ARIN and Network Solutions: consumer rip-off

[Roger Marquis <marquis@roble.com>]

> You might want to read my Internet World column of March 16th
> http://www.internetworld.com/print/1998/03/16/infrastructure/19980316-expert.html
> and have a look at the information on the ARIN website at
> http://www.arin.net especially the mailing list archives section.

Thank's for the pointer and the article.  We always encourage customers
to use RFC1918, DHCP and LPCP wherever possible.  For various reasons
(directly connected nodes, equipment that doesn't support VLSM, etc.) this
is not always feasible.   

This leaves mid-tier and regional ISPs who only need a few class Cs
stuck between a rock and a hard place.  On one side are higher tier
ISPs who seem to think there's a market for class Cs at $1000/year for
which they in turn pay ~$78/year.  On the other hand it can be
difficult or impossible to change all of your customer's IP addresses
every time your own ISP becomes insolvent due to poor quality of
service, rate increases or aging technology.

ARIN's fee structure and allocation requirements have exasperated this
problem to the degree that many small net-dependent businesses are
finding it increasingly difficult to operate.  While there are valid
technical reasons for keeping address fragmentation to a minimum there
is no similar rational behind ARIN (or Network Solutions') fee
structure.  Instead of creating roadblocks to new technologies like
Internet commerce and security ARIN should be paving the way by
charging reasonable fees, moderating allocation requirements,
reclaiming unused blocks (of the many corporations like Apple with
their class A), and imposing guidelines for address resale to prevent
unreasonable profiteering.

The nature of monopolys however leads me to question ARINs ability to
implement reasonable fees, forward thinking policies, and acceptable
quality of service.  The fees currently charged by both ARIN and
Network Solutions should be proof enough that this sort of
"self-regulation" simply does not work.

Roger Marquis