ARIN fee structure (was: re: 2749 routes AT RISK - Re: TIMELY/IMPORTANT)

Wed Apr 6 03:07:51 UTC 2022

On 5 Apr 2022, at 8:38 PM, Dan Mahoney (Gushi) <danm at prime.gushi.org<mailto:danm at prime.gushi.org>> wrote:

But say they sign an LRSA: Those $0 fees would go up to 150, this year, 175 next year, 200 the following...250 in year five... to be able to simply add DNSSEC, RPKI, and Validated IRR.  $25 a year does not seem like a lot, but for a "hobbyist block" it adds on quickly.

[If the fee for my amateur radio license worked that way, I would not have taken the initiative, and I see exploration of these two things as very similar: a somewhat lost-art with the spectrum being quickly demanded and reclaimed for corporate use, and a thing one can only learn by experience.]

To add corresponding ipv6 (say, two /48s), it would go to 3x-small for the v6 blocks in a normal RSA, plus the above (capped but increasing) costs for the LRSA.

At that point, if I'm reading correctly, you're paying as much in the fifth year as you would be for 2x-small, with a normal RSA, with it still climbing $25 a year.  You effectively have side-stepped any use that the fee cap offers you, and it becomes a liability rather than a benefit.

- Dan

Ref: https://www.arin.net/resources/fees/fee_schedule/

Dan -

You have it correct, and not surprisingly the comparison of paying ARIN fees compared to receiving just basic registry services for your legacy IPv4 address block - without any cost at all - is indeed unfavorable.

Note that ARIN has worked rather diligently over the years to more evenly recover costs and lower overall fees to customers.  At our formation in 1997, our smallest customer size category was those with an IPv4 block of /20 or smaller, with a one-time fee of $2500 and ISPs paying that same amount of $2500 each year.   This was necessary because ARIN has always had to fully recover its costs each year, and the establishment of these fees was quite a shock to those who heard that just a few years earlier that they could have obtained IPv4 address blocks just for asking...

Since that time, we’ve managed to reduce fees several times over the years, and have added smaller size categories, and worked to spread the costs out over more customers in a fairer manner among those receiving similar services.  It’s not perfect, but at present (per the our present fee schedule that you cited above) our smallest customers pay a single registry service fee of $250/year, and that covers services for a /24 of IPv4, /36 of IPv6, and any number of AS#s.   These fees are the same for all organizations - ISP, end-user, cloud, individual, hosting company, etc,; and the fees double for every 4x increase in IPv4 space or 16x IPv6, going to $500 annually, $1000, etc.

Our prior fee schedule distinguished between end-user and ISPs, and provided for paying a fixed $150 per year maintenance fee for each record in the database (regardless of size and/or whether it was IPv4, IPv6, or an ASN) – this resulted in circumstances such as an organization with /16 or /8 of IPv4 space paying a total of $150 per year, whereas a very small ISP that happened happens to two small disjoint IPv4 blocks, an IPv6 allocation and an ASN paying $600 per year.  Now we instead treat all the customers the same based solely on the resources in the registry, and this does mean that our smallest customers will see a $250 (or $500 if they have slightly larger holdings) per year invoice from ARIN.

[As already noted, legacy resource holders who bring their resources under RSA can either maintain two relationships (and get the benefit of a $150 [increasing $25/year] total fee cap on their IPv4 registry fees) or combine all together under one bill without the cap and pay the same as everyone else - it’s their choice and for those will larger IPv4 legacy blocks may find benefit for the time being in keeping two distinct billing relationships.]

Would I love to see ARIN’s registry fees drop even lower?  Absolutely, and that’s not inconceivable as more legacy resources come under registry services contract.  Do I think that $250 (or even $500 per year) is a rather significant annual cost for the hobbyist who has IP address space?  Absolutely – it’s quite substantial, and will never compare favorably against receiving basic registry services and paying nothing.  Do I believe that it is an unfair amount for a small customer to pay annually given the services provided and a fair allocation of costs across the entire ARIN customer base?  No, I believe it is quite fair - but as noted above, I would also like to continue to see if drop for the smallest registry customers if that can be managed in any reasonable manner.

Thanks,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers

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