RIPE NCC Funding
Rob Blokzijl
Daniel Karrenberg
Document ID: ripe-84
Version: May 1993
1. Introduction
RIPE (Reseaux IP Europeens) is a collaborative organisation
open to all European Internet service providers. The
objective of RIPE is to ensure the necessary administrative
and technical coordination to allow the operation of a pan-
European IP network. RIPE does not operate a network of its
own.
The RIPE Network Coordination Centre supports all those RIPE
activities which cannot be effectively performed by
volunteers from the participating organisations.
The RIPE NCC started operation in the second quarter of 1992
and currently has 3 permanent staff members. The RARE
association provides the legal and financial framework for
the NCC. Funding for the first year of operation of the NCC
has been provided by EARN, the full national members of
RARE, Israel and EUnet. These organisations have agreed to
guarantee funding of NCC operation during the remaining
three quarters of 1993. At the same time they have
expressed that -while they guarantee continued funding- it
is imperative that the remaining European Internet service
providers start contributing to NCC funding as soon as
possible. As all European Internet service providers
benefit from NCC services, the costs should be shared
appropriately.
Because of this RIPE seeks to establish agreement about a
funding model among European Internet service providers and
other organisations interested in contributing.
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2. Scope
In this paper, an attempt is made to analyse the problem by
categorising the services and user communities of the NCC,
discuss some of the possible options, and to arrive at an
agreed framework for RIPE NCC funding.
Funding of local registries in general and local "non-
provider" registries in particular is outside the scope of
this paper.
Also the actual level of charges is to be agreed separately
once there is consensus about the model outlined in this
paper.
The model has been approved by the 15th RIPE meeting in
April 1993.
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3. 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
services presently provided by the NCC first. For details
about these services, please see the RIPE NCC Quarterly
reports.
3.1. Information Service - RIPE Document Store
The biggest and most diverse group of NCC users are those
making use of the NCC information services. The information
services consist of various ways to retrieve information
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 contains
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 EuropaNet(IXI). Users do
not need to register before using this information service.
Logs are kept about usage and summaries are published in the
RIPE NCC Quarterly Reports. The user community of this
service is the whole worldwide Internet.
3.2. 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, Autonomous Systems and contact
persons for these. Further it contains routing policy
information. Users do not need to register before querying
the RIPE database. Logs are kept about usage and summaries
are published in the RIPE NCC Quarterly Reports. The
database is available to the whole worldwide Internet
community. The community represented in the database itself
is limited to European organisations.
3.3. 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 mechanism which enables European
organisations 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
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usage of the address space is fair and address space is not
wasted.
The user community for the regional registry functions is
all European organisations using TCP/IP protocols and
desiring unique addresses. Note that this is larger than
the community connected to what we call the European part of
the Internet.
In principle the NCC achieves the above by working through
local registries. These are IP service providers assigning
address space to their customers. Those who are not
customers of an IP service provider (yet) ar served by local
"non-provider" registries. Looking at it in this
hierarchical fashion the direct user community are the
European IP service providers and the "non-provider"
registries which handle the vast majority of the registry
actions locally without involvement of the NCC.
Wherever a local registry has not been established the NCC
assigns address space directly. The NCC also handles all
requests for larger amounts of address space directly,
especially those for class B numbers.
3.4. RIPE Support
The RIPE NCC supports RIPE activities in general. This
includes providing mailing list service as well as some
secretarial service to RIPE and the RIPE working groups,
preparation and logistics for three RIPE meetings a year in
varying locations for an increasing amount of attendees. The
last meeting was attended by approximately 90 people. The
NCC also participates in global activities such as the IETF
on behalf of RIPE.
The direct user community of these services are the
organisations participating in RIPE. The indirect user
community are all organisations connected to the European
part of the Internet because RIPE is the organisation
coordinating the European Internet.
3.5. 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.
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4. Categories of RIPE NCC Users
Based on the different services offered one can distinguish
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.
4.1. The Internet at Large
The most general category is users of the Internet
worldwide. The information and database querying services
of the NCC are open to the whole global Internet community.
Charging for these services is next to impossible 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.
Even 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.
4.2. European Internet Users
The next category is all organisations connected to (some
parts of) the European Internet. This obviously is a subset
of the global Internet users. In addition to the services
used by the previous category these organisations depend
more on the RIPE database registration service because of
the role the database plays in distributing routing policy
information.
Because these organisations are connected they are also more
likely to benefit from the general coordination activities
of the RIPE NCC.
Charging these users could be done in form of a periodical
database registration charge. However this could work out
counterproductive to the goal of manageability of the
European Internet if organisations or service providers find
ways of achieving the desired connectivity without
registering. Also the measurement of use and the charging
model will be hard to agree. The number of entities to bill
is still large.
An alternative that has been discussed in the past is to
charge based on the address space assigned to an
organisation. Once could charge either per assignment or
one could "rent out" address space. The latter would
provide an incentive to use address space prudently. The
limits of practicability here are the number of
organisations, the legal implications, especially with
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holders of already assigned address space. Another
prerequisite is global agreement on the charges to prevent
"grey 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
practicable and economical to do.
4.3. European Internet Service Providers
Each organisation in the previous category either is
connected through a service provider or is itself such a
service 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 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 routing. For many
interactions with the NCC 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/or a
registration charge, with the same drawbacks.
An alternative charging model which becomes viable when
charging via the providers is to charge a fixed annual fee
depending on the rough size of the provider. This way a
reasonably fair distribution of the costs can be achieved
without spending a lot of resources defining and collecting
the usage data used for charging.
The big benefit of funding via the service providers in
general 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. This way the wider
European 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.
4.4. Individual TCP/IP Users
A category outside of the previous hierarchy are all
organisations using TCP/IP in Europe who are not customers
of a service provider. Typically these are organisations
operating local area networks, but some are operating
substantial networks inside their organisation. This
community uses the regional Internet registry and database
registration services in order to obtain unique addresses in
case they want to connect to the Internet at large or to
other organisations later on.
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The only basis for billing which is obvious for this group
is the registry service.
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5. Proposed Model for 1993/1994
Looking at the services and the user communities the most
practical general model is funding via the service
providers. Looking at the problems described above it is
clear that it will be next to impossible to agree quickly
-if at all- on the metrics for charging. Therefore we
propose to establish four categories of service providers
with associated charges in ECU. The charging levels below
are indicative and are expected to change during the ongoing
discussions.
Category Annual Charge (1994) Charge Q2-4 1993
Large 10000 7500
Medium 6000 4500
Small 3000 2250
Very Small 1000 1000
The service providers will determine their category
themselves. The categories are geared towards providers
operating at the national or regional level. International
service providers with a wider geographical scope may find
it appropriate to make commitments above the level of
"Large" and indeed this has happened already. Also
interested organisations who are not service providers have
indicated their willingness to contribute and the level of
their contributions will be independent from the categories
for service providers.
In order to provide guidance, all firm commitments will be
published as they are received. Also the level of all
actual contributions will be published once a year. For
additional guidance service providers are welcome to
contact the RIPE chair.
5.1. Possible problems with the charging model
One problem is to convince all service providers to
contribute to NCC funding. Given the spirit of RIPE
cooperation and the obvious benefit service providers derive
from NCC services and the relatively low charges, we expect
this to be achievable.
The only group that would not be charged this way but
directly benefiting from NCC services is the individual
TCP/IP users. There are two possibilities to deal with
this. Either there is consensus among the service providers
that a large part of these are future customers and thus
"covered" or a separate charging model needs to be developed
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for registration services for this group. As described
above charging for registration based on either a per
assignment charge or "rental" address space is not really
practicable at this point. Appendix B contains some
material about possible models for this.
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6. Conclusions
The European Internet service providers will commonly fund
the RIPE NCC according to a charging scheme based on a small
number of provider categories. Service providers will
determine their own category and the level of all
contributions will be published.
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Appendix A - Further Actions as of May 1993
During preliminary discussions at the 14th RIPE meeting
there was a rough consensus on this model and further
discussion was agreed since some of the service providers
were not present.
At the 15th RIPE meeting it was agreed that the scheme
outlined in this paper shall form the framwork for NCC
funding. It was further agreed for the time being
individual TCP/IP users will not be charged for registration
services.
RIPE and RARE will commonly approach all service providers
immediately with this draft proposal and ask them to make
voluntary contributions in 1993 and formal commitments for
funding according to this scheme in 1994.
RIPE has formally asked RARE to continue providing the
financial and legal umbrella for the RIPE NCC until the end
of 1994.
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Appendix B - Some ideas about charging for registry service
The material in this appendix is intended to act as a base
for discussion in case there is consensus that individual
organisations need to be charged for registry service. It
has not previously been discussed in a wider forum and thus
cannot be more as a means to focus the discussion.
The registry services are used by individual organisations
as well as by service providers acting on behalf of their
clients.
As described above charging based on registration actions or
rental of address space is very difficult if not impossible
to get right.
When one looks at the resources used by registry actions it
is the requests for large amounts of address space from
individual organisations which take most of the time. These
organisations cannot rely on the resources provided by a
service provider to help them develop an appropriate
addressing plan and provide the necessary information to the
registry concisely. Consequently they use the resources of
the registry to arrive at these goals. Thus it is
reasonable to charge for this resource usage while well
presented requests for small amounts of address space should
probably be covered as an overhead.
Details of this would need to be discussed and worked out
further.
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