On Friday 06 February 2026 15:07:02 Nick Hilliard wrote:
Michal,
The flat fee structure is in place because the membership of the RIPE NCC, i.e. the LIRs, voted this into place some years back, and have consistently voted to keep flat fees for LIRs in place since then.
Here's the history.
[..]
Same as the previous answer. It's like this because the RIPE NCC membership voted for this, repeatedly, even when presented with options to change back to a resource-based charging scheme.
[..] The history is correct as far as i remember. BUT what is not said is that in all the proportional fee proposals that were rejected is the FACT that all proposal where modulated with a substantial annual fee increase for the small LIRs. In other words, with all proposals, even a small LIR whith only a base assignment was incurring in substantial more cost and a ginormous LIRs such as the telcos, will get a fee that, while increased, was to be very smallish to negligible for their balances. This was told to honour the policy one vote one member by leveling the playing field. IMHO this was fondamentally erroneus because it was for equality ( = all members are equal ) versus a more sane equity ( all members one vote but the larger the member, the larger the work for the member, the more it should pay) For myself, i am foundamentally a very small member, and my assigned ips doesn't move much and i basically do not require service from ripe besides the initial registration and assignment; why i must pay more? The community at the time chose the minor malus, remain with the status quo instead of allow much higher annual fees. And the discussion is repeating today, arguing about scale, arguing about fee models that penalizes the very small because today che concept of small changed froma /21 from when i began to a /none (wait list) to a /24 for the mode lucky. Yes i got some IPs, but that was my inital and, lately the last, allocation i was entitled for my membership at the time. And now, with all these models i find some (and ripe too) that want to treat me as a medium ISP with a more substantial fee (last proposal was to update my fee to double the normal amount) I am not changed, so tell me what changed please. Best Regards, Andrea Borghi --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrea Borghi - W KEY srl - http://www.wkey.it Tel. +39 0648919230 e +39 0648919231 Fax. +39 064871550 - Mobile: +39 3477135822 sede legale: Via Alfredo Catalani 30 - 00199 Roma - P.IVA e CF 08426171008