Hi,

the RIPE NCC’s budget had doubled in the past few years. It’s clear that they won’t have enough money for all activities if the membership decreases… they knew this a decade ago, but instead of building a sound business, HPH keeps coming to us every few years with proposals for a new charging scheme that makes nobody happy.

except him and the board of an RIR that needs to spend €40m/year (double than the other RIRs - ARIN is at about $20m, LACNIC - $10m, APNIC - $21m, only the NCC needs $45m) and increase budget with 10-15%/year. 

how much of the travel budget is really needed. how much does a members lunch cost? why do I need to pay for dozens of these lunches between the NCC and other companies? 

the NCC still pays dozens of consultants, chair(s), possibly over 250 people. when will it start paying contributors to policies, mailing lists, community members? at least when it has thousands of ‘employees’, we’ll know what the money is spent on. (/s)

what’s the cost of atlas? has it ever been self sustained as it was promised more than a decade ago?

how much money is spent on training and the certified professionals platform? is it worth it, how many members use it? how much money is that project losing every year?

why does the NCC need ~200 employees? why, when everyone is cutting jobs, is the NCC adding 2% more FTEs and only God knows how many more consultants?

I could go on and on with ways to cut costs… but I doubt that’s what HPH or the Board want to hear. They need another 12% increase next year!

I keep raising this point but it is again ignored. So, unless the NCC comes with a balanced budget cut, I will reject any new charging scheme and will recommend every member to do so, maybe they’ll

get the message after they see the voting results.

elvis

On Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 06:03 Kai Siering <k.siering@team.mail.de> wrote:

Hi *,

I'm still puzzled for what the _Membership_ fee is intented to be used for.

First of all, there's the budget that needs to be collected from the members.

Quoting [1]: "This means that the income the RIPE NCC receives will be reduced by a significant amount and we will need to ensure that our charging model allows us to collect the revenue required to maintain our operations."

Well, yes, but: if the revenue is being reduced, where's the appropriate call to action to reduce the _spending_ as well? RIPE NCC started as an RIR — and added a lot of services[2] over time, not all of those vital for running an RIR.

Like others already mentioned, changing the charging scheme *without* alingning the *cost structure* as well, at times where there will be less and less members, is the wrong way around. There have to be severe cuts in the 2024 budget of RIPE NCC, as the number of members will decline — unless, of course, the remaining members are eager to increase their fees significantly. (As far as I followed the threads here, paying more seems not to be the most popular option though.)

Therefore this discussion about "Charging Scheme Models 2024" is taking place at the wrong time. The Membership is to be provided with cost cutting options for the budget 2024 really soon now, and the current charging scheme is to be adjusted to collect the 2024's budget.

_Then_ a discussion can be held about how, from 2025 onwards, the RIPE NCC and its core (Registration Services, RIPE DB, ...) and additional services (RPKI, K-Root, RIPE Atlas, RIPEstat, RIS, etc.) shall be financed.

Since TANSTAAFL was mentioned already: if the time of a single _Membership_ fee shall be over, RIPE NCC will need to extend the model of a "Base Membership fee plus per-service fees" (latest "Model A") to the non-core services offered as well — e. g. RPKI comes with a 2023 toll of 8 FTE, RIPE Atlas of 9, and so on. Yes, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, hence the costs for e. g. RIPE Atlas mustn't be paid by all members, whether they utilize it or not. Does the RIR RIPE NCC have to do research? No, it's not core RIR business, hence not to be paid from the _Membership_ fee. It's nice to have these services, but why does a RIR run the K-Root? This has to be taken to the Membership to decide whether they still see a need for it — and therefore want to cover those expenses via their Membership fee.

So, first there need to be a discussion on what of the current operations and services to drop — and then how the remainng, _necessary_, money for running this RIR shall be collected from it's members.

I'm still in favor for one, single, Membership Fee that covers for the services the Members are willing to pay for, i. e. the current model.

The only other alternative would be to have a "Base Membership fee" of 250-500 EUR and then count any "usable ressource" (/24 v4, /48 v6, ASN) and give it a "Service fee". Like "Model A", but without fiddling with "Categories". Just count allocated ressources and bill them. That solves the issues with "why does Incumbent X pay even less than me", once and for all.
Basic LIR stuff should be covered by the "Base Membership fee"; M&A related additional work as well as Transfers should be billed separately, the suggested 1000 EUR (new "Model A") should be per case. Receiving (temporary or permanent) allocations should be subject to an "Allocation fee" — not only v4 PA, but v6 PA as well.

Am 18.04.23 um 22:46 schrieb Gert Doering:
>> If that's the argument here, than we should also introduce a charge for IPv6 resources because all of the above applies there too. It's not a scarce resource but we should keep track of it, and if it's not used it should be returned, no?
> Already in place - IPv6 resources are either PI (50 EUR/piece charge exists) or PA, tied to LIR accounts, with LIR fees. (Yes, there is no *extra* fee for IPv6 PA blocks, and I think that's a feature - the goals "keep track of resources" and "incentivize *end users* to return resources they no longer need" are both met)

Why only end users? There's no incentive to return additional /29 or /32 received from merging LIRs, and AFAICS the act of transferring these allocations is free as well. And the more stray allocations there are, the more works for the RIPE NCC to keep track. What's true for (few) ASNs must be true for (lots of) v6 prefixes as well.

>>> […] does have an effect - ASN fees and PI fees can be billed "onwards" toward the customer, while the regular LIR fee is "mine to keep"...

The LIR fee – actual the RIPE NCC Membership fee – is part of the cost of running your business. As such, it's not "for you to keep," but being paid back by your customers.

>> Well the financial bit is another conversation. I've seen a lot of push back here on increasing the fees and it seems a lot of folks would rather like to see where spending could be reduced. But let's keep those conversations separate.
> Indeed, that's a separate conversation.

Yes, but one that needs to be happening _before_ talking about new charging schemes. RIPE NCCs ever expanding membership base isn't expanding anymore, hence RIPE NCC needs to cut down costs as well.

> But if we do have agreement on some sort of NCC budget, the question remains "how is that budget financed", and "fee for ASNs" would inevitably lower the LIR fees (and vice versa), to reach the same total budget.

Don't stop at ASNs then; we can put a price tag on every ressource managed by the RIPE NCC, and a fully "usage based" charging scheme would create a lot of these "incentives" to get rid of no longer required ressources. And it's the only other "fair" option besides the current model.



After all, _we_ became an LIR as we needed v4 space. Yes, _we_ need delegation of the related in-addr.arpa zones. Do we need K-Root, RIPE Atlas or Community Building and Member Engagement [3]? Don't think so. _We_ just need a well run RIR. But certainly not at ever increasing costs!

Regards,
-kai


[1] https://www.ripe.net/participate/mail/member-and-community-consultations/charging-scheme-2024-consultation/
[2] https://www.ripe.net/about-us/what-we-do/list-of-ripe-ncc-services
[3] https://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-786.pdf

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