Summary

  • ARIN-2023-5 names Alison Wood and Kendrick Knowles as shepherds. The change deleted fee-schedule sentences from IPv4 micro-allocation section 4.4 and IPv6 critical-infrastructure micro-allocation section 6.10.1. Its problem statement says ARIN’s Policy Development Process does not address fees.
  • ARIN adopted the package on 19 August 2024 and implemented it on 21 August. The current NRPM states the resource rules; ARIN’s fee schedule states the charges.

The price tag had wandered into the wrong aisle. ARIN’s Number Resource Policy Manual explained when certain operators could receive small IPv4 and IPv6 blocks. In two sections it also told them that they would be charged under the fee schedule. The sentence sounded harmless. It put a billing instruction inside a policy process whose own scope excludes fees.

Alison Wood and Kendrick Knowles shepherded ARIN-2023-5. Among four edits, the package removed the fee sentence from section 4.4, which covers IPv4 micro-allocations for critical infrastructure such as public exchange points and core DNS providers. It removed the equivalent sentence from section 6.10.1, the IPv6 critical-infrastructure micro-allocation provision. One institution publishes both documents; the documents have different jobs.

The same package retired a redundant section 4.3.4 and simplified the language in section 4.10, the dedicated IPv4 allocation used to facilitate IPv6 deployment. The latter now says plainly that a /24 will be allocated. These edits make the package look like housekeeping. Yet the fee deletion draws a boundary around decision-making. The policy record says the community’s Policy Development Process does not address fees. A sentence about billing in that process's manual suggested a link between resource eligibility and price-setting that the process itself could not maintain.

Wood presented the package at ARIN 52. ARIN’s staff and legal review found no operational impact and listed public-documentation updates as the implementation work. The Board adopted the changes on 19 August 2024; ARIN implemented them two days later. The current manual carries the number-resource criteria without those two fee sentences. The separate fee schedule tells customers how annual registration-service charges are determined.

For an exchange operator, the map is now cleaner: read the NRPM to see the address conditions, read the fee schedule to see the bill. For the community, it is clearer who owns each decision. Wood’s small edit removed two misplaced price tags. The cashier remained at the next counter.