Comment by rmoriz
3 days ago
Okay, but that is not enough to operate independently. PA v6 is another dependency. With ARIN you get your personal IPv6 assignment.
3 days ago
Okay, but that is not enough to operate independently. PA v6 is another dependency. With ARIN you get your personal IPv6 assignment.
For a hobbyist, the difference is academic. You can announce PA space with your own ASN, which is what I do. If I change LIRs I’ll have to renumber my IPv6 space.
Companies offering LIR services to hobbyists are probably not going to stay in business forever, as many of them are 1 person companies, too. Also keep in mind that they may change pricing. I understand, that with IPv6 the numbering strategy is almost always automatic and a renumbering can be done in a couple of hours, but it's still an inconvenience, especially when you have to update a lot of AAAA records.
I really think that when you start to operate an AS that you should have a direct RIR membership. And as mentioned above, RIPE has a higher financial entry barrier. I remember they had an object volume based pricing scheme 15 years ago, just like ARIN still has.
None of us know what will happen in the future. All I can say is that currently, it is cheaper for a hobbyist to use a RIPE LIR than to use ARIN. If this changes in the future, I'll move to ARIN.
ARIN is lowering their costs gradually. When I first made the RIPE LIR or ARIN decision several years ago, ARIN wanted $500 just to register an ASN, on top of the yearly fees. I see they have removed that requirement.