[External] Re: Normal ARIN registration service fees for LRSA entrants after 31 Dec 2023 (was: Fwd: [arin-announce] Availability of the Legacy Fee Cap for New LRSA Entrants Ending as of 31 December 2023)

Thu Sep 15 21:18:26 UTC 2022

Speaking from the enterprise / end site perspective I would bet there are a lot of legacy holders that other than maybe updating their reverse DNS records once or twice haven’t looked at ARIN policies or their allocation since the late 1980s. In most cases there really is not strong technical reason to, the stuff just keeps working.

We are put in kind of an awkward place by the current policies. On one hand some of us would like to be good Internet citizens and implement things like IRR and RPKI for our resources to help the larger community. But show the RSA/LRSA to your lawyers with the justification that "I would like to implement RPKI, but everything will keep working even if we don't." You can bet they will never jump on board. On one hand there is a push from ARIN and the larger community to use these advanced services, but on the other hand the fees and risk far outweigh the benefits. (Heck the fees aren’t even that big of a deal, just the risk of loosing control of our legacy allocations.)

Tom Krenn
Network Architect
Enterprise Architecture - Information Technology

-----Original Message-----
From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+tom.krenn=hennepin.us at nanog.org> On Behalf Of John Curran
Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2022 3:35 PM
To: John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com>
Cc: North American Network Operators' Group <nanog at nanog.org>
Subject: [External] Re: Normal ARIN registration service fees for LRSA entrants after 31 Dec 2023 (was: Fwd: [arin-announce] Availability of the Legacy Fee Cap for New LRSA Entrants Ending as of 31 December 2023)

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John -

Your summary is not inaccurate; I will note that ARIN’s approach is the result of aiming for a different target – that more specifically being the lowest possible fees administered on an equitable basis for _all resource holders_ in the region.

For more than two decades legacy resource holders have been provided the opportunity to normalize their relations with ARIN by entry into an LRSA - thus receiving the same services on the same terms and conditions as all others in the region (and also with a favorable fee cap applied to their total annual registry fees.)  While many folks have taken advantage of that offer over the years, it’s quite possible that all of those interested have already considered the matter and hence going forward we are returning to the refrain of the entire community in seeking the lowest fees applied equitably to all in the region.

As we’ve recently added more advanced services that may be of interest to many in the community (RPKI and authenticated IRR) and also have just made a favorable simplification to the RSA in section 7 (an area that has been problematic for some organizations in the past), it is important that ARIN not subset availability of the legacy fee cap without significant notice, as there many be a few folks out there who were unaware of LRSA with fee cap availability and/or haven’t recently taken a look at the various tradeoffs.

In any case, legacy resource holders who don’t care for these advanced services (whose development and maintenance is paid for by the ARIN community) can simply continue to maintain their legacy resources in the ARIN registry.  They do not have to do anything, as ARIN is continuing to provide basic registration services to the thousands of non-contracted legacy resource holders (including online updates to your resources, reverse DNS services,
etc.) without fee or contract.

Thanks!
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers

> On 15 Sep 2022, at 3:41 PM, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com> wrote:
>
> John Curran wrote:
>>> We strongly encourage all legacy resource holders who have not yet
>>> signed an LRSA to cover their legacy resources to
>
> Randy Bush <randy at psg.com> wrote:
>> consult a competent lawyer before signing an LRSA
>
> Amen to that.  ARIN's stance on legacy resources has traditionally
> been that ARIN would prefer to charge you annually for them, and then
> "recover" them (take them away from you) if you ever stop paying, or
> if they ever decide that you are not using them wisely.  If you once
> agree to an ARIN contract, your resources lose their "legacy" status
> and you become just another sharecropper subject to ARIN's future
> benevolence or lack thereof.
>
> The change recently announced by John Curran will make the situation
> very slightly worse, by making ARIN's annual fees for legacy resources
> changeable at their option, instead of being capped by contract.  ARIN
> management could have changed their offer to be better, if they wanted
> to attract legacy users, but they made an explicit choice to do the
> opposite.
>
> By contrast, RIPE has developed a much more welcoming stance on legacy
> resources, including:
>
>  *  retaining the legacy status of resources after a transfer or sale
>  *  allowing resources to be registered without paying annual fees to RIPE
>     (merely paying a one-time transaction fee), so that later non-payment
>     of annual fees can't be used as an excuse to steal the resources.
>  *  agreeing that RIPE members will keep all their legacy resources even if
>     they later cease to be RIPE members
>
> You are within the RIPE service area if your network touches Europe,
> northern Asia, or Greenland.  This can be as simple as having a rented
> or donated server located in Europe, or as complicated as running a
> worldwide service provider.  If you have a presence there, you can
> transfer your worldwide resources out from under ARIN policies and put
> them under RIPE's jurisdiction instead.
>
> Moving to RIPE is not an unalloyed good; Europeans invented
> bureaucracy, and RIPE pursues it with vigor.  And getting the above
> treatment may require firmly asserting to RIPE that you want it,
> rather than accepting the defaults.  But their motives are more
> benevolent than ARIN's toward legacy resource holders; RIPE honestly
> seems to want to gather in legacy resource holders, either as RIPE
> members or not, without reducing any of the holders' rights or abilities.  I commend them for that.
>
> Other RIRs may have other good or bad policies about legacy resource
> holders.  As Randy proposed, consult a lawyer competent in legacy
> domain registration issues before making any changes.
>
>       John

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