Re: Cost Recovery and ARIN...

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com>]

Michael and all,

Michael Dillon wrote:

> On Fri, 10 Jul 1998, Patrick Greenwell wrote:
>
> > And where pray tell, could someone go to if they wished to get IP space
> > from a competing IP registry?
>
> Why would anyone want to do this?

  Simple answer is that organizations or small companies want choices.  As
many choices as possible.

> The IP registries are run on a
> cost-recovery basis because you need an IP address to connect to the
> global Internet. Your question is like asking where would a telephone
> company go to if they didn't want to get their area codes allocated by the
> North American Numbering Plan Administration. The answer is, nowhere.
> http://www.nanpa.com/ for more info.

  The telephone analogy doesn't work unfortunately Michael.  We have been down
that road before.

>
>
> > > Also, there are currently no annual fees for using IP addresses except for
> > > the few companies (mostly ISPs) who use large blocks of IP address space.
> >
> > Michael, this statment exhibits a fairly significant ignorance of what is
> > happening in the marketplace. It is becoming exceedingly common for costs
> > to be passed on to the consumer. Really, one can not blame the provider;
> > they are incurring costs, and they are passing them on.
>
> That's fine if this is happening in the competitive marketplace but it's
> not a good reason for ARIN to either jack up its rates or to start
> charging people for IP addresses that they got from their ISP.

  But there should be more CHOICES. Or ARIN should be able to allocate
IP blocks, large or small, to anyone on a fixed cost basis.  I think everyone
could live with that.  The other possibility would be to have many competing
IP registries.

> The basic
> principle here is that ARIN does not charge for IP adresses. They do
> charge various fees to sustain the registry and to supply services to the
> companies that are ARIN members or who deal directly with ARIN. But they
> do not control the financial affairs of those companies and require them
> to charge their customers for IP address space. If a company is doing so
> then they are doing it independently of ARIN.

  And here inlies the problem.  Not enough choice where a company or organization
can obtain IP blocks regardless of size.

>
>
> > > There is no lock-in with IP addresses because sunk costs are very low and
> > > easily controlled by use of dynamic addressing techniques such as DHCP and
> > > DNS.
> >
> > Please then, tell us all why ARIN exists, and is charging for large blocks
> > of addresses.
>
> ARIN cannot provide services for free. The services have to be funded
> somehow and it makes the most sense to use an industry funding model to
> sustain the registry. Free services are not a choice because that is not
> possible.

  No problem here with this.

>
>
> > There is absolute lock-in with ARIN, RIPE, and APNIC currently. One can
> > not "shop around" for IP address allocation if they wish to have portable
> > address space.
>
> Lock-in refers to the difficulty of changing suppliers. If a company were
> to move servers from the USA to France it would not experience any
> difficulty in changing IP addresses.

  Why should they have to change IP addresses?  What is needed here is portability
in this sort of instance.

> The addresses in France would work as
> well as the addresses that had been in use in the USA. There is no lock-in
> barrier to changing suppliers and, like with area codes, there is no need
> to change suppliers.

  Yes there is lock-in in changing suppliers in this instance or any other.  For this
proposed company to move to France, they must either get their IP's from
and ISP in that country or from RIPE.  That is not much choice.

> All the IP addresses allocate IP address space based
> on need.

  This is a false statement Michael.  Many ISPs have many more IP allocations
than they need.  SOme have been hoarding IP's for over two years.

> If you can demonstrate that you need the space, then you can get
> it.

  What is the criterion.  RFC2050?  That is a joke.

> If you only need a little bit of space then the registries would
> prefer that you deal with your ISP.

But what if the organization does not want to go with a local ISP.  Than what?Can the
request IP allocations the perceive they need from ARIN/RIPE/APNIC?

> If you need a lot of space then you
> won't have a difficulty paying the fees that the registries need to
> sustain themselves.
>
> And if you have a problem with your little block of address space being
> non-portable, then complain to Sprint.

  Why Sprint?  Isn't ARIN/RIPE/APNIC supposed to handle these problems?  If
not, why not?

> They are the ones that created this
> situation two years and three generations of router technology ago. Many
> people believe that Sprint no longer has any technical justification for
> their filtering policies and should change them. See my IW article of
> June 29th for example.
> http://www.internetworld.com/print/1998/06/29/infrastructure/19980629-infraex.html

  Well we certainly agree here.  But this is another problem all together.

>
>
> At this point the major technical constraint on IP allocations other than
> the finite size of the IPv4 address space is the size of the global
> routing table. There are many people, myself included, who believe that we
> can loosen up somewhat on IP allocations as long as it only causes a
> modest controlled growth in the routing table size. If we can come up with
> some reasonable wording for a policy that allows for prudent controlled
> routing table growth and gives us the ability to hold back if new
> technical problems arise due to that growth, then I would advise ARIN to
> implement such a policy. This may very well end up putting Sprint on the
> hot seat legally speaking but I don't care. I'm rather annoyed at the way
> Sprint's website was referring to ARIN's website claiming that ARIN
> policies were the reason for their filtering policies when the historical
> record clearly shows that a former Sprint employee unilaterally imposed
> these policies a couple of years ago stating the inability of Sprint's
> routers (I believe they were Cisco AGS+) to handle much more growth in
> routing table size.
>
> --
> Michael Dillon                 -               Internet & ISP Consulting
> Memra Communications Inc.      -               E-mail: michael@memra.com
> Check the website for my Internet World articles -  http://www.memra.com

 Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com