------------------------------------------------------------------- APNIC Document identity Title: The APNIC Funding Plan and Current Status Short title: apnic-funding-status Document ref: APNIC-013 Version: 001 Date of original publication: 1 September 1995 Date of this version: 1 September 1995 Review scheduled: n/a Obsoletes: n/a Status: Historical Comments: Expired 31 January 1996 -------------------------------------------------------------------- The APNIC Funding Plan and Current Status Issued: September 1, 1995 Expires: January 31, 1996 Introduction This document describes the plan chosen by a majority consensus of 43 to 1 at the Honolulu APNIC to provide a stable funding source to insure APNIC's continued operation. Initially planned for implementation on September 1, 1995, certain technical difficulties relating to legal status were encountered which resulted in an implementation delay until February 1, 1996. In the interim, APNIC will be continuing with a modified form of the existing donation based funding plan. The Existing Funding Plan To date, APNIC has operated on voluntary contributions of equipment and personnel to provide registry services to the Asia and Pacific Rim Internet communities. The current funding plan requests donations from organizations providing Internet services (ISPs) in the following categories of service provider sizes: Small: $1500.00 Medium: $5000.00 Large: $10000.00 with the size self determined by the service provider. By the second APNIC meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, APNIC had failed to receive a single voluntary donation from an Internet service provider using the above scale, but did receive from the Japanese National NIC (JPNIC) a donation of JPY 2,000,000 and JPY 1,000,000 from the Internet Association of Japan. In addition, APNIC received in-kind donations of equipment from NTT, IIJ (a commercial service provider in Japan), WIDE (a research project/network in Japan) and JPNIC, and network connectivity from WIDE. Unfortunately, the rapid growth of the Internet in the region has resulted in severe strain on those donated resources resulting in varying levels of quality in the services offered by APNIC. To address the quality of service issues, APNIC has hired one full time and two part time employees to provide APNIC registry services as their primary responsibility. However, APNIC will be unable to pay these employees without an increase in the funding level. The APNIC Funding Plan In order to address the APNIC funding requirements, APNIC created a working group (funding-wg) whose charter was to come up with a stable funding plan which could statisfy APNIC's requirements for resources. An announcement was sent out in early May, 1995 indicating the donation based funding model had failed and volunteers for the funding working group were requested from the APNIC community and Internet service providers in the Asia and Pacific Rim regions. After two and a half months of consideration, the funding working group reached consensus on the funding plan in use the the European Internet community for funding the European Registry, RIPE-NCC. The RIPE-NCC funding plan imposes a fee, based on the self- determined size of service providers, for services offered to registries. Initally, the RIPE-NCC funding model made no distinction between organizations which paid and those which didn't. However, at the insistance of paying organizations, RIPE-NCC decided to make services to non-paying organizations provided on a time-available basis. APNIC's funding plan as devised by the funding working group copied this funding plan in all details with the exception of differing monetary values for the various provider categories and the intent to offer Internet service provider referrals to the general Internet community ordered by the self-defined size of the ISP. At the Honolulu APNIC meeting, in early July, 1995, the chair of the funding working group presented to the attendees the proposal for the APNIC funding plan. After the presentation and some discussion where the original proposal was fine tuned, a poll was taken of the attendees with the results of 43 in favor of the plan presented and one person against. It was additionally agreed that the implementation of the APNIC funding model would begin on September 1, 1995. Details of the accepted funding plan can be found in Appendix A. A Small Concern APNIC, as an organization, does not have legal status. It has not been incorporated in any country, thus it cannot join into any contracts for the provision of services. In order to address this issue, APNIC contacted the Internet Society and asked if the Internet Society would be willing to support APNIC a proxy both for payment by organizations wishing to pay for APNIC services as well as for the purposes of signing legal documents such as contracts. Initial indications were that the Internet Society agreed to fulfill this function for APNIC. However, as the date approached for the implementation of the APNIC funding plan, a lack of response on the part of Internet Society leadership threw into question the assumption that the Internet Society would be able to support the legal requirements of APNIC. Further, the service contract provided by APNIC to the Internet Society was never reviewed by legal counsel, thus it became uncertain as to acceptibility of the service contract. As a result, on September 1, when the APNIC Funding plan was intended to be implemented, APNIC found itself without any clear legal umbrella in which to operate nor with a viable service contract in which organizations could request APNIC's services. An Interim Plan Taking into account the best interests of the Asia and Pacific Rim Internet communities and in addition, the concerns for legal liabilities which might be incurred by APNIC in the provision of its services, APNIC has decided to postpone the implementation of the APNIC Funding Plan until after the third APNIC meeting to be held in Singapore in January, 1996. By that time, APNIC will establish a clear and well understood legal umbrella, and in addition, will use the intervening time to modify the funding plan to operate in the new legal environment created and to publicize the impending APNIC Funding Plan to all ISPs operating in the Asia and Pacific Rim regions as much as possible. However, APNIC still has needs of funding to continue operating and to provide better and more stable services to the Asia and Pacific Rim Internet communities. Thus, the following modifications to the existing donation based funding model will be implemented. APNIC will continue to request donations from service providers operating in the Asia and Pacific Rim regions, using the funding levels as defined in the APNIC funding plan described in Appendix A. Organizations are free to pay APNIC fees or not as their conscience dictates. APNIC will take all requests, regardless of from whom the requests came or for what was requested in a first-come, first served basis and all requests will be processed as resources and time permits. However, as an encouragement to organizations to make donations, APNIC will waive the US $1000 startup fee when APNIC implements the funding model described in Appendix A (with necessary amendments) following the third APNIC meeting in Singapore. In addition, organizations which donate to APNIC will also become members of the APNIC Contributors Committee and will have a say in how APNIC implements registration policies. Finally, APNIC will provide invoices to organizations for donations to help provide APNIC registration services. Whatever donations organizations make will be applied to their yearly service fee, thus the date on which APNIC receives the donation will be equivalent to the start of the service year. When a donation is received, APNIC will establish an account number for the donating organization and that account number will be valid when the APNIC funding plan is implemented after the Singapore APNIC meeting. It should be made clear however that APNIC will not make a distinction between organizations which pay and those who do not in terms of the processing of requests before the implementation of the APNIC funding plan described in Appendix A following the third APNIC meeting in Singapore. Conclusions Resources are necessary to provide services, regardless of the type of services or where the services are provided. In the past APNIC has operated on a donation based funding model. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to provide a consistent level of services using this funding model, thus APNIC has decided to implement a charging based funding model. The charging based funding model was intended to be implemented on September 1, 1995, but due primarily to legal considerations, implementation of the APNIC funding plan has been delayed until after the third APNIC meeting in Singapore in January, 1996. In the interim, APNIC will be continuing with the donation based funding model, however organizations which donate to APNIC prior to the implementation of the APNIC funding plan will have the startup fee of US $1000 waived and will have the amount donated taken into account when computing the yearly service fee. Appendix A -- Details of the APNIC Funding Plan The APNIC funding model copies the RIPE-NCC funding model in most details, the only significant change being the charges applied. Specifically, any organizations may approach APNIC and request to become a "local Internet registry" which can receive sub-delegations of IP address space and other resources from APNIC. APNIC currently places no requirements on organizations requesting this status such as licensing, connectivity (other than a requirement to submit re-assignment information), etc. However, APNIC will assess the following fees: Start Up Fee (one time): US $1,000.00 Internet Service Provider Registries: Large: US $10,000/year Medium: US $5,000/year Small: US $2,500/year Enterprise Registries: US $1,500/year The categories of registries are self-determined. Enterprise registries are organizations which require address space or other resources yet who will not sub-delegate those resources to outside organizations. Examples of enterprise registries could be universities, large corporations, etc. Allocations to Enterprise registries will be based on existing policies in use at APNIC and will require, in the case of IP address space, the submission of accurate estimates of initial, one year, and two year address space consumption, etc. Internet service provider registries are intended for organizations which provide Internet connectivity services or who act as a proxy for one or more Internet service providers, generally entailing the sub-delegation of address space or other resources. It must be stressed that APNIC will NOT verify the claims of an ISP with respect to their size, nor will any action be taken by APNIC if an organization is deemed by others to be inappropriately sized. Allocations of IP address space made to Internet service provider registries using a "slow-start" algorithm as detailed in APNIC-022 (see ftp://archive.apnic.net/apnic/docs/apnic-022.txt). Payment of service fees must be made prior to requesting service. If a request is made by an organization which has not paid the appropriate fee, APNIC will service the request on a time available basis. While APNIC cannot guarantee service parameters for either paying or non-paying requestors, APNIC does guarantee that paying requestors will be serviced before non-paying requestors. The intention of this funding plan is to provide APNIC with enough funds to cover APNIC's operational costs. As such, the fees may vary from year to year depending on the requirements placed upon APNIC. APNIC Services Payment of the APNIC fee will mean that organizations will get priority over non-payers in the following services: - Allocation/Assignment of IP address space - Delegation of in-addr.arpa domains - Allocation of autonomous system numbers Payment status will have no effect on the implementation of allocation/assignment policies, e.g., review of requests for address space will not take payment status into consideration. It must be stressed that APNIC is charging for service level, not for resources. There is no price associated with any resource under APNIC's jurisdiction such as IP address, AS numbers, etc. APNIC offers services to points of contact only. If organizations wish to join together to form a single point of contact, they need to pay only a single fee. For example, if all the ISPs in a country agree to form a national Internet Registry and the national Internet Registry acts as the interface to APNIC, the national Internet Registry is the organization which will need to pay the APNIC bill (thus allowing APNIC's fees to be spread out over a number of organizations). However, if such a confederation of ISPs is created, APNIC will not insist organizations go through that confederation, although APNIC may refer organizations to the confederation if so desired. Note also that APNIC places no restriction to the number of confederations in a given region nor the requirements for creation of a confederation or its constituency. If an organization feels APNIC is acting in an inappropriate fashion with respect to the allocation of resources, organizations may appeal APNIC decisions to the APNIC Contributors Committee (see below). If the organization is still not satisfied after receiving the Contributors Committee results, they may petition the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. Decisions of the IANA should be considered final. Finally, APNIC will offer as a service to the entire Internet community a list of local Internet registries, ordered by the size of the local Internet registry, with the large ISPs coming first and small ISPs coming last. This list, made available via the World Wide Web, FTP, Gopher, etc., will be used for referrals for service in the Asia and Pacific Rim region and will be linked into the APNIC information services facilities. Mechanics of Payment APNIC will provide an APNIC Service Request Form. Organizations should fill out this form and submit it to APNIC at the address included in the form. After APNIC receives the request form, we will submit an invoice to the entity listed on the request form for the appropriate amount. As APNIC is not yet a legal entity, the Internet Society will act as a proxy, receiving payments intended for APNIC and keeping those funds in an account set asside for APNIC until the funds are required. The account to make the actual payment to is: Riggs National Bank of Virginia 8315 Lee Highway Fairfax VA 22031 USA Bank ABA number: 056001260 Account number: Internet Society 148 387 10 Payment should be made in US dollars and a receipt will be provided to your organization on request. Payment should be made within 30 days of receipt of the invoice. Please allow up to one week for your payment to be processed. At the end of the service year, APNIC will submit to registered organizations a new service request form for the organization to return to APNIC with whatever changes are necessary. If no changes are required, as indicated either by returning the form without a change of status or failing to return the form after 30 days, the previous status will be assumed and APNIC will submit a new invoice. When payment is received, the organization will be tagged as paid in full for the year starting on the date agreement provided below was signed and an account number will be issued to the organization (if one has not already been issued). The account number should be used in all subsequent requests to APNIC to insure the most timely handling of your requests. In addition, the administrative and technical points of contact for the organization will be included into the APNIC Contributors Committee described in more detail below. Finally, payment is non-refundable, either in whole or in part. Changes of local registry category can occur only at the end of the service year. Payment status is, however, transferable. Simply notify APNIC of the new point(s) of contact. The APNIC Contributors Committee In order to provide input into the operation of APNIC from those who have contributed to that operation, APNIC has established a Contributors Committee. This committee will provide input on tasks APNIC should devote resources to, directions APNIC should move with respect to policy, and advice or suggestions on overall administrative or operational issues. In addition, the Contributors Committee will be presented with petitions for exceptions to the APNIC fees and appeals of APNIC decisions. It is the perogative of the Contributors Committee to approve or disapprove of these petitions and appeals as circumstances see fit. APNIC requests the Contributors Committee organize themselves, electing at a minimum a chair and a vice chair. With the exception of imposing a rule of one vote per paying organization, APNIC has no binding input on how the Contributors Committee is organized or operated. It should be noted that due to technical considerations or overriding policy concerns imposed by the IANA, APNIC may not be able to implement the recommendations of the Contributors Committee, although all efforts will be made to do so. Modifications to the APNIC Funding Plan As the environment in which APNIC operates is rapidly changing, it is not assumed that this funding plan will remain static. In order to insure timely adjustments to the APNIC Funding Plan, at each APNIC meeting the funding plan will be reviewed and modifications will be made with the concurence of the APNIC Operations staff and the APNIC Contributors Committee. It should be further noted that the existance of this funding plan should not be taken as indication that other funding mechanisms are not being investigated, nor that APNIC will decline donations offered by organizations interested in the further growth of APNIC.