And who pays for the administration of this service? The government does. Not the "members". Do you really want the govt more involved in the Internet? Why are you drawing parallels when you obviously realize that there are none to be made? Insinuation is your specialty so I won't even try it myself, but as Doug said, you're obviously too intelligent to be making parallels where there are none, so one does wonder what the motive is. Avi
Total cost to the ISP to get a SPIN: $0.00
Now, let's look at the parallels:
1. Both are required to "do business" in a given sector (ie: announce routes, sell to the Erate customer base)
2. Both are simple *technical* providers (assignment of a number, with the important being that it is unique in both cases).
3. One is free to the ISP.
4. The other costs $500.00
You are either charging a price to defray costs, or you are changing a price to encourage/discourage behaviour. In the two cases, the answers to "what is the correct price" are radically different, so we need to decide what the goal is before determining if the current price is good or bad.
Doug
What is going on here? ASNs didn't used to cost money until ARIN got its claws into them.
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