[members-discuss] Charging scheme discussion

Thomas said ...
> As a side comment, I have the felling that in a per such world , I would
> pay more to RIPE than I pay now... so I am not asking for it to try to
> save some money.

A number of the UK RIPE members I speak to, all think we overpay, and that
we don't get "value for money" when (essentially) RIPE is simply there to
maintain a database of something that RIPE *don't pay for* - and whilst we
don't all agree with the ARIN model, I know we'd certainly pay ~1/2 of the
amount we do now, and for any business, that's something worth considering !

* should some members pay more than others - probably

There will always be some who will use more "ripe time" and therefore have a
higher "cost" to the organisation

Perhaps the "solution" to that is charge everyone the same, and offer a
"rebate" off the next years fees based on the number of applications made
(less is better) number of support tickets raised (less is better) and
number of non-essential projects supported (less is better)

* should fees be based on numbers of ip addresses - absolutely not

Number of assignments - yes, makes some sense, more PA, more PI, more ASN =
more DB objects = (to a small degree) more cost

"count" of ip's within a block - no, it's back to them being a "commodity"
(altering the tax status) 

If an organisation justified and uses a /23 and other justified and uses a
/21 there is no difference in the cost to RIPE of the 2 different DB entries
- in fact bigger blocks make for cheaper routing ;)

* should the fees keep going up - not at all

Costs should be going down as they're shared over more members, and there is
less work to do, as the number of "resources" left is ever shrinking !

> Thinking aloud, should RIPE propose several options every year instead
> of one. 

I think we need to revisit the issue regularly, but not annually - every 3
years maybe ...

I do have some questions/concerns over the TF finding/decisions,
particularly one that needs clarification and could be "counter productive"
to us all.

We all understand that IPv4 is pretty-much-gone

Many of us understand IPv6 should be a solution

Some of us have been dual-stacked for ~10 years and are fed up waiting on
the rest of you catching up ;)

TaskForce Report says ...
> PI address space should be charged separately and there should be no
double charging

If we're going to "accelerate"the acceptance of IPv6 (which is in all of our
interests) then anyone using PI IPv4 _probably_ needs some PI IPv6

If you're going to charge then for both you put an artificial barrier
(doubling their cost), and they'll never want the v6 ...

> There should be a differentiation in charge depending on assignment size,
e.g. a /18 is charged more than a /24.

Why ?

What more work is there for RIPE to do ?
What more "cost" therefore is there for RIPE to bear ?

> There is no need to charge for ASNs. 

16bit ASNs are equally in short supply, and the majority of deployed routers
don't understand longer ASNs - so if there's to be no charge for ANSs, then
charging obviously isn't based on scarcity ...

> Regardless of how PI space and ASNs are charged, there should be no
distinction between IPv6 PI and IPv4 PI

Again, to reiterate, if you start charging for IPv6 PI *and* IPv4 PI, you
will knock back the use of IPv6 another 10 years, in which case we may as
well just scrap it entirely.

Rob