ARIN and Network Soultions: consumer rip-off

[Roger Marquis <marquis@roble.com>]

In antitrust@essential.org, John Howard Brown wrote:
> Before I get flamed let me apologize for the intemperate use of the term
> Spam, which Flemings contributions definitely are not.  Nonetheless, the
> point remains, isn't there some more appropriate forum for these discussions?

I don't know about the technical stuff but the discussion of ARIN's
unsupervised and largely undocumented rip-off of Internet addresses
does belong on the antitrust list.

As a first person example: we've been looking for a secondary ISP to
serve our 2 class C subnets (500 addresses).  We're forced to rely on
larger ISP for those addresses because ARIN will not allocate address
space to organizations needing fewer than 8,000 addresses.  The fee for
8,000 IP addresses will cost a non-ISP a one time fee of $2,500.  An
ISP on the other hand must pay that $2,5000 _annually_.  Of course ISPs
are passing on these fees.  We've been quoted up to $1,000 per class C
(254 addresses)!  These fees are definitely going to impact our
Internet dependent business.

Like Network Solutions ARIN is using underhanded tactics to set this
fee structure and the fees are similarly way out of line with the cost
of providing them.  Network Solutions incurs a cost of $3 to $5 per
domain name yet charges $50 (recently reduced to $35) per domain!
ARIN's cost of providing reverse domain resolution (IP address ->
hostname) is almost identical to the cost of providing forward
resolution (i.e., $3-$5 per class C) yet they're charging nearly
_1,000_ times that amount!

ARIN is operating independently and virtually without government or
public supervision or input.  These people will get rich and there
doesn't seem to be anything smaller shops like ours can do about it.
Like Network Solutions (the current Internic) their fees are way out of
line with their costs and, like the Internic, only the courts seem to
be able to do anything about it.  Along those lines is there any way a
business like ours can participate in the current lawsuits against ARIN
and Network Solutions?

Network Solutions needed no authorization to split-off reverse IP
resolution to ARIN (without cutting their fee in half) and both
organization are splitting-off whois service and other IP/name domains
wherever possible.  How long will these robber barons of the Internet
continue getting away with this?

Roger Marquis