ARIN is not/is too/is not/is too... blah.

[Michael Gersten]

Just to comment on this pricing model comment,

I've been looking at getting a fixed IP address. Every ISP that I've
talked to that offers this that is a local call only offers a full
class C address block -- a full 256 addresses.

What does this do to the cost? The cheapest charges $80 per month.
Figure $20 per month to connect, another $20 per month for the
phone line. That still leaves $40 per month that they will charge
for the class C block.

"But what about the modem, and the line install?". Nope. As I said,
that was the cheapest. Most had another $100-$200 startup, and
then where around $120-$150/month.

So other than dedicating a line and a modem to me, and paying for
the IP range that they are giving me, what else is there?

The cost to install a line is going to be around $50 (assuming that
they do it in bulk). The cost of a new modem port on a modem
server (I'm thinking here that ISP's buy a single box with DSP's
inside that does a dozen or so lines at once) will probably be
around $80 per line. That's a startup cost per line of maybe
$150-$200 after administrative and other people-time.

Lets say that the ISP wants to recover $10/month of the startup cost.
Then after a year and a half, it's paid for (sounds like a viable
recovery time to me). That still leaves $30 per month for a class C
equivalent.

And again, most ISP's were charging $40 to $80 MORE per month.

In a competitive environment, people only charge based on their
costs. If the only new, ongoing cost is the ARIN charge, what does
that say about the actual cost involved?

Yes, the price would be lower if they only gave me a /30 (all I
even wanted) instead of a /24 class C. No one does (at least out
here). So for whatever reason, I can only assume that it is cheaper
for them to give out class C's (I have no idea what's involved on
the commercial routers in this area).

Point is, saying that the per-address price is cheap is meaningless,
** IF YOU CANNOT GET A PER ADDRESS **.

If you can only get addresses in class C blocks from ISP's, then
you need to compare the cost of a class C. That's about a 250 times
increase in cost to the ISP per user; at standard markups (given that
the ISP is effectively holding an inventory and then selling at a
profit),that means a price increase to the user of 500 times.

So, if we are looking at a yearly price to the ISP of 40 cents
per address, that's a yearly price to the end user of $200; at
12 months, that's about $15 per month.

So lets say that the other $15/month will go into customer support
and dealing with customer mis-configurations.

The point is, ARIN charges are not negligable to the end user.

Yes, the cost would be cheaper if I was looking at a large or extra
large ISP, instead of a small or medium one. But the large ones
simply do NOT offer this service, or for the one that did, had the
second highest price.

(Oh, forgot one. Concentric Network also did, at about $250 per month.
Make that two that did, at the highest and third highest price).

(I think I'll write up my proposed routing alternative to v6 and v8
this weekend, and see about puting it out as a draft RFC. Eliminates
[hopefully :-)] all v4 address shortages, and shrinks routing table
size, at a small(?) cost of CPU at the routers.)

		Michael