North American Network Operators Group
Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

SPINs and ASNs (was: Re: Why does Sprint have address filters again?)

  • From: Jeffrey C. Ollie
  • Date: Mon Jun 01 12:28:34 1998 
Karl Denninger wrote:
> 
> The Federal Government has set up a corporation for "E-Rate" connections.
> These are the "libraries and schools" program you keep hearing about.
> 
> To bid on these, you must have a SPIN, or service provider ID number.
>
> [...] 
> 
> Total cost to the ISP to get a SPIN: $0.00
>
> [...]
>
> What is going on here?  ASNs didn't used to cost money until ARIN got its
> claws into them.

The cost of administering SPINs is paid for by the U.S. government (and
therefore by the U.S. taxpayers), just like the U.S. government used to pay
for the administration of ASNs, IP address allocations, and domain names. What
has changed is that the U.S. government no longer pays for the administration
of ASNs.  It still costs money to do the administration so the money has to
come from somewhere.

In fact, knowing the way the U.S. government works, it probably costs the
taxpayers more than $500 to allocate a SPIN.

Jeff

Attachment: smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature