Hi,
(PA has a recurring, for most networks not too small price tag attached, PI is basically free) Is there a way around the scoring algorithm I don't know about? PI is currently scored in the year of assignment, and then never again, so it's not "fully free", but after the initial cost, it is - so the term "basically free" is appropriate.
And even this initial cost are only scoring points. I work (among others) for a medium sized business ISP, with a /16, a /18 and a /32 IPv6 assigned a few years ago. This equals to around 500 scoring points which pushes us in the medium sized LIR category. http://www.ripe.net/membership/billing/procedure.html says I can use up to 864 scoring points before becoming a (more expensive) large LIR. This difference of 350 to be used scoring points allows me to request something around a /20 (16 * (2008-1992)) _per_ _year_ without paying a single cent more to RIPE. And hell, pay 1500 EUR more for one year (large category) and have ~5500 scoring points available. That's an insane amount of address space that will be totally free after one year. Bernhard