[Fwd: Kremen VS Arin Antitrust Lawsuit - Anyone have feedback?]

Fri Sep 8 15:03:43 UTC 2006

>  The debate there will be around the 
> preferential treatment that larger ARIN members get (in terms of larger 
> allocations, lower per address fees, etc), which Kremen construes as 
> being anticompetitive via creating artificial barriers to entry.  That 
> may end up being changed.

Your statement about preferential treatment is factually
incorrect. Larger ARIN members do not get larger allocations.
It is the larger network infrastructures that get the larger
allocations which is not directly tied to the size of the
company. Yes, larger companies often have larger infrastructures.
However, ARIN gives the addresses based primarily on the 
number of hosts attached to the network infrastructure.
It has been argued in the past that ARIN's policies are
prejudiced AGAINST larger organizations because the rules
do not properly allow for the scaling overhead necessary
due to the complexity of larger networks.

As for fees, there are no per-address fees and there 
never have been. When we created ARIN, we paid special
attention to this point because we did not want to create
the erroneous impression that people were "buying" IP
addresses. The fees are related to the amount of effort
required to service an organization and that is not
directly connected to the number of addresses.

--Michael Dillon
(no longer in any official ARIN capacity. Just another member)