RIPE NCC is an association of equals.
Under Dutch association law, a Vereniging is a community of members with equal rights. One member — one vote. The natural counterpart is one member — one fee.
One LIR.
One vote.
Equal fee.
RIPE NCC is a membership association, not an address marketplace. Every member receives the same services and should pay the same annual fee — no matter how many IPv4, IPv6, or AS resources they hold.
01 — The proposal
One member, one fee.
RIPE NCC's charging scheme is up for a vote. We support the variant that keeps a single, equal annual fee for every Local Internet Registry — the model the community deliberately chose in 2012 and has held stable ever since.
02 — What we're against
Pay-per-resource.
Tying fees to the number of IPv4 addresses, IPv6 prefixes or AS numbers turns a membership association into a meter — and changes who RIPE NCC works for.
03 — Why now
This decision lasts.
Charging schemes are sticky. Once the principle is broken, it's very hard to restore. The choice the membership makes this year sets the shape of the next decade.
Arguments · For an equal fee
Why an equal fee is the right model.
Ten reasons grounded in what RIPE NCC actually is and what it actually does for its members.
The service is the same for everyone.
Registry operations, LIR Portal, RPKI, training, policy support — the workload to serve a LIR with a /22 is the same as for a LIR with a /16. Equal cost in, equal price out.
Predictable, transparent budget.
Members × flat fee = revenue. Anyone can read the budget. Nobody is surprised by a sudden bill triggered by a transfer or a routing change.
No barrier for new and small LIRs.
Regional operators, research networks, IXPs, ed-tech, and new entrants can join on the same terms as anyone else. Equal fees protect the diversity of the registry.
Aligned with the policy goal of IPv6.
If members are charged per address they hold, IPv6 — by design vastly larger than IPv4 — gets punished. An equal fee removes any disincentive to deploy IPv6 properly.
The community already made this choice — in 2012.
In September 2012, the RIPE NCC membership was offered three charging schemes, including a resource-based one, and chose equal fees. The flat-fee model isn't a default — it's a fourteen-year-old standing decision of the community, held stable through repeated reaffirmations. Reverting now would undo a conscious choice the membership already debated and made.
One LIR — one vote — one fee.
Each LIR has exactly one vote in the General Meeting. The fee is the financial mirror of that equal vote. Differentiated fees break the symmetry that makes a registry trustworthy.
Registry, not marketplace.
RIPE NCC stewards a common resource. It should not put a price tag on IPv4 addresses, IPv6 prefixes or AS numbers. That's broker work — and it belongs to the transfer market, not to the registry that records the truth.
Equal — not subsidy.
A cheaper fee for small LIRs is not fairness — it's a discount someone else has to pay for. Nobody should be bribed with a lower price to support a model that distorts the registry. Equality means nobody buys influence, and nobody is bought.
Equal fees defuse a structural conflict in the vote itself.
Under one LIR — one vote, a numerical majority of smaller LIRs can always vote a financial decision that lands on a minority of larger LIRs. Equal fees are the only model under which this conflict cannot structurally arise: nobody wins by outvoting anyone else on price, and the General Meeting is freed from being a vehicle for the majority to tax the minority.
Arguments · Against pay-per-resource
Why resource-based fees harm the community.
Ten concrete risks of moving away from a single equal fee.
Turns a registry into a metered service.
RIPE NCC becomes a vendor selling "address units" rather than a member association stewarding a shared resource. The whole logic of the RIR system shifts.
Punishes members for historical allocations.
LIRs that received larger blocks under the rules of the day get a retroactive tax. They followed the policy — and are billed extra for it.
Incentivises shell LIRs and fragmentation.
If fees scale with holdings, the rational move is to split resources across multiple legal entities. That's the opposite of what RIPE policy is trying to achieve.
Disproportionate hit on operators in large markets.
Networks serving large populations — common in CIS, MENA, Turkey, parts of Africa — would pay far more without receiving any additional service.
Membership costs become unpredictable.
Transfers, audits, deregistrations, even market prices — all start to feed back into your annual bill. Budgeting an LIR becomes guesswork.
Creates a conflict of interest inside RIPE NCC.
If revenue depends on the volume of resources under management, the organisation has an economic interest in keeping IPv4 scarce, tightening reclamation, and complicating transfers.
A direct tax on IPv6 deployment.
Any model that counts IPv6 prefixes towards the bill makes the right architectural choice the expensive one. That contradicts the community's own stated direction.
Legally fragile.
Unequal pricing between members of the same association is harder to defend under EU and Dutch law than a uniform fee — especially when the service rendered is identical.
The real beneficiary is RIPE NCC itself.
Switching to a resource-based fee is, on day one, a large transfer of money from a few hundred LIRs into RIPE NCC's budget — for the same services as the year before. The community gains nothing. The organisation gains a windfall. The bill is paid by the operators who carry the most traffic and run the most infrastructure.
The vote itself is structurally unfair.
One LIR — one vote. But a resource-based scheme is a financial decision that lands almost entirely on a minority of larger LIRs — and that minority is heavily outnumbered in the room. A numerical majority of smaller LIRs is being asked to vote that larger LIRs should pay more, with no countervailing voting power on the other side. If the General Meeting had equal representation across LIR sizes, the outcome could be called objective. As it stands, it is the majority voting to tax the minority — the very thing a membership association should not enable.
Compare
Two models, side by side.
Equal fees for equal rights.
Resource-based fee Reject
- Same service, different price — by accident of history.
- Annual bill swings with transfers and policy changes.
- Rewards splitting resources across shell entities.
- Taxes IPv6 deployment.
- Creates a structural conflict of interest at RIPE NCC.
- Complex methodology, recurring disputes over weighting.
Equal fee Recommended
- Same service, same price.
- Stable, predictable annual budget for every LIR.
- No incentive to game policy with shell LIRs.
- Neutral toward IPv4, IPv6, and ASN holdings.
- Matches the legal nature of RIPE NCC as a Vereniging.
- Trivial to administer and audit.
Context
Two facts every voting LIR should keep in mind.
RIPE What is the "RIPE community"?
RIPE (Réseaux IP Européens) is the open community of network operators, ISPs, hosting providers, government engineers, academics and other parties that stewards the regional Internet registry for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia. Anyone with an interest in the technical operation of the Internet in this service region can participate — no membership fee, no formal registration. Decisions emerge by consensus on mailing lists and at biannual RIPE meetings. The RIPE NCC is the legal entity that supports the community; its members are LIRs, and they decide the budget and the charging scheme. More on Wikipedia →
~95% of LIRs don't vote.
At the RIPE NCC General Meeting in May 2025, 19,713 LIRs were eligible. Only 1,039 voted — a turnout of 5.3%. The GM decides for everyone, but only on the voices of those who register and show up. A handful of percentage points of turnout can overturn outcomes. The RIPE community has to vote soberly — and that means showing up.
The community already moved AWAY from categories.
In September 2012, the membership was offered three charging schemes — including a resource-based one — and chose equal fees. The flat-fee model isn't a default; it is a fourteen-year-old, deliberately taken decision, held stable through repeated reaffirmations. Returning to categories for 2027 would undo a conscious choice the community already debated and made.
FAQ
Common questions.
01Isn't it fairer if bigger holders pay more?
"Bigger" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. RIPE NCC doesn't sell bandwidth, traffic, or address space — it operates a registry. Two LIRs cost the secretariat almost exactly the same to serve, regardless of the size of their holdings. Charging by holdings is not fairness; it's cross-subsidy with extra steps.
02Wouldn't a tiered fee reflect "ability to pay"?
A membership association is not a tax authority. RIPE NCC has no mandate or instrument to assess the financial health of its members. Resource holdings are not a proxy for revenue — many of the largest holders are stagnant carriers, while small holders include thriving cloud operators.
03What about IPv6? Should it count?
No. Counting IPv6 in the formula creates a direct economic disincentive to deploy it correctly — exactly the opposite of what the RIPE community has been pushing for two decades. Any model that touches IPv6 is self-defeating.
04Won't an equal fee push small members out?
It hasn't in the fourteen years since the community chose the flat-fee model in 2012. What pushes small members out is unpredictable fee swings, which is precisely what tiered models introduce.
05Doesn't RIPE NCC need more revenue?
Revenue is a budget question, not a fairness question. If RIPE NCC needs more revenue, the membership can vote to raise the equal fee. There is no need — and no benefit — to invent a metering layer to do it.
06What about LIRs that hold legacy /16s or larger?
Those resources were allocated under rules accepted at the time. Retroactively taxing them is a breach of the implicit contract under which they joined the registry. It also sets a precedent: today's policy decisions are tomorrow's bills.
07Who is behind this site?
A group of RIPE NCC member LIRs, acting in our individual capacity. This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by RIPE NCC. Sources for every factual claim are linked from the RIPE NCC website.
08How can my LIR support this?
Register a voting representative before the General Meeting deadline, vote in favour of the equal-fee charging scheme variant, and forward this page to peers.
Take action
How to vote.
Voting in the RIPE NCC General Meeting is open to every member. The process is short — but the deadlines matter.
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01
Register for the General Meeting
Register your LIR's voting representative for the General Meeting — well before it opens on Wednesday 20 May. Attending RIPE 92 in person is separate and optional.
ripe.net/membership/gm/meetings/may-2026/ → -
02
Read the agenda, join the vote
The General Meeting agenda is published. Find the charging scheme vote and connect to the voting platform during the GM voting window.
ripe.net/membership/gm/meetings/may-2026/agenda/ → -
03
Vote Option A
Option A keeps an equal annual fee for every LIR. Read the official summary of the proposals on ripe.net, then vote A — equal fees for all members.
ripe.net/.../ripe-ncc-charging-scheme-options/ →
Voting registration is open now and closes Wednesday lunchtime, 20 May. The vote itself runs from Wednesday (once the General Meeting opens) until Friday morning. After that, the charging scheme is locked in for the next budget cycle.
Spread the word
The vote is decided by who shows up.
Most LIRs don't vote in General Meetings. A handful of forwarded emails changes the outcome. Use the texts below.
Share
Post the campaign in your operator community, LIR mailing list, or NOG channel. No tracking parameters, no shorteners.
Email template — to a peer LIR