I'm not trying to get into
ethics or teach anyone how to run their business.
And definitely not here to decide what's fair or not.
RIPE NCC has been around for
30+ years, and the membership fee has always been the same.
Seemed like everyone was fine with that.
But after IPv4 ran out, there
was a huge wave of "new" members — and most of them weren't
really new.
It was just a line for the last /24, because paying €3,500 for a
LIR account was cheaper than buying on the market. A wrong
decision was made.
In today’s reality, I don’t see
any point in that queue anymore.
We should just stop handing out IPv4 addresses altogether.
Any addresses that end up in
the pool should simply be sold on the open market — plain and
simple commercial activity.
And the revenue from that should go directly into RIPE NCC’s
budget.
That would reduce the financial burden on existing members.
Once the IPv4 market dries
up, that revenue will be gone — and we'll all be back to paying
full membership fees.
Personally, I’d rather buy
a subnet directly from RIPE NCC, knowing that the money would go
toward supporting the community.
But for some reason, RIPE NCC
doesn’t offer that as a way to fund its budget.
Instead, it keeps “welcoming” new members for €2,000 and
pretends that this isn’t IPv4 trading...
And then we hear talk about increased operational load due to
the crazy market activity.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
On 29.05.2025 21:31, Kaj Niemi wrote:Let's try to keep the symbolism and virtue signaling away from technical matters. The portal (etc.) needs to work for people who deal with matters related to addressing, RPKI, whatever. Disabling the primary method (I assume, no data) of access won't help at all. It'll be a nuisance. Most of us don't like nuisances.
I draw many similarities with the idea of paying for unused assignments and the goals that state monopolies tend to have in some countries. Like selling alcohol but at the same time being responsible for cutting down on consumption. Or overseeing gambling and lotteries but at the same time being responsible for gambling addicts. You get the idea. For IPv4 addresses the train left the station a long time ago. The addresses got assigned with the rules and policies that were in force at the time. That's it. I don't think RIPE's goals are to be punitive or at least I didn't read about it in the bylaws. Is it unfair that someone got addresses years ago for free or nearly free? Arguably... no since anyone at the time could get them given proper justification. That was then and complaining about it 10-30 years later won't help anyone.
I'll skip discussing pros and cons of various charging models for now. Models exist to collect (and justify, really) the fees one pays for services. Arguably, the fairest is everyone pays a flat fee as one cannot choose "a la carte" but instead need to pay a share of what I'd call a fixed common service pool. Is it fair that smaller orgs pay the same as the largest pan-Europeans? It both is and isn't simultaneously. It is because everyone pays the same. It isn't if larger orgs utilize services or cause more effort.
Finally, if your business model isn't able to sustain the purchase or lease of IPv4 addresses it might need some fine-tuning. Perhaps that super low-end web hosting or shell business and the race towards zero is not the paradise and road to IPO you think it is. Perhaps your competition thinks the same but is willing to sell below cost or has higher margin products where they (hope to?) recoup the extra costs. Perhaps the blue ocean really is elsewhere.
Kaj
Sent from my iPad