Subject: Re: Addresses and ports and taxes -- oh my!

From: "vinton g. cerf" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Aug 2000 10:51:11 -0400

Dennis

thanks for drawing attention to this question. One of the reasons
for fees, of course, is that the Address Registries also have responsibility
to support ICANN so they have some new costs in addition to their operating
costs (or if you like, their operating costs include support for ICANN).

It is a very good question whether one's internet-enabled household appliances
will induce a monthly charges - do you suppose there would be a way to have a
one-time charge to "pay" for some number of such addresses - perhaps built into
the cost of the appliance (and paid by the manufacturer who "burns" an address
into the device - at least the low order 64 bits or something to make it
end-to-end unique)? 

Please don't flame me for thinking out loud - Dennis' point is a good one and
we ought to discuss - perhaps in a smaller group than the whole of ietf announce
list!

Vint Cerf

At 05:32 AM 8/3/2000 -0700, Dennis Glatting wrote:

>I've been thinking about the issue of ARIN fees from last night's plenary
>and arrived at two philosophical questions.
>
>I run my business out of my home and my DSL link is an important part of
>my business. About six months ago my ISP started charging me a $20/mo. fee
>for my /27 because "ARIN is now charging us." I am unhappy about this fee
>but I understand its motivation -- conversation of IP space, though I
>believe fees do not really effect the true wasters of this space and the
>fee, or as it is called in some circles, a tax, is probably misguided.
>Nonetheless, with IPv6, I naively hoped, until last night, the
>conservation of space issues would go away, and thus the fees. Big duh!
>
>If we look at today's marketing hype and think forward a bit there is a
>thrust to "Internet enable" appliances, such as dryers, ovens, and
>stereos. Assuming ARIN fees persist, my first philosophical question is
>whether any consumer of these appliances MUST periodically (e.g., monthly)
>drop coins in the ARIN fountain?
>
>Thinking laterally, the reserved port space (<1024) is tight. Using the
>same IP space conversation logic, should fees be charged to conserve port
>space? If so, my second philosophiocal question is what is our role, as
>protocol designers and IETF volunteers, in creating, what is slowly
>becoming, an Internet consumption taxation model?
>
>Imagine for a moment the effect of a fee against the allocation or use of
>port 80 or 443, maybe even port 25 or 53.
>
>
>
>

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---

From: Rick H Wesson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 11:33:05 -0700 (PDT)

Vint,

the ASO members don't support ICANN on a per block basis, in fact ICANN's
Task Force on Funding (TFF) observed that the IP Address Registries
operate on a non-profit business model from member fees and should foot
10% of ICANN's budget. (see 
http://www.icann.org/tff/final-report-draft-30oct99.htm)

If ICANN's budget grows the ASO's responsibility grows proportionally. If
the IP Address Registries (ASO Members) are doing cost-recovery then its
expected the price for membership will increase or the cost for a
delegation will increase. It is reasonable to assume that an address
maintance fee will eventually passed along to the consumer just to
maintain the 10% ICANN maintance.

I don't want to see IP Address space charges, no matter its version,
induce a monthly charges on the end-user side. Just this year the ASO's
10% responsibility will amount to $428,000 USD. If you don't think that
ICANN's budget will grow under stand tha ARIN's 2000-01 budget is 5.2M and
ICANN's budget for 2000-01 is 5.0M 

If you want to keep ICANN out of your pocket, ensure they stay lean and
focused on technical administration of Assigned Names and Numbers and not
inflating its own self worth.

I would prefer having ICANN set the ASO funding requirements in such a way
that it did not encourage ASO members to pass on the ICANN maintance fees
in a per assignment basis. In short Manageing ICANN's budget can have the
largest impact on the costs of future IP Address Registry operations.

I'd be happy to carry this conversation on in another forum, just let me
know where that is.

thanks,

-rick