Comments on ARIN proposal

[Michael Dillon]

On Wed, 22 Jan 1997, Kent Crispin wrote:

> And it is also a gross oversimplification
> to say that the large providers will be benign or neutral toward
> small competitors.  In fact, it would be more than a gross
> oversimplification, it would represent total economic cluelessness.

Given the fairly strict US laws regarding anti-trust with triple damages
and the aility of anybody to lay charges, I would expect that the large
providers, out of economic necessity, will bend over backwards to be
benign and neutral toward small competitors within the context of ARIN.

It is to the economic advantage of the large providers to pass on IP
allocations to their customers (including small ISP's) at no additional
charge. By doing so, they avoid antitrust charges and they develop good
customer relationships.

> The fact that small ISPs have had explosive growth may mask things,
> but one would have to be willfully blind or chained by dogma to
> imagine that the goodwill of the large providers is any protection
> whatsoever for small ISPs.

Perhaps I see things differently because I'm not an American. I certainly
don't share the view that large companies are greedy grasping behemoths
out to crush their competition.  The world of commerce is a world of "you
scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". There really is little incentive for
the large providers to "crush" the small ones.

There are approximately 3,000 ISP's in North America. That means thate
there is a lot of money to be made providing services to those ISP's. If
one of the larger providers decided to start charging their ISP customers
for IP addresses they would quickly find that they aren't so large any
more.

Michael Dillon                   -               Internet & ISP Consulting
Memra Software Inc.              -                  Fax: +1-250-546-3049
http://www.memra.com             -               E-mail: michael at memra.com