6 ms·

Annual LIR fees at RIPE are around 2000€, and includes trainings and tickets to meetings. If anything, this serves as a filter for economically unreasonable ven

Annual LIR fees at RIPE are around 2000€, and includes trainings and tickets to meetings. If anything, this serves as a filter for economically unreasonable ventures. Compared to other expenses, even if run purely on volunteer basis (meaning you are donating your time), this seems easily doable.

immibis 1y ago
You aren't supposed to be a LIR unless you're serious about reselling RIPE services. You're supposed to get services through some other LIR instead, similar to the relationship between domain registries and registrars. There are many, including several in the hacker community that would be happy to register you for no additional fee beyond the RIPE fee (the 50€/year for registration, not the 2000€/year for being an LIR).
throwaway63467 1y ago
It’s even less usually, they reimburse you if they have a surplus, I think I pad around 1.500 € normally.
weitendorf 1y ago
I've been doing a moderate amount of research on getting an ASN and ipv4/6 blocks so I can BYOIP and host third-party services without being locked into the cloud provider I was using at the time the third-party configured DNS. That has led me down various rabbit holes in which I started learning how the Internet actually works. IMO the Internet actually sucks ass Why is there so much bureaucracy and cost involved for someone to own an IP address? I should be able to connect to the network and acquire an IP address as easily as I can buy a merckle-tree-backed pointer to an IPFS image, or vote in a US election. Why do I have to pay hundreds of dollars for Internet Numbers conjured from thin air by a US nonprofit to be resold by a RIR? How fucking moronic is it that IPV4 was created with substantially less capacity than there were humans on Earth, got adopted, wasn't immediately fixed or abandoned once it became obvious that the Internet would be used globally, was irresponsibly allocated, introduced various unofficial but consequential practices (eg NAT), ran out and got expensive, and STILL is widely used alongside ipv6. What is the point of having a centralized system for governance centered around ICANN/IANA when they are so wildly inefficient and incapable of governing? Fuck 2000€ these are freaking made up numbers that I should be able to buy for pennies with an email address, government ID, and credit card.
- jasonvorhe 1y ago
  Just look at the origins of each of these technologies and the times in which they were created and you have all the answers you need. I'm really surprised whenever I read takes like these.
  - weitendorf 1y ago
    Of course everything is a product of its time, and in 1999 or any other world where the Internet is more of a cool new thing than serious business, it makes sense. But that was 26 years ago. I am pretty sure the guys charging hundreds of dollars for IP addresses that cost them nothing to produce should be able to set up stripe, an identity verification product, and otherwise automate onboarding. Also, instead of writing giant process documents and slow-walking such wildly difficult problems as "allow domains to end in .cool" through infinitely nested committees they could try wielding their supreme governance over Who Owns Numbers And Names by killing off IPv4. As long as ICANN/IANA remain in charge of Internet governance and operate with >$100mm budgets [0] "it made sense 25 years ago" is not a valid excuse IMO. [0] https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/fy24-funding-source-04sep24-en.pdf https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/fy24-funding-sou...
    - jve 1y ago
      Just a little correction per IPv4 wikipedia [1]: Introduction 1981; 44 years ago [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4
      - tracker1 1y ago
        I was going to look up the same... I thought it was a little older than that... it's worth remembering that in 1981 there was no DNS yet, and even for dialup BBSes there were only a handful in the entire country as Hayes modems were new that year. Hell, for years a lot of business email services were dialup, grab packets, send packets and read/reply offline. This is the same year the IBM PC was first released, and many people felt that would only see fairly limited sales. It wound up selling over 20x projections. Nobody at the time really thought there would be a need for even more addresses. Not to mention the additional overhead of a wider network on the hardware at the time.
eqvinox 1y ago
> Annual LIR fees at RIPE are around 2000€ This is a recent 2025 change; we (minimum size ISP) started around 1k, it went to 1.5k in 2023 and 1.8k in 2025. > and includes trainings and tickets to meetings. Only one or two (don't remember) tickets are included with the initial becoming a member, none thereafter. > this seems easily doable. It's not negligible but not a massive expense either. Even a minimum size ISP is quickly going to be ≥1k€/month on operational expenses. Uplink is the majority for us, location rental & electricity roughly equal at ca. a quarter to third of uplink cost each.

immibis 1y ago

You aren't supposed to be a LIR unless you're serious about reselling RIPE services. You're supposed to get services through some other LIR instead, similar to the relationship between domain registries and registrars. There are many, including several in the hacker community that would be happy to register you for no additional fee beyond the RIPE fee (the 50€/year for registration, not the 2000€/year for being an LIR).

throwaway63467 1y ago

It’s even less usually, they reimburse you if they have a surplus, I think I pad around 1.500 € normally.

weitendorf 1y ago

I've been doing a moderate amount of research on getting an ASN and ipv4/6 blocks so I can BYOIP and host third-party services without being locked into the cloud provider I was using at the time the third-party configured DNS. That has led me down various rabbit holes in which I started learning how the Internet actually works. IMO the Internet actually sucks ass Why is there so much bureaucracy and cost involved for someone to own an IP address? I should be able to connect to the network and acquire an IP address as easily as I can buy a merckle-tree-backed pointer to an IPFS image, or vote in a US election. Why do I have to pay hundreds of dollars for Internet Numbers conjured from thin air by a US nonprofit to be resold by a RIR? How fucking moronic is it that IPV4 was created with substantially less capacity than there were humans on Earth, got adopted, wasn't immediately fixed or abandoned once it became obvious that the Internet would be used globally, was irresponsibly allocated, introduced various unofficial but consequential practices (eg NAT), ran out and got expensive, and STILL is widely used alongside ipv6. What is the point of having a centralized system for governance centered around ICANN/IANA when they are so wildly inefficient and incapable of governing? Fuck 2000€ these are freaking made up numbers that I should be able to buy for pennies with an email address, government ID, and credit card.

jasonvorhe 1y ago
Just look at the origins of each of these technologies and the times in which they were created and you have all the answers you need. I'm really surprised whenever I read takes like these.
- weitendorf 1y ago
  Of course everything is a product of its time, and in 1999 or any other world where the Internet is more of a cool new thing than serious business, it makes sense. But that was 26 years ago. I am pretty sure the guys charging hundreds of dollars for IP addresses that cost them nothing to produce should be able to set up stripe, an identity verification product, and otherwise automate onboarding. Also, instead of writing giant process documents and slow-walking such wildly difficult problems as "allow domains to end in .cool" through infinitely nested committees they could try wielding their supreme governance over Who Owns Numbers And Names by killing off IPv4. As long as ICANN/IANA remain in charge of Internet governance and operate with >$100mm budgets [0] "it made sense 25 years ago" is not a valid excuse IMO. [0] https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/fy24-funding-source-04sep24-en.pdf https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/fy24-funding-sou...
  - jve 1y ago
    Just a little correction per IPv4 wikipedia [1]: Introduction 1981; 44 years ago [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4
    - tracker1 1y ago
      I was going to look up the same... I thought it was a little older than that... it's worth remembering that in 1981 there was no DNS yet, and even for dialup BBSes there were only a handful in the entire country as Hayes modems were new that year. Hell, for years a lot of business email services were dialup, grab packets, send packets and read/reply offline. This is the same year the IBM PC was first released, and many people felt that would only see fairly limited sales. It wound up selling over 20x projections. Nobody at the time really thought there would be a need for even more addresses. Not to mention the additional overhead of a wider network on the hardware at the time.

eqvinox 1y ago

> Annual LIR fees at RIPE are around 2000€ This is a recent 2025 change; we (minimum size ISP) started around 1k, it went to 1.5k in 2023 and 1.8k in 2025. > and includes trainings and tickets to meetings. Only one or two (don't remember) tickets are included with the initial becoming a member, none thereafter. > this seems easily doable. It's not negligible but not a massive expense either. Even a minimum size ISP is quickly going to be ≥1k€/month on operational expenses. Uplink is the majority for us, location rental & electricity roughly equal at ca. a quarter to third of uplink cost each.