an order of magnitude
less than InterNICs and RIPE-NCC.

And please, before people start screaming that the registries should
not to do these reviews, I am talking about CURRENT registry policies
as defined in RFC 2050.  If you'd like to modify those policies,
please take it to the Policy And Guidelines for Allocation of Network
numbers mailing list, pagan at apnic.net (to subscribe, send a message
body of "subscribe" to pagan-request at apnic.net).

>Computers:  you will need something fairly good-size for a Web and FTP
>server so that people can get registry information.  Call it $50K every
>five years, or $10K/year.

Load on whois servers can be quite high -- Mark Kosters can provide
details.  People whine very loudly when they can't reach the
registration database.  Instead of a single big machine, you'll likely
want an array of smaller machines so you can round robin load share
over those machines.  Also helps availability.

>Networking equipment:  I can't see the need for anything faster than three
>T1 links

Both APNIC and (I believe) RIPE-NCC have placed machines at Internet
exchange points.  This has 3 advantages: a) bandwidth is generally not
a concern, b) you don't run the risk of "gives us more addresses or
we'll cut you off", and c) people won't say "we're better than ISP x
because we're providing Internet services to a regional registry".  Of
course, the registry has to be able to negotiate peering and transit
agreements as necessary.

Housing at an IX plus peering/transit fees can be significantly higher
than your projected numbers.

>Periodic meetings:  The usual cost for throwing a meeting ranges from $4K
>to $9K, depending on how fancy you get.  This assumes five days, rooms for
>the few staff that attend, some amenities, and the non-staff attendees pay
>their own room costs.  This also incorporates some costs for printing and
>copying contributions to the meetings.  If you assume quarterly
>face-to-face meetings, the total to budget is $36K/year
>
>Trade show presence:  Small booths run roughly $15K to build -- and expect
>to build a new one every year.  Transporting, setting up, tearing down, and
>returning the booth to storage is around $1K/show.  Labor and amenities
>(power and net connection) associated with the booth should be no more than
>$7K per show.  Assuming the organization exhibits at three trade shows a
>year, that's $39K/year.

Not sure how valuable trade show presence is, however it has proven to
be important that the registries attend technical conferences and
meetings of ISPs (e.g., IETFs, IEPGs, NANOGs, EOFs, etc).  These
probably balance out.

>Copying, Mailings:  While I can make a strong case that this organization
>should *never* mail a document, the truth is that ballots and such may need
>to be mailed, and once you start snail-mailing ballots you might as well do
>it right.

Don't forget billing expenses.

>Loan costs:  priced correctly, there is no way that you can get enough
>grants to fund this thing totally.  Assume you will need to borrow $1.5
>million to start, and you can get this for 12 percent (secured loan).  That
>means your debt service will be at most $180K/year.  This is a good place
>to look to cover with revenue from "first-time fees."

Shouldn't be necessary -- NSI is providing funding backstop while ARIN
becomes established.

>Remember, I calculated the
>out-of-pocket cost for a member is in the close order of $100;

Depends very much on the number of members -- this is one of the
unknowns.

>Now let's talk about grandfathering existing allocations.  Let's say you
>have 3000 existing top-level customers of address space.

I suspect this would be a bit controversial.

Again, thanks for providing the numbers -- they provide very good
input for useful discussions.

Regards,
-drc