[167155] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: AT&T UVERSE Native IPv6, a HOWTO
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Owen DeLong)
Mon Dec 2 20:13:36 2013
From: Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com>
In-Reply-To: <op.w7hpn2m5tfhldh@rbeam.xactional.com>
Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2013 17:07:40 -0800
To: Ricky Beam <jfbeam@gmail.com>
Cc: NANOG List <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Dec 2, 2013, at 16:15 , Ricky Beam <jfbeam@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 02 Dec 2013 17:59:51 -0500, Mark Andrews <marka@isc.org> =
wrote:
>> ... A simple RA/DHCP option could do this.
>=20
> Great. Now I have to go upgrade every g** d*** device in the network =
to support yet another alteration to the standards.
>=20
>> For the few residential ISP's that do this what is it? $5 / month
>> per IP and how many ask for a second address? 1 in 10000, 1 in
>> recover the setup costs.
>=20
> It varies. Bellsouth DSL, it was $15(?) for /32 (it was included in =
mine) Uverse is $15 for /29. TWC-BC $29(?) for /29. (twc-res doesn't =
offer it)
>=20
> It turns out to be a mark-up of over 200x their annual cost (and they =
charge that per month) -- so it's a significant income stream. (how many =
people are buying, they aren't saying.)
Actually, on DSL, it's ridiculous, but for Cable operators, most of the =
cost is that static addresses are a major pain due to the way cable =
works.
Whenever they split or combine a CMTS or head-end (which is apparently a =
frequent operation for capacity management according to people I know at =
MSOs), the static addresses require all kinds of additional =
configuration effort. Likely, they aren't making much money on it, but =
that's not address quantity, that's static address management. =
Admittedly, they do charge by the address, but I think that's only in =
IPv4.
>=20
>> Go ask the bean counters about the cost of having different sized
>> customers. Those costs will dwarf the income from charging for
>> bigger address space. For IPv4 there wasn't a choice. For IPv6
>> there is the choice of one size for all vs the additional cost of
>> managing different sized customers.
>=20
> As one who has dealt with such accounting and billing systems, it's =
actually not that much work. (unless the system pre-dates the internet.) =
And even more so if the system was designed from the beginning to =
support it. (as this was already there for IPv4, it should've been =
included in any additions for IPv6 support.) I doubt we're going to see =
anyone from the big boys popping up to admit having setup their systems =
to support micro-allocation billing, but it's a safe bet they have, or =
they're working on it.
I actually tend to doubt it. All of the people I've talked to from the =
major operators have said that the charges in IPv4 were not a revenue =
source, they were an effort to discourage the consumption of the =
addresses and/or the use of static addresses and to try and recover the =
costs of dealing with them in cases where customers were willing to pay.
There's a reason we don't (generally) pay for metered long distance =
within the US any more. IPv6 addresses should be pretty much the same.
Owen
