NCC Funding
- Date: Wed, 20 Jan 93 17:18:00 +0100
Folks,
Rob and I have been asked by many people (among them the current funders
of the NCC) to come up with ideas for funding the NCC in 1994 and maybe to
provide addtitional funding in 1993.
This is related to the strategic decisions which must be made about
charging for the registry functions. Below is a *very* rough first draft
representing out thinking in this. I circulate it for discussion
during the agenda point registry funding at Praha local-ir meeting.
Please do not take this as prejudicating anything. It is just some very
basic thoughts.
Comments welocme.
Daniel
RIPE NCC Funding
Some General Observations
DRAFT Vertsion 0.1
Rob Blokzijl
Daniel Karrenberg
Introduction
When examining the problem of how the RIPE NCC should be
funded, the question of "Who uses the NCC?" immediately
comes to mind. And indeed the RARE CoA has asked for an
answer to just this question. However, it is difficult to
answer such a general question. A little easier might be
"Who benefits from NCC services?".
In this paper, an attempt has been made to analyse the prob-
lem by categorising the services and user communities of the
NCC. A single model for NCC funding has not yet been con-
sidered, as this requires discussion and consensus from all
the parties involved. Instead, this paper aims to examine
the problem, discuss some of the possible options and to ar-
rive at a framework which will promote further discussion.
Categories of NCC Services
When approaching the problem from the NCC user angle one can
identify several classes of users according to the different
services the NCC offers. Therefore we present the main ser-
vices presently provided by the NCC first. For details about
these services, please see the RIPE NCC Quarterly reports.
Information Service - RIPE Document Store
The biggest and most diverse group of NCC users are those
makeing use of the NCC information services. The informa-
tion services consist of various ways to retrieve informa-
tion from what is called the "RIPE Document Store". Despite
the name this carries not only documents but also software
tools related to network management. The scope is wider than
just RIPE but restricted to information relevant to Internet
and RIPE activities. For instance the document store con-
tains mirror images of the RARE, EBONE and IETF document
stores including all RFC and all Internet draft documents.
In the Internet tradition the document store is available to
all sites on the Internet and additionally accessible from
the public X.25 networks as well as EMPB(IXI). Users do not
January 20, 1993
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need to register before using this information service. Logs
are kept about usage though and summaries are published in
the RIPE NCC Quarterly Reports * insert some usage stats*
The user community of this service is the whole worldwide
Internet. No registration is necessary.
RIPE Network Management Database
The RIPE network management database holds information about
European IP networks (network in the sense of IP network
numbers), DNS Domains and contact persons for these. Furth-
er it contains routing policy information. Users do not need
to register before querying the RIPE database. Logs are
kept about usage though and summaries are published in the
RIPE NCC Quarterly Reports. * insert some usage stats*
The database is available to the whole worldwide Internet
community.
The community represented in the database is limited to Eu-
ropean organisations with Internet connectivity. *stats*
European Regional Internet Registry
The RIPE NCC functions as the European regional registry for
Internet numbers. The most important such numbers are the IP
network numbers, which constitute the IP address space. The
NCC provides a meachanism which enables European organisa-
tion to obtain the address space they need in an efficient
manner without the need to refer to the global registry in
the US. At the same time the NCC ensures that usage of the
address space fair and economical.
In principle the NCC achieves the above by working through
so called local registries. These are IP service providers
assigning address space to their customers or "non-provider"
registries assigning address space for local use. Wherever a
local registry has not been established the NCC assigns ad-
dress space directly. The NCC also handles all requests for
larger amounts of address space directly, especially those
for class B IP numbers. *insert numbers of registries*
The user community for the regional registry functions is
all European organisations using TCP/IP protocols and desir-
ing unique addresses. Note that this is larger than the com-
munity connected to what we call the European part of the
Internet.
Looking at it in a hierarchical fashion the direct user com-
munity are the European IP service providers and the "non-
provider" registries. This the direct assignments by the
January 20, 1993
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NCC in cases where there is no appropriate local registry.
RIPE Support
The RIPE NCC supports RIPE activities in general. This in-
cludes providing mailing list service as well as some secre-
tarial service to RIPE and the RIPE working groups, prepara-
tion and logistics for three RIPE meetings a year in varying
locations for an increasing amount of attendees. The last
meeting was attended by approximately 75 people. The NCC
also participates in global activities representing RIPE.
The direct user community of these services are the organi-
sations participating in RIPE. The indirect user commmunity
are all organisations connected to the European part of the
Internet because RIPE is the organisation coordinating the
European Internet.
General Coordination
The NCC also performs a host of small and/or incidental
coordination functions related to the European part of the
Internet which are not easy to categorise. This is normal
for a focal point of distributed activities like the RIPE
NCC.
Categories of RIPE NCC Users
Based on the different services offered one can disitinguish
different categories of NCC users. We will do this in a
hierarchical fashion by defining a number of user categories
which are progressively smaller subsets of each other.
The Internet at Large
The most general category is users of Internet protocols and
the Internet worldwide. The information and database query-
ing services of the NCC are open to the whole global Inter-
net community. Charging for these services is nesxt to im-
possible in the current Internet framework because users do
not need to register before using these services. The sheer
number of users makes traditional billing methods unworkable
as well. If it was practicable to bill for these services it
would probably be counterproductive because their usage
helps keeping the Internet coordinated and keeps quite a bit
of load off the NCC itself as well as the help desks of the
service providers.
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European TCP/IP Users
The next category is all organisations using TCP/IP in Eu-
rope. This category is a subset of the previous one. In ad-
dition to the global Internet community this community uses
the regional Internet registry and database registration
services. These organisations are known with contact infor-
mation, so billing is at least theoretically possible. The
only basis for billing which is obvious at this level is the
adress space.
Once could charge either per assignment or one could "rent"
address space. The limits of practicability here are the
number of orgaisations, the legal implications, especially
with holders of already assigned address space. Another
prerequisite is global agreement on the charges to prevent
"black imports". Our conclusion is that this is impractical
for the time being but could be valuable in the future,
especially as a tool to rationalise address space usage. It
remains doubtful however whether it will ever become practi-
cable and economical to do.
European Internet Users
The next category is all organisation connected to the Euro-
pean Internet. In addition to the services used by the pre-
vious categories organisations in this category can depend
more sophisticated use of the RIPE database registration
service because of the role the database plays in distribut-
ing routing policy information. Because these organisations
are connected they are alos more likely to benefit from the
general coordination activities of the RIPE NCC.
Charging these users could be done in form of a poeriodical
database registration charge. However this could work out
counterproductive to the goal of manageability of the Euro-
pean Internet if organisations or service providers find
ways of achieving the desired connectivity without register-
ing. Also the measurement of use and the charging model will
be hard to agree. The number of entities to bill is still
large.
European Internet Service Providers
Each organisation in the previous category either is con-
nected through a service provider or is itself such a ser-
vice provider. The service providers make use of all NCC
services the previous category uses. However they do so much
more directly than their customers, the users of the Europe-
an Intnernet. The service providers interact directly with
the NCC for the registry function, as members of RIPE and
when using the RIPE database for trouble shooting and rout-
January 20, 1993
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ing. Most of the time the service providers act on behalf of
their customers.
Charging the service providers could be achieved in the same
way as above through a database registration charge and with
the same drawbacks Also the use of the registry service
could be billed, with similar difficulties.
The big benefit of funding via the service providers is that
the number of entities to bill is relatively small and -even
more importantly- there is a chance to come to a consensus
about the charging model. On the other hand the wider Euro-
pean user community will be funding the NCC services from
which they benefit via the providers. So the users having a
direct benefit pay, albeit indirectly.
*list service providers from local registty list*
Making suggestions for that charging model needs consider-
ably more time than we have had so far to write this paper.
Any simplistic model suggested and simulated so far was un-
fair and/or might cause providers economise in undesirable
ways.
So we will just present an incomplete list of the problems:
What service measures to charge on?
registry service
ehat measures? do not
penalise well organised local registries!
do not reward service providers putting load
on the NCC by not running a local registry!
do not stimulate bad adress space usage pat-
terns!
do not break route aggregation!
database service
what measures? do not
discourage registration! reward organised
local maintenance of database!
Legal Framework?
how to organise? what to do with providers
who "do not p(l)ay"?
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How to build consensus?
RIPE is the obvious place! How to proceed?
Conclusion
Looking at the services and the user communities the most
practical general model is funding via the service provid-
ers. If this much can be agreed then an activity can be
started to further work things out within this group.
Because this needs more work we suggest that in order to
seek additional funding for (part of) 1993 all identifiable
service providers not contributing yet are approached for a
voluntary contribution and all commitments including the al-
ready established ones are publisised publicised within
RIPE.
January 20, 1993
