Folks, Rob and I have been asked by many people (among them the current funders of the NCC) to come up with ideas for funding the NCC in 1994 and maybe to provide addtitional funding in 1993. This is related to the strategic decisions which must be made about charging for the registry functions. Below is a *very* rough first draft representing out thinking in this. I circulate it for discussion during the agenda point registry funding at Praha local-ir meeting. Please do not take this as prejudicating anything. It is just some very basic thoughts. Comments welocme. Daniel RIPE NCC Funding Some General Observations DRAFT Vertsion 0.1 Rob Blokzijl Daniel Karrenberg Introduction When examining the problem of how the RIPE NCC should be funded, the question of "Who uses the NCC?" immediately comes to mind. And indeed the RARE CoA has asked for an answer to just this question. However, it is difficult to answer such a general question. A little easier might be "Who benefits from NCC services?". In this paper, an attempt has been made to analyse the prob- lem by categorising the services and user communities of the NCC. A single model for NCC funding has not yet been con- sidered, as this requires discussion and consensus from all the parties involved. Instead, this paper aims to examine the problem, discuss some of the possible options and to ar- rive at a framework which will promote further discussion. Categories of NCC Services When approaching the problem from the NCC user angle one can identify several classes of users according to the different services the NCC offers. Therefore we present the main ser- vices presently provided by the NCC first. For details about these services, please see the RIPE NCC Quarterly reports. Information Service - RIPE Document Store The biggest and most diverse group of NCC users are those makeing use of the NCC information services. The informa- tion services consist of various ways to retrieve informa- tion from what is called the "RIPE Document Store". Despite the name this carries not only documents but also software tools related to network management. The scope is wider than just RIPE but restricted to information relevant to Internet and RIPE activities. For instance the document store con- tains mirror images of the RARE, EBONE and IETF document stores including all RFC and all Internet draft documents. In the Internet tradition the document store is available to all sites on the Internet and additionally accessible from the public X.25 networks as well as EMPB(IXI). Users do not January 20, 1993 - 2 - need to register before using this information service. Logs are kept about usage though and summaries are published in the RIPE NCC Quarterly Reports * insert some usage stats* The user community of this service is the whole worldwide Internet. No registration is necessary. RIPE Network Management Database The RIPE network management database holds information about European IP networks (network in the sense of IP network numbers), DNS Domains and contact persons for these. Furth- er it contains routing policy information. Users do not need to register before querying the RIPE database. Logs are kept about usage though and summaries are published in the RIPE NCC Quarterly Reports. * insert some usage stats* The database is available to the whole worldwide Internet community. The community represented in the database is limited to Eu- ropean organisations with Internet connectivity. *stats* European Regional Internet Registry The RIPE NCC functions as the European regional registry for Internet numbers. The most important such numbers are the IP network numbers, which constitute the IP address space. The NCC provides a meachanism which enables European organisa- tion to obtain the address space they need in an efficient manner without the need to refer to the global registry in the US. At the same time the NCC ensures that usage of the address space fair and economical. In principle the NCC achieves the above by working through so called local registries. These are IP service providers assigning address space to their customers or "non-provider" registries assigning address space for local use. Wherever a local registry has not been established the NCC assigns ad- dress space directly. The NCC also handles all requests for larger amounts of address space directly, especially those for class B IP numbers. *insert numbers of registries* The user community for the regional registry functions is all European organisations using TCP/IP protocols and desir- ing unique addresses. Note that this is larger than the com- munity connected to what we call the European part of the Internet. Looking at it in a hierarchical fashion the direct user com- munity are the European IP service providers and the "non- provider" registries. This the direct assignments by the January 20, 1993 - 3 - NCC in cases where there is no appropriate local registry. RIPE Support The RIPE NCC supports RIPE activities in general. This in- cludes providing mailing list service as well as some secre- tarial service to RIPE and the RIPE working groups, prepara- tion and logistics for three RIPE meetings a year in varying locations for an increasing amount of attendees. The last meeting was attended by approximately 75 people. The NCC also participates in global activities representing RIPE. The direct user community of these services are the organi- sations participating in RIPE. The indirect user commmunity are all organisations connected to the European part of the Internet because RIPE is the organisation coordinating the European Internet. General Coordination The NCC also performs a host of small and/or incidental coordination functions related to the European part of the Internet which are not easy to categorise. This is normal for a focal point of distributed activities like the RIPE NCC. Categories of RIPE NCC Users Based on the different services offered one can disitinguish different categories of NCC users. We will do this in a hierarchical fashion by defining a number of user categories which are progressively smaller subsets of each other. The Internet at Large The most general category is users of Internet protocols and the Internet worldwide. The information and database query- ing services of the NCC are open to the whole global Inter- net community. Charging for these services is nesxt to im- possible in the current Internet framework because users do not need to register before using these services. The sheer number of users makes traditional billing methods unworkable as well. If it was practicable to bill for these services it would probably be counterproductive because their usage helps keeping the Internet coordinated and keeps quite a bit of load off the NCC itself as well as the help desks of the service providers. January 20, 1993 - 4 - European TCP/IP Users The next category is all organisations using TCP/IP in Eu- rope. This category is a subset of the previous one. In ad- dition to the global Internet community this community uses the regional Internet registry and database registration services. These organisations are known with contact infor- mation, so billing is at least theoretically possible. The only basis for billing which is obvious at this level is the adress space. Once could charge either per assignment or one could "rent" address space. The limits of practicability here are the number of orgaisations, the legal implications, especially with holders of already assigned address space. Another prerequisite is global agreement on the charges to prevent "black imports". Our conclusion is that this is impractical for the time being but could be valuable in the future, especially as a tool to rationalise address space usage. It remains doubtful however whether it will ever become practi- cable and economical to do. European Internet Users The next category is all organisation connected to the Euro- pean Internet. In addition to the services used by the pre- vious categories organisations in this category can depend more sophisticated use of the RIPE database registration service because of the role the database plays in distribut- ing routing policy information. Because these organisations are connected they are alos more likely to benefit from the general coordination activities of the RIPE NCC. Charging these users could be done in form of a poeriodical database registration charge. However this could work out counterproductive to the goal of manageability of the Euro- pean Internet if organisations or service providers find ways of achieving the desired connectivity without register- ing. Also the measurement of use and the charging model will be hard to agree. The number of entities to bill is still large. European Internet Service Providers Each organisation in the previous category either is con- nected through a service provider or is itself such a ser- vice provider. The service providers make use of all NCC services the previous category uses. However they do so much more directly than their customers, the users of the Europe- an Intnernet. The service providers interact directly with the NCC for the registry function, as members of RIPE and when using the RIPE database for trouble shooting and rout- January 20, 1993 - 5 - ing. Most of the time the service providers act on behalf of their customers. Charging the service providers could be achieved in the same way as above through a database registration charge and with the same drawbacks Also the use of the registry service could be billed, with similar difficulties. The big benefit of funding via the service providers is that the number of entities to bill is relatively small and -even more importantly- there is a chance to come to a consensus about the charging model. On the other hand the wider Euro- pean user community will be funding the NCC services from which they benefit via the providers. So the users having a direct benefit pay, albeit indirectly. *list service providers from local registty list* Making suggestions for that charging model needs consider- ably more time than we have had so far to write this paper. Any simplistic model suggested and simulated so far was un- fair and/or might cause providers economise in undesirable ways. So we will just present an incomplete list of the problems: What service measures to charge on? registry service ehat measures? do not penalise well organised local registries! do not reward service providers putting load on the NCC by not running a local registry! do not stimulate bad adress space usage pat- terns! do not break route aggregation! database service what measures? do not discourage registration! reward organised local maintenance of database! Legal Framework? how to organise? what to do with providers who "do not p(l)ay"? January 20, 1993 - 6 - How to build consensus? RIPE is the obvious place! How to proceed? Conclusion Looking at the services and the user communities the most practical general model is funding via the service provid- ers. If this much can be agreed then an activity can be started to further work things out within this group. Because this needs more work we suggest that in order to seek additional funding for (part of) 1993 all identifiable service providers not contributing yet are approached for a voluntary contribution and all commitments including the al- ready established ones are publisised publicised within RIPE. January 20, 1993