[ppml] Legacy /24s

[Leo Bicknell]

In a message written on Sat, Sep 01, 2007 at 02:40:25PM -0400, William Herrin wrote:
> 10%-30% of the routers in the DFZ today have a hard limit between
> 244,000 and 260,000 IPv4 routes or half that number of IPv6 routes.
> When the limit is reached within the next few months, those routers
> will experience various degrees of falling over dead. Upgrading these
> routers to accomodate 1M IPv4 or 500k IPv6 routes will cost
> $30,000-$150,000 each.

You've nicely bounded the problem of upgrading Sup2+MSFC boxes to
Sup720 boxes.  (I'm guessing, because I've seen you talking about
the problem on the nanog mailing list and all the numbers fit.)

On the flip side, there are a lot of M40, 7513, 12008 and the list
goes on boxes that either have no direct upgrade path, or the upgrade
path is so costly and painful that replacing the box in total is
the only option.  In many cases the replacement cost includes
upgrades (some of which you want, some of which you don't), and can
easily be in the range of $500,000-$2,000,000 per box.

Your numbers also only account for the hardware cost.  Particularly
in the case of a forklift upgrade you're talking about a significant
amount of engineer time, and on-site time at what may not be manned
pops.  You also do not account for customer credits and/or losses
attributed to the down time of upgrading.

In short, I'm afraid your estimate is WAY low on cost per device.

> The number of routes and ASes in the DFZ implies that there are
> somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 routers in the DFZ.

I can't come up with anyway to estimate, but my gut tells me this is a
little high.

> Lets try the high numbers. $150k to handle 500,000 IPv6 routes = 30
> cents per route. Times 300k routers = $90l. Divide by a 5 year upgrade
> cycle = an annual attributable cost of $18,000 per prefix.

Ok, so, we keep talking about a 50-100 year lifetime for IPv6.
Using your numbers, assuming it's a one time cost, and there's no
inflation means if ARIN makes an allocation it will cost $900,000
to $5,000,000.

If there are 10,000 swamp routes that would qualify we're talking
about $9,000,000,000 to $50,000,000,000.  That's 9 billion to 50
billion dollars, over the lifetime of IPv6.

So individuals and small businesses who jumped on IPv4 early can
continue to reap the same benefits.

IPv6 was supposed to be different.  The concept is rooted in really
good principals.  Unfortunately the execution has been lacking.

> As for the folks who want to weasel out of the $100/yr annual
> maintenance fee for an IPv6 PI assignment, I would ask why anyone
> should take your request seriously when you're simultaneously asking
> the rest of the world to spend $17,000/yr on your behalf.

Excellent point.  I personally believe if $100 a year is an issue
for you that's a sign you should not have your own block, for the
economic reasons above.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
Read TMBG List - tmbg-list-request at tmbg.org, www.tmbg.org
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