[ppml] Free Market

[William Herrin]

On 8/26/07, Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch at muada.com> wrote:
> It's entirely possible to create
> a hierarchical addressing model with only a modest fraction of the
> IPv6 address space. [...]
> Cue objections to geography in routing... However, you get to ignore
> geography if you don't want to aggregate, so if you can afford those
> big routers, it costs you nothing and it provides some insurance

Iljitsch,

The topology of the Internet hasn't been hierarchical since the
dissolution of the NSFnet and every passing day sees greater
geographic dispersion of connections in the graph. Its quickly getting
to the point where even mere mortals can afford to lease transatlantic
fiber. Even a decade ago it was naive to think that topological
aggregation could be made to work, whether geographic or otherwise.
With today's traffic engineering requirements (and the economic
pressure for better traffic engineering if only it was possible), the
argument that aggregation can still work is just plain intransigent.

I read your geoaggregation paper. You don't give the multihomed end
users or their ISPs any choice over which carrier moves their packets
across the sea and you fail to address what economic structure allows
the carrier who does move their packets across the ocean to get paid.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William D. Herrin                  herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
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