Re: [Fwd: Kremen VS Arin Antitrust Lawsuit - Anyone have feedback?]

[Michael.Dillon () btradianz com]

> > Your statement about preferential treatment is factually
> > incorrect. Larger ARIN members do not get larger allocations.
> > It is the larger network infrastructures that get the larger
> > allocations which is not directly tied to the size of the
> > company. Yes, larger companies often have larger infrastructures.
>
> And that's the point: A company that is established gets preferential 
> treatment over one that is not; that is called a barrier to entry by the 

> anti-trust crowd. 

You need to understand the basics of networking to see
that this is NOT preferential treatment but is instead
even-handed treatment. You see, a network is a collection
of devices interconnected with circuits. Each point where
a circuit connects to a device is called an interface.
Devices may have more than one interface. Typically, the
devices used by network operators have many interfaces.
IP addresses are numbers used to uniquely identify such
interfaces and the Internet Protocol (IP) requires that
these numbers be assigned in a structured manner. 

It is then obvious that larger networks have more interfaces
and therefore can TECHNICALLY justify more addresses. This 
is even-handed treatment even though small companies end up
with less addresses than large companies.

> You may feel that such a barrier is justified and 
> fair, but those on the other side of it (or more importantly, their 
> lawyers) are likely to disagree.

Yes, lawyers do not understand networks. No doubt some of
them will read the above text and begin to get a glimmer
of understanding.

> Of course it's directly connected; all you have to do is look at the 
> current fee schedule and you'll see:
>
> /24 = $4.88/IP
> /23 = $2.44/IP

That is completely untrue. ARIN's web page here
http://www.arin.net/billing/fee_schedule.html
says nothing of the sort. In fact, ARIN's annual
fees are structure so that organizations which
have a larger transaction volume pay a larger
fee. These transactions could be IP address applications
or SWIP transactions or in-addr.arpa traffic.
The size categories are just a rough rule of 
thumb for categorizing organizations that has
been accepted by the ARIN members themselves.

> So, just between the two ends of the fee schedule, we have a difference 
> of _two orders of magnitude_ in how much an registrant pays divided by 
> how much address space they get.

Large organizations get their allocations bit
by bit, applying for 3-6 months requirements
at a time. Small organizations may have only
a single allocation.

> Besides the above, Kremen also points out that larger prefixes are more 
> likely to be routed, therefore refusing to grant larger prefixes (which 
> aren't justified, in ARIN's view) is another barrier to entry.  Again, 
> since the folks deciding these policies are, by and large, folks who are 

> already major players in the market, it's easy to put an anticometitive 
> slant on that.

Routability decisions are not made by ARIN. If anyone
is unhappy with routability they should be suing those
organizations which recommend route filtering. But they
would have to prove that the route filtering is not 
technically justified which will be difficult when all
the expert witnesses are on the other side.

--Michael Dillon