Are there any suggestions/ideas on best practices when it comes to co-lo
allocation of addresses to its customers? Is there any site that may have
some pointers? The dilemma is whether to charge or no to charge separate for
the IPs. Should it be a cause built into their overall contract? Any ideas?
My approach (I don't think there is anything close to a BCP for this):
Charge if they'll pay, don't if they demand it for free. It's a great fee
to knock off to close the deal.
But only give them what they can justify, unless they are potentially a
huge revenue customer, to who you would give whatever they want (within
reason).
$50 per /24 at the high end, $5 per /29 at the low end.
Andy
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Andy Dills 301-682-9972
Xecunet, LLC www.xecu.net
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Dialup * Webhosting * E-Commerce * High-Speed Access
Be careful on charging for it...
I know of cases where adult-websites/spammers (who have more money than
they know what to do with) will buy 8 class-C's and when one gets
blacklisted, they move onto the next... by the time they're on the 8th,
the 1st is available again...
If you make it a policy to charge for IP, people will not pay as much
attention to the "as much as you can justify" comment. If it's free,
people respect the conditions.
If you can get them to respect the conditions AND pay you for it, that's
the best situation...
hope this helps,
-marc.
I would be extremely cautious about following that advice. It's pretty
simple to get more IP addresses from ARIN if you follow their processes,
do your allocations according to their guidelines, and keep good
documentation. Those who don't follow the ARIN guidelines tend to run
into a lot of trouble when it comes time to get more IP addresses,
especially when the customers for whom they ignore the guidelines stand
out as their really big allocations.
As far as whether to charge goes, that's really a business decision rather
than an operational one. Arin charges somewhere between 60 cents and a
tenth of a cent per IP address, depending on how big you are. The process
of obtaining the IP address blocks costs you something, as does processing
the paperwork associated with the justifications, setting up and
maintaining the routing, and so forth. Meanwhile, you're also charging
your customers for various other services. You may or may not be making a
sufficient amount to cover your costs in dealing with IP address
allocation, and you may or may not be in a situation where your customers
would be willing to pay you more.
-Steve