206.82.160.0/22

Tue Sep 26 07:06:43 UTC 1995

>I'm arguing that economics have to enter the picture for any application
>for IP address space a registry receives. 

As I have mentioned before, in the case of APNIC, there will be a cost
associated with requesting address space:

US $10,000/year for Large ISPs
US $5,000/year for Medium ISPs
US $2,500/year for Small ISPs
US $1,500/year for Non-ISPs
US $1,000 startup fee.

The category is self-determined by the organization.  The charging
scheme used by APNIC is nearly identical to that used by the European
registry, RIPE-NCC, varying only in the amount charged (last I
checked).  Obviously, a college student with four modems in her garage
is most likely not going to be able to afford US $2,500/year for
registry services, thus it is conceivable that ISPs in this class will
obtain their address space from their upstream provider.  Arguably the
correct place.  Further, non-ISP organizations will be obligated to
pay US $2,500 when they request the space, US $1,500 per year for
continued APNIC services, so it is likely the small (/24+) requests
will tend to move towards their providers which (presumably) are
significantly cheaper.  Again, arguably the correct thing happens.
Such an approach is perhaps not as clean as charging for IP address
space directly, but it does seem to be a reasonable compromise given
political and theological constraints.  Note that an organization
claiming to be an ISP will obtain a block of sufficient size to avoid
most proposed prefix length filters.

However, at this time, I am unaware of any plans InterNIC has
regarding charging for IP registration services.  InterNIC's approach
seems to be (speaking from observation only) to request "small" ISPs
to obtain their space from their upstream provider, however if the ISP
insists, InterNIC will allocate them long prefix provider independent
space (as exemplified by the prefix that started this thread).

>My goal in asking that the registries charge for
>their services is: better services, better allocations of IP address
>space (i.e. allotion of IP address space to those who are serious about
>using it).

The place you should be directing such comments to is the US NSF.
Note that you should stress charging for registration services as
opposed to charing for address space.  The latter is a political
minefield that will simply muddy the waters.

>But the registries don't seem willing to stop considering IP address
>space exhaustion as a BIG problem, and I don't blame them. We have two
>problems which are interrelated; you can't ignore one and solve the
>other, because the one you ignore may become far worse as a result of
>your solution.

As I pointed out a couple of days ago, there is a high likelihood that
to encourage CIDR, you will discourage address conservation.  However,
my observation is that there is a general feeling that address space
exhaustion will take care of itself -- as the address space becomes
less available, people will:

a) become more efficient in utilizing the space 
b) use NAT/ALGs
c) obtain address space in "non-traditional" means (e.g., buying it
   from another organization (how many As does BBN have? :-)).
d) migrate to IPv6

See RFC 1744 for more details.  Note that option c is theoretically
not available -- according to current and likely future guidelines,
buying/selling of addresses is essentially disallowed, addresses
should be returned to the orgininating registry to be reallocated as
criteria are met.  I would be very interested in hearing people's
opinions regarding this aspect of current allocation guidelines.

Regards,
-drc