[ppml] Free Market

[Iljitsch van Beijnum]

On 27-aug-2007, at 17:45, William Herrin wrote:

> Here's the economic problem you haven't adequately addressed:

[...]

Sorry, this is way too complex for me to be able to keep straight in  
my head.

However, the point is that all ISPs announce to everyone everywhere  
where they peer all the prefixes of their customers and customer's  
customers. So the aggregation only happens inside an AS and is  
invisible from the outside.

I suspect that in the topology you came up with, it's not possible to  
do aggregation on the transatlantic link because that way, the thing  
that you think happens would indeed happen: someone would have to  
carry the traffic for free. That's not an option, so this means you  
can't here. However, Christie and Debbie still get to direct all  
their traffic for NL to the routers in their networks that connect to  
transatlantic transits. I.e., a router in San Diego doesn't need NL  
prefixes.

> making the whole thing a colossal waste of effort.

There is no effort until you implement aggregation. Presumably,  
people will only start to implement the aggregation when it buys them  
something and not before. Without aggregation it's all just regular  
PI that customers like so much.