For two years Israel has been handling "allocations" in a free fashion. Lately, as I am sure with everyone, the burden of registering IP class C networks, domain names, contact people, inverse domain names, and routing updates is taking more and more of our time, personnel and our national DNS primary CPU. It is not uncommon for sites that have no Internet connectivity to request IP numbers for their private networks. It is not uncommon for local dialup (SLIP) service providers asking for us to register domain names on their behalf and then charging their customers a monthly fee for the "privilege" of owning their own "DNS" entry. When the entire matter was on a one or two request per month basis, the university non-profit consortium was able to handle the requests on a volunteer basis. This is no longer the case. We have no NSF to fund a scaled down Internic (which handles requests free of charge since it is government funded) on a national scale and since RIPE NCC charges its member countries an annual fee we have to find a "fair" way to recover not only the RIPE NCC costs but also the local manpower and computing costs. We are planning on implementing the following surcharges: - Any organization wanting a class C IP network will be charged $xx per class C network assigned. - Any organization wanting a domain name assigned in the .il domain will be charged $xx. - Any organization that wants ILAN to handle inverse domain name registration will be charged $xx. - Any organization that wants its IP network to be routed globally will be charged $xx. I would like to hear what other countries who are in a similar position are doing in this area. Should we already start discussing numbers? Thanks, Hank
Hank I don't know whether we're in a similar position here, except that I understand what you're saying and have a lot of sympathy for your proposal. I'd make one suggestion about the tariffs you mention. In addition to once-off charges, there should be recurrent charges. These would be planned to cover ongoing maintenance costs. They would also encourage customers to use the resource prudently. These charges should be small but noticeable. For example, if an organisation is paying $yy a year for the use of a Class C network, then it will be quick to hand it back when it no longer needs it for any reason. Perhaps you meant that the charges proposed by recurrent. If so, sorry for wasting the time of the list. Cheers. Mike
For two years Israel has been handling "allocations" in a free fashion. Lately, as I am sure with everyone, the burden of registering IP class C networks, domain names, contact people, inverse domain names, and routing updates is taking more and more of our time, personnel and our national DNS primary CPU.
Naturally you took this on on a purely voluntary base (nobody forced you to do it). I would consider it to be very improper to start charging "users" without a clear consenus in your country on how the various registration issues etc. should be handled and if they want your organisation to continue with this role in the first place. The current German solution seems to be very good and would seem to avoid the obvious conflict of interest issues that immediately arise if non-neutral organisations provide these services. Simon
poole@eunet.ch writes:
The current German solution seems to be very good and would seem to avoid the obvious conflict of interest issues that immediately arise if non-neutral organisations provide these services.
Just to explain for those who do not know: In Germany the major Internet service providers got together (in spite of serious historical antagonism I might add) and formed a consortium which funds and supervises the DE-NIC. DE-NIC offers both DNS and address registration services. This is paid and controlled by the members of the consortium who in turn pay it from the revenue from their customers. Providing service to not connected organisations is seen as an investment in future customers. I do not know how the consortium deals with new service providers which are not yet a paying member. But I guess they will suggest they become a member. The operation of the DE-NIC was awarded to the comp centre at Karlsruhe University after a public call for tender by the consortium. As long as DE-NIC serves everyone in Germany I consider this is an excellent way to solve the problem. Daniel
Folks, I know that some local registries are actually charging for registrations although they do not discuss this publicly since doing it is frowned upon by the RIPE community and especially by those providing free last-resort registry services. I think it is time to discuss this issue openly and come to a consensus on how to handle this which will be written up as a RIPE recommendation. Some input for a discussion can be found in: Ref: ripe-084 Title: RIPE NCC Funding Author: Rob Blokzijl, Daniel Karrenberg Date: 25 March 1993, updated May 1993 Format: PS=41337 TXT=17835 bytes Daniel
I know that some local registries are actually charging for registrations although they do not discuss this publicly since doing it is frowned upon by the RIPE community and especially by those providing free last-resort registry services.
The question is not if charging is acceptable or not, but far more a) by what process are the organisations selected that provide these services. b) what the duties and rights of the registries are (for example do top level domain registries "own" the domains they are administrating?). c) by what process is the cost recovery method for the organisation selected in a) decided. a) and b) tend to not be an issue as long as the services are free, as soon as you start asking for money, all kind of issues turn up. Alas, all attempts I've followed to define a) and b) seem to have been dismal failures. Simon
participants (4)
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Daniel Karrenberg -
Hank Nussbacher -
Mike Norris -
poole＠eunet.ch