[ppml] Policy to help the little guys

[William Herrin]

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 8:18 PM, Jo Rhett <jrhett at svcolo.com> wrote:
> On Mar 19, 2008, at 3:27 PM, William Herrin wrote:
> > 5. Each year, ARIN solicits bids for an ISP to serve as a "catchall"
>  > tunnel broker for the whole /16. The tunnel broker announces the whole
>  > /16 and (if you pay him) then tunnels any traffic to you via GRE in
>
>  FYI I see nothing about this proposal that requires ARIN.  It could
>  be implemented by any current or future holder of /16 or whatever
>  size space.  It sounds like an ingenious marketing opportunity that
>  if implemented in advance could become really valuable when IPv4
>  exhaustion occurs.   Why don't you do this?

Hi Jo,

Six reasons:

1. It is, as you say, overly complex. My second variant is more practical.

2. To be perceived as fair, the registry component must be handled by
a neutral non-profit. There's no money in that.

3. The payment processor and tunnel broker components are more
interesting as additions to an existing business than as a startup. I
sold my last business some time ago and this idea doesn't sing sweetly
enough for me to start another.

4. My hunch is that most of the folks disgruntled about the
unavailability of PI space would not be willing to pay the actual cost
of announcing a route into the entire DFZ. Again, my second variant is
more practical.

5. No funding. And if a VC with a checkbook and pen is reading this, I
have more interesting projects I'd like to discuss with you off-list.

6. This problem has been a problem for a long time. I'm really just
trying to get people to think creatively about solving it instead of
devolving into yet another round of "PI guys are treated so unfairly."

Regards,
Bill Herrin



-- 
William D. Herrin herrin at dirtside.com bill at herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004