[35605] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Broken Internet?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (William Allen Simpson)
Tue Mar 13 21:24:32 2001
Message-ID: <3AAEABFE.4509B495@greendragon.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 18:24:01 -0500
From: William Allen Simpson <wsimpson@greendragon.com>
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Roeland Meyer wrote:
>
> What we have today is a manufactured dependence on a single upstream
> provider and no way to multi-home. Even co-lo boils down to single-home
> dependency.
>...
> It looks like our technical solutions are raising unreasonable barriers to
> entry for small businesses.
I beg to differ.
I presented a _technical_ solution back in '92-93 at IETF -- numbering
allocations based on local exchanges. Deering presented another --
numbering based on metropolitan areas. Either eliminated dependence
on a single upstream, and made it simple to switch.
Instead, we have the non-technical solution -- provider-based
allocations. Why? Contrary to Greenwell's assertion, capital does NOT
seek a "market based" solution. Successful markets assume competition
and low barriers to entry. Capital seeks best return on investment.
Best return requires monopoly advantage.
Either of our proposals would have improved competition, but
competition was not what the large providers wanted. The large
providers funded ARIN.
The _technical_ solutions required regional cooperation between local
providers to carry all local (non-transit) traffic directed to the
exchange(s), much as the NSFnet (back when this was the regional-techs
list). Such cooperation has been in short supply.
WSimpson@UMich.edu
Key fingerprint = 17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26 DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32
