Is RIPE, The European Internet Registry, A Ripoff?
Canada and US account for slightly over 45% of the world's IVP4 IP addresses. Europe is far less. Yet the 2025 budget for ARIN, the regional registry that serves the US, Canada, and Caribbean, is $28.8 million versus 41 million Euros for RIPE. If I use purchasing price parity to convert Euros to USD, and this is the correct approach, then the RIPE budget is 1.3*41 million Euros or $53 million USD. So RIPE's budget is almost twice the ARIN budget, yet their core functions are the same. The budgets are recouped via fees on IP addresses.
It is plausible in my opinion that RIPE is feather bedding, which means it has a lot of unnecessary positions. There have been rumors for years that RIPE maintain a huge, but generally useless staff of community representatives. Let me add, that I have used ARIN to get /24s for an ISP client. The organization is highly efficient and professional. So is Arin underfunded and RIPE just the right size? Highly unlikely. Given the price pressures that ISPs endure, there is no room for fat in an Internet registry's budget.
First of all, the RIPE NCC is the registry. “RIPE” is the community. There are obviously many other factors in play which you seem to conveniently ignore — including the price charged per member. This is also pretty offensive to the community representatives in the RIPE NCC who you do not appear to have interacted with. The staff levels of the NCC are published in the annual report.
ReplyDeleteHey, your budget is huge relative to the much leaner ARIN. That's the issue. If you are pretending that the charges that were pushed through a few years ago did not disturb your members, you are wrong. It's time for more truth and less European clubbiness. Let me add there is a stench of arrogance surrounding the Internet exchanges and RIPE.
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