[102021] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Cost per prefix [was: request for help w/ ATT and terminology]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (William Herrin)
Tue Jan 22 22:59:28 2008
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:58:26 -0500
From: "William Herrin" <herrin-nanog@dirtside.com>
To: "nanog@merit.edu" <nanog@merit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.61.0801221340030.3306@soloth.lewis.org>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
On Jan 22, 2008 1:58 PM, Jon Lewis <jlewis@lewis.org> wrote:
> Giving absolutely anyone who wants it PI space would make things much
> worse...so I wouldn't call that artificial supression. It's more like
> keeping the model sustainable.
Jon,
Its kinda like gas in the 70's. There wasn't enough to go around given
the price controls so the only way to keep the consumption model
sustainable was with rationing.
Except history tells us that was kinda dumb. Had we allowed prices to
adjust (as we're doing today) the market would have taken care of
itself. Gas would have tripled in price and more folks would have
taken the bus but you wouldn't have the entire nation waiting in line
at the pump.
Right now, announcing a prefix is close to free. If my numbers are
right, it actually costs around $8k/year. A sustainable model selling
an $8k product as a free loss-leader requires some pretty harsh
rationing. Which is precisely what ARIN does, at our insistence.
> I think you mean "get paid for accepting prefixes" or perhaps "pay into
> some global pool (for redistribution to the participants) to announce
> prefixes".
That's right.
The vendors are currently delivering routers that can handle 1M
prefixes and they promise that they can build routers that handle 10M
prefixes with today's technology if there's a demand. If folks want to
pay us more than it costs to dump another 700k prefixes into the
table, why shouldn't we take the profit? It's free money. Even at $8k
there are folks willing to pay it. All it requires is a market
structure that makes the transaction possible.
Let's engage our imaginations, roll with your "global pool" model for
a moment and see if anything interesting pops out of the box.
So, ARIN starts assigning addresses down to a /28 level. The only
requirement for a prefix longer than /20 is that they must remain in
continuous use on the Internet or they'll be revoked
Then, NRO sets up a Universal Service Fund for DFZ routing. Any
transit AS which agrees to accept and normally propagate exactly the
prefixes that are subscribed to the USF is entitled to receive monthly
payments from the USF based on some formula including that AS's
backbone speeds, number of routers and number of peers. At the other
side, anyone who wants their routes carried can make a fixed
contribution to the USF for each prefix that they want to announce,
all the way down to a /32. That only entitles them to announce exactly
that one prefix. If they want to disaggregate, they have to pay for
each of the deaggregates separately.
So now you have folks who can only justify a /28 but its worth
$8k/year to their business to have PI space so that there are no
renumbering costs. And the best part is that they're paying you for
the privilege, paying more than it costs, instead of you having to
blandly accept those prefixes for free.
But wait, it gets better. Now that there's a market structure in
place, its possible to envision different classes of service.
Maybe this market holds a niche for folks who don't want to pay
$8k/year into the USF. Suppose ARIN auctions off the right to announce
a "covering /8" for each of its IANA allocations. The winner can't use
any of the addresses for itself, but it has the right to sell tunnels
to the folks with more specific prefixes. So, if you're a small fry,
maybe you don't pay $8k/year into the USF. Instead, you pay $500/year
each to the two backbones closest to you and then you pay another
$1000/year to the tunnel provider whose /8 covers your prefix. Your
ISP gives you one address from their PA space to catch the endpoint of
that tunnel and for $2k/year you're in business with PI space. If you
picked your backbones right, there's even a decent chance that traffic
following the /8 usually wanders into one of them and redirects your
way before hitting the tunnel.
And suddenly, surprisingly, the Internet works better than ever
without everyone having to carry full routes, you get PAID for the
prefixes you do carry and everyone who wants PI or lots of TE can have
it! Its not free any more, but you can have anything you're willing to
pay for without having to justify yourself to the rationing board.
> Good luck on that one. In how many languages can you say "not gonna happen"?
Do programming languages count? $paiddfz=!$happen;
Seriously, the goal may seem unachievable but that doesn't mean it's
not worth striving for. Who knows what we may find on the way?
On Jan 22, 2008 11:35 AM, Bill Woodcock <woody@pch.net> wrote:
> instead of eating less, we GET PAID for eating tasty
> sammitches!
I would love to get paid for eating tasty sammitches. How cool a job
would that be!
Regards,
Bill Herrin
--
William D. Herrin herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004
