Sebastian, I don’t know how it works in Germany, but here in Czechia, a few hundred kilometers away, in elections everyone generally has one vote, regardless of how much they pay in taxes.

I dare say that in any democratic system it works more or less the same way.

But don’t worry — we, the small operators who didn’t manage to stock up on IPv4 back when they were handed out on request, don’t really follow what’s going on in RIPE that closely, so outvoting us apparently hasn’t been much of a problem so far.

Does your idea also include equal voting rights to the amount of the payment per resource? Like one vote for each /24?

-- 

Kind regards

Sebastian Becker

 

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Von: Kaj Niemi <kajtzu@basen.net>
Gesendet: Freitag, Februar 6, 2026 4:07 PM
An: members-discuss@ripe.net <members-discuss@ripe.net>; AlbHost SH.P.K <info@albahost.net>
Cc: Michal Krajčírovič <michal@krajcirovic.cz>
Betreff: [members-discuss] Re: Charging Scheme Model Consultation: Phase 2 - comments

 

Uniform pricing for membership fees would align well with procedural fairness. That is, the same price exists for everyone and there aren't any discounts. If you have discounts someone will always find a special interest group, that they should be entitled to it for whatever reason, and so on and on and on.

Kaj

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From: AlbHost SH.P.K via members-discuss <members-discuss@ripe.net>
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2026 18:52
To: members-discuss@ripe.net <members-discuss@ripe.net>
Cc: Michal Krajčírovič <michal@krajcirovic.cz>
Subject: [members-discuss] Charging Scheme Model Consultation: Phase 2 - comments

Dear colleagues,

I would like to explicitly support Michal’s position, in particular regarding the proposed discounts for educational institutions, and add an important practical aspect to this discussion.

Many universities and similar institutions received extremely large IPv4 allocations in the past—often /16 or even multiple /16 blocks. In a significant number of cases, only a very small fraction of these resources (sometimes just one to three /24s) is actually used for their own operational needs today.

At the same time, it is publicly observable that IPv4 address space originating from such legacy allocations is being sold or transferred on the open market via platforms such as ipv4.global, at fully commercial prices (currently on the order of ~30 EUR per IPv4 address). This is not speculation; it is an established and RIPE-compliant transfer market.

In this context, granting fee reductions to organisations that:

• hold vast historical IPv4 resources,

• use only a minimal portion of them operationally, and

• monetise the remainder at market prices,

is difficult to justify from a fairness perspective.

If educational institutions are to benefit from discounted RIPE fees, this should at minimum be conditional upon the substantial return of unused IPv4 address space to the free pool. Without such a mechanism, the proposed model effectively rewards address hoarding while shifting the financial burden onto smaller commercial LIRs, start-ups, and non-profit-adjacent organisations that must both pay full RIPE fees and acquire IPv4 addresses at full market cost.

Absent meaningful IPv4 reclamation, fee discounts for organisations already in possession of disproportionately large legacy allocations appear inequitable and inconsistent with the stated principles of efficient and fair resource distribution.

Kind regards,
Mentor L.

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