With there being a fee structure coming into place for obtaining address
space, businesses are going to end up being more conservative with their
space requests. Maybe. I suspect many will. If you expect to assign
a /17 worth of space over the next year, why ask for all /17 of it now.
Why not get a /19 each quarter as needed. With the fee structure in
place, there would be less panic about space becoming too scarce.
Now if this does take place, and I believe it will although I am not sure
to what scale, that will mean that each business and ISP will have more
smaller prefixes. That means more BGP announcements and larger tables and
an impact on routers.
Thoughts?
Think of what happened way back when, when InterNIC began to charge for
domain names. I for one was outraged at first, and then calmed down and
learned to "bite the bullet", as did many others...
However, looking at the high fees imposed by ARIN for address assignment,
I really hope this practice will not remain in its current form. As
anyone can clearly see, the fees are extremely high, and will surely cause
a raise in costs that are incurred by the end user in one way or another.
Put simply, I would LOVE to hear some justification for the high fees
imposed by ARIN (in terms of administrative work on their end that is, not
considering the whole scarcity of addresses factor).
I sure hope millions of net users worldwide will not be driven to colocate
their equipment abroad, or circumvent IP addresses by doing
firewalling/port forwarding, or something wacky of the sort! 
-=asr
However, looking at the high fees imposed by ARIN for address assignment,
I really hope this practice will not remain in its current form. As
anyone can clearly see, the fees are extremely high, and will surely cause
a raise in costs that are incurred by the end user in one way or another.
Listen, many of us have already lived through the e-mail Jihad on
the ARIN mailing list, so I really don't want to see this thread
perpetuated here. Please, subscribe to the naipr list and have a
blast, but please, not here.
I would suggest that you take a little time, read the 'recommended
reading' list assembled on the ARIN web pages, surf the naipr
mailing list archives, etc.
I would also suggest that you examine the fact that the Internet
community in the European (RIPE) and Asia Pacific (APNIC) communities
have been living with similar *service* models for a few years.
Put simply, I would LOVE to hear some justification for the high fees
imposed by ARIN (in terms of administrative work on their end that is, not
considering the whole scarcity of addresses factor).
They are a not-for-profit organization which must be self-sustaining.
'Nuff said.
Happy Holidays,
- paul
Think of what happened way back when, when InterNIC began to charge for
domain names. I for one was outraged at first, and then calmed down and
learned to "bite the bullet", as did many others...
Way back when? I still think that's recent history...
Anyway, it didn't do anything to reduce the number of domain requests.
Like 800 numbers, I think the price will continue to go up. Then after IPv6
is finally deployed, (if it doesn't get too complicated and fail like
certain other good, but unmanagebly complex technologies).... Someday the
price will come down. For now, companies that have to have it, *have* to
have it. They will pay whatever it takes, and charge more for their
products.
However, looking at the high fees imposed by ARIN for address assignment,
I really hope this practice will not remain in its current form. As
anyone can clearly see, the fees are extremely high, and will surely cause
a raise in costs that are incurred by the end user in one way or another.
Put simply, I would LOVE to hear some justification for the high fees
imposed by ARIN (in terms of administrative work on their end that is, not
considering the whole scarcity of addresses factor).
Justification? Well, there's the porche, the boat, the lear jet.
Maintenance is expensive... And people will pay the price for address
space. Its a scarce resource. Its no longer a government run operation.
Now you can empathize a little when government workers are forced into the
business market. ;-0
--Dean
In retrospect, I believe Internic's decision to control the flood of
domain registrations has turned out to be a positive one. Charging for
address space, on the other hand, is a seperate issue.
Domain name registration is something that, as many are sure to agree, was
being abused. Address space tends to require a more formal request,
including justification, and (the discussion of GE's 3.0.0.0/8 and
4.0.0.0/8's aquisitions aside), I feel those delegating address space try
their best to insure delegations aren't abused. I'm confident others have
had their address space providers demand CIDR be well implemented before
they receive any address space.
Address space is, IMO, something that shouldn't be charged for, but should
instead have procedures in place to insure those requiring additional
space do, in fact, require it.
Cheers,
-Chris Portman
Chris Portman ================================================= chris@unix.org
Senior Systems Operations and Security iSTAR Internet Inc.
(613) 788-7767 Ottawa, ON, CA