[128718] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Lightly used IP addresses
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Curran)
Sun Aug 15 00:24:24 2010
From: John Curran <jcurran@arin.net>
To: Patrick Giagnocavo <patrick@zill.net>
Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2010 00:23:42 -0400
In-Reply-To: <4C675F5D.6070408@zill.net>
Cc: NANOG <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Aug 14, 2010, at 11:30 PM, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
>=20
> Question: Why does it cost $11 million or more per year (going to some
> $22 million per year after 2013) to run a couple of databases that are
> Internet-accessible?
Patrick - If this is a reference to ARIN, the budget is approximately $15M
annually, and is not substantially changing any faster than expected for=20
normal cost-of-living trends (If $22M is a reference to having both IPv4=20
and IPv6 fees, ARIN charges each organization only once for the larger of=20
IPv4 or IPv6 registration services fee it makes use of)
Even so, it's a fair question to ask why it costs $15M annual to run ARIN. =
=20
That includes the costs for many tasks which might not be obvious, includin=
g=20
running the legacy registry system (which handles SWIP email templates), th=
e=20
new ARIN Online system (which is quite a bit more elegant), the public WHOI=
S=20
servers, bulk WHOIS and FTP services, IN-ADDR services, the public web site=
s,=20
the polling & election systems, the billing/invoicing systems, and the stag=
ing,
development/QA support for same, and the normal office infrastructure for t=
hings=20
like email, mailing lists, replication, business record keeping, and archiv=
al.
There's some engineering staff to keep all that running, registration serv=
ices=20
staff to handle incoming requests, member services for running the meetings=
,=20
elections, and policy process, and outreach thats already been mentioned wi=
th=20
respect to trade shows and press, but also includes engagement with our fri=
ends=20
at the ITU, international bodies, and governments. The full budget is avai=
lable=20
in each year's annual report along with the audited financials, and can be =
found
here: https://www.arin.net/about_us/corp_docs/annual_rprt.html=20
Clearly, the budget can be increased or decreased based on the services des=
ired=20
by the community, and this typically discussed on the last day of the ARIN =
Public
Policy & Member meeting (twice yearly) during the Financial Services report=
. In=20
between meetings, this topic is probably best suited for the arin-discuss m=
ailing=20
list as opposed to the nanog list.
FYI,
/John
John Curran=20
President and CEO
ARIN
