Final Report from the RIPE NCC Charging Scheme Task Force
Dear all, On behalf of the RIPE NCC Charging Scheme Task Force, I am delighted to share our final report, which outlines the principles intended to guide the development of a new charging scheme model for the RIPE NCC. You can read the final report at: https://www.ripe.net/s/charging-scheme-task-force-2024/final-report/ Over the course of just under a year, the task force met 18 times to explore a wide range of issues related to how the RIPE NCC could charge its members. These discussions involved disagreements and compromises, but ultimately we reached consensus on the principles presented in this report. The work of the task force, including the minutes from these meetings, is available at: https://www.ripe.net/s/charging-scheme-task-force-2024/ Thank you to everyone who contributed to this process, including all members of the task force and members who provided feedback. Best regards, Peter Hessler Co-Chair, RIPE NCC Charging Scheme Task Force
On behalf of the RIPE NCC Charging Scheme Task Force, I am delighted to share our final report, which outlines the principles intended to guide the development of a new charging scheme model for the RIPE NCC.
an exemplary job randy
Peter, Thanks to you and all the members of the TF. I think you have managed to capture so much diverse feedback into a great set of guiding principles! While I'm obviously very aware that the NCC had involvement in this whole process, which was absolutely vital, I now wish wisdom for all of the team who will take these principles and work to build the next proposed charging scheme around them! Thank you, Brian Brian Nisbet (he/him) Head of Service Operations HEAnet CLG, Ireland's National Education and Research Network North Dock Two, 93-94 North Wall Quay, Dublin 1, D01 V8Y6 +35316609040 brian.nisbet@heanet.ie www.heanet.ie Registered in Ireland, No. 275301. CRA No. 20036270 ________________________________ From: Peter Hessler <phessler@theapt.org> Sent: Wednesday 9 July 2025 10:35 To: members-discuss@ripe.net <members-discuss@ripe.net> Subject: [members-discuss] Final Report from the RIPE NCC Charging Scheme Task Force CAUTION[External]: This email originated from outside of the organisation. Do not click on links or open the attachments unless you recognise the sender and know the content is safe. Dear all, On behalf of the RIPE NCC Charging Scheme Task Force, I am delighted to share our final report, which outlines the principles intended to guide the development of a new charging scheme model for the RIPE NCC. You can read the final report at: https://www.ripe.net/s/charging-scheme-task-force-2024/final-report/ Over the course of just under a year, the task force met 18 times to explore a wide range of issues related to how the RIPE NCC could charge its members. These discussions involved disagreements and compromises, but ultimately we reached consensus on the principles presented in this report. The work of the task force, including the minutes from these meetings, is available at: https://www.ripe.net/s/charging-scheme-task-force-2024/ Thank you to everyone who contributed to this process, including all members of the task force and members who provided feedback. Best regards, Peter Hessler Co-Chair, RIPE NCC Charging Scheme Task Force To unsubscribe or manage your subscription, log in to the LIR Portal with your RIPE NCC Access account and go to the LIR Account page: https://my.ripe.net/#/account-details. Scroll down to Membership Mailing Lists to update your 'members-discuss' subscription. Having issues unsubscribing? More information about managing your subscription can be found at: https://www.ripe.net/s/members-discuss-subscription-options/
Hi! Thanks a lot for the work done. But I don't see anything new about the problem of the method to calculating contributions. Again, only the category option is offered. This is going to change nothing. Categories will not encourage the release of unused resources. Since the release of small but significant amounts of resources will not lead to a change in fees for large holders. It's a dead end. So, is there any sense in all these studies and proposals? --- Dmitry Serbulov.
Dear all,
On behalf of the RIPE NCC Charging Scheme Task Force, I am delighted to share our final report, which outlines the principles intended to guide the development of a new charging scheme model for the RIPE NCC.
You can read the final report at: https://www.ripe.net/s/charging-scheme-task-force-2024/final-report/
Over the course of just under a year, the task force met 18 times to explore a wide range of issues related to how the RIPE NCC could charge its members. These discussions involved disagreements and compromises, but ultimately we reached consensus on the principles presented in this report.
The work of the task force, including the minutes from these meetings, is available at: https://www.ripe.net/s/charging-scheme-task-force-2024/
Thank you to everyone who contributed to this process, including all members of the task force and members who provided feedback.
Best regards, Peter Hessler Co-Chair, RIPE NCC Charging Scheme Task Force To unsubscribe or manage your subscription, log in to the LIR Portal with your RIPE NCC Access account and go to the LIR Account page: https://my.ripe.net/#/account-details.
Scroll down to Membership Mailing Lists to update your 'members-discuss' subscription.
Having issues unsubscribing? More information about managing your subscription can be found at: https://www.ripe.net/s/members-discuss-subscription-options/
We have consistently voted no to categories so I was surprised to see the only option is categories. I had hoped there might be a new option, however this was probably an impossible task. "The amount of categories should be determined by the RIPE NCC, but there should be enough categories to ensure there is no significant increase from one category to the next" NCC now has to magic something aceptable and make everyone feel they did OK. I can't comment on that until then but an open ended category risk is what we keep voting against. Even if the categories are acceptable now will they remain so, a rule should be added that there will always be a flat membership fee available to vote each year to cover this risk so we may safely give categories a go and not feel like it is a trap. "equity rather than equality should be seen as the key driver of fairness" sounds good but the reality of "not all members with large resource holdings are using those resources to make money or have the ability to pass the cost down to their customers" makes equity impossible if all those with the same resources have to be treated the same as their poorest cousins. That means the very large commercial orgs continue to get a much better deal than everyone else so categories can not introduce equality or equity. It's not really about the number of categories, There are two "fair" models, flat membership and per IP. Categories just shuffle unfairness around. "The category that members are placed in should be based on the total PA resource holdings" Why are we persisting this legacy PA/PI differentiation, why no make them all just IPs and treated the same. "The category model should ensure that those with a small number of resources would pay less than they would under a one LIR account-one fee model" Lets not forget the reason for this issue and the future risk. A lot of lucky IP miners were able to extract blocks from the run out space. As a result there are a large number of small members wanting to pay less even though they knew the price when they got them. Why is it expected the charging model should accommodate that at the other members expense? Members may agree to do that but in doing so the larger peril is that many of those members are cashing in their winnings so the number of members will reduce significantly. How that will affect a the category model is unknown, all we know is a large chunk of revenue will be shifted rather than cut spending. If the model continued to favour the small category paying less than currently then without a significant move of costs to higher categories the middle categories are going to end up paying a lot more. IPv6 charges: Consideration should be given to what the categories would look like post v4, if there are only a handful of allocation sizes would that break the category model. If so is it worth introducing categories based on legacy v4 now? brandon
I completely agree. I got the impression that the same people are trying to push the same idea in "someone" interests. Ignoring the option of charging for each resource Ipv4 becomes a marker of the odiousness of these offers. Unfortunately, the content in these texts and speeches is "useful water", which does not make much sense. But it hides the true meaning: "To consolidate the existing inequality in access to scarce IPv4 resources." -- Dmitry Serbulov
We have consistently voted no to categories so I was surprised to see the only option is categories. I had hoped there might be a new option, however this was probably an impossible task.
"The amount of categories should be determined by the RIPE NCC, but there should be enough categories to ensure there is no significant increase from one category to the next"
NCC now has to magic something aceptable and make everyone feel they did OK. I can't comment on that until then but an open ended category risk is what we keep voting against. Even if the categories are acceptable now will they remain so, a rule should be added that there will always be a flat membership fee available to vote each year to cover this risk so we may safely give categories a go and not feel like it is a trap.
"equity rather than equality should be seen as the key driver of fairness" sounds good but the reality of "not all members with large resource holdings are using those resources to make money or have the ability to pass the cost down to their customers" makes equity impossible if all those with the same resources have to be treated the same as their poorest cousins.
That means the very large commercial orgs continue to get a much better deal than everyone else so categories can not introduce equality or equity.
It's not really about the number of categories,
There are two "fair" models, flat membership and per IP. Categories just shuffle unfairness around.
"The category that members are placed in should be based on the total PA resource holdings"
Why are we persisting this legacy PA/PI differentiation, why no make them all just IPs and treated the same.
"The category model should ensure that those with a small number of resources would pay less than they would under a one LIR account-one fee model"
Lets not forget the reason for this issue and the future risk. A lot of lucky IP miners were able to extract blocks from the run out space. As a result there are a large number of small members wanting to pay less even though they knew the price when they got them. Why is it expected the charging model should accommodate that at the other members expense?
Members may agree to do that but in doing so the larger peril is that many of those members are cashing in their winnings so the number of members will reduce significantly. How that will affect a the category model is unknown, all we know is a large chunk of revenue will be shifted rather than cut spending. If the model continued to favour the small category paying less than currently then without a significant move of costs to higher categories the middle categories are going to end up paying a lot more.
IPv6 charges: Consideration should be given to what the categories would look like post v4, if there are only a handful of allocation sizes would that break the category model. If so is it worth introducing categories based on legacy v4 now?
brandon
On 14/07/2025 13:20:14, sdy@a-n-t.ru wrote:
But it hides the true meaning: "To consolidate the existing inequality in access to scarce IPv4 resources."
It is unfair to say that is the intent as I don't think anything that can be done in the charging model could possibly change it. Nobody is going to hand back space. So it is purely a charging model, v4 access is left to the commercial market to manage. brandon
Hi, the purpose of the proposed charging scheme isn't to release addresses of the historical IPv4 protocol. The purpose of the proposed charging scheme is the long-term sustainability of the RIPE NCC operation in the future, even with the modern IPv6 protocol, where "categories" will have less meaning. The effort to release IPv4 addresses has only short-term benefit anyway. There is no benefit to this in the long term perspective. - Daniel On 7/12/25 12:08 AM, sdy@a-n-t.ru wrote:
Hi! Thanks a lot for the work done.
But I don't see anything new about the problem of the method to calculating contributions. Again, only the category option is offered. This is going to change nothing.
Categories will not encourage the release of unused resources. Since the release of small but significant amounts of resources will not lead to a change in fees for large holders. It's a dead end.
So, is there any sense in all these studies and proposals?
--- Dmitry Serbulov.
Dear all,
On behalf of the RIPE NCC Charging Scheme Task Force, I am delighted to share our final report, which outlines the principles intended to guide the development of a new charging scheme model for the RIPE NCC.
You can read the final report at: https://www.ripe.net/s/charging-scheme-task-force-2024/final-report/
Over the course of just under a year, the task force met 18 times to explore a wide range of issues related to how the RIPE NCC could charge its members. These discussions involved disagreements and compromises, but ultimately we reached consensus on the principles presented in this report.
The work of the task force, including the minutes from these meetings, is available at: https://www.ripe.net/s/charging-scheme-task-force-2024/
Thank you to everyone who contributed to this process, including all members of the task force and members who provided feedback.
Best regards, Peter Hessler Co-Chair, RIPE NCC Charging Scheme Task Force To unsubscribe or manage your subscription, log in to the LIR Portal with your RIPE NCC Access account and go to the LIR Account page: https://my.ripe.net/#/account-details.
Scroll down to Membership Mailing Lists to update your 'members-discuss' subscription.
Having issues unsubscribing? More information about managing your subscription can be found at: https://www.ripe.net/s/members-discuss-subscription-options/
To unsubscribe or manage your subscription, log in to the LIR Portal with your RIPE NCC Access account and go to the LIR Account page: https://my.ripe.net/#/account-details.
Scroll down to Membership Mailing Lists to update your 'members-discuss' subscription.
Having issues unsubscribing? More information about managing your subscription can be found at: https://www.ripe.net/s/members-discuss-subscription-options/
participants (6)
-
Brandon Butterworth -
Brian Nisbet -
Daniel Suchy -
Peter Hessler -
Randy Bush -
sdy＠a-n-t.ru