[arin-ppml] Rationale for /22

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

David Farmer wrote:
> On 3 Aug 2009 Kevin Kargel wrote:
> 
>> One quick point on the existance or emergence of small multi-homed
>> networks..
>>
>> In the past year and a half I have seen a very noticeable increase in the
>> number of small organizations that are going or attempting to go multi-homed
>> with DSL connections to multiple upstream providers.  They are doing this as
>> a means to try and do what they did before with expensive dedicated circuits
>> like T1.  Increased reliability of a $39.95 SDSL has led these customers
>> down the primrose path to think that if they have a couple of these then
>> they don't need an $800 ATM circuit.  
>>
>> I am not saying I agree with this philosophy or even that I think it is
>> functional, but I am seeing it happen.
>>
>> As these customers get educated they figure out that they are technically
>> "multi-homed" and that they "can" get their own IP space, and if they invest
>> in a router that can do BGP they can gain transparent (to the end user)
>> routing reliability using these DSL connections.  Bean counters tend to
>> prefer non-recurring expenditures to recurring expenditures.  
>>
>> These organizations are small hospitals, clinics, small banks, farmers,
>> insurance agencies, non-chain manufacturers and distributers, et.al.  They
>> don't need a lot of IP, but they do need routing failover.  They are
>> learning that it is theoretically (albeit not realistically) possible to do
>> what used to require a T1 on SDSL better for a fraction of the cost.  
>>
>> I believe we will see a mushrooming incidence of these small multi-homed
>> organizations in the routing tables in the coming years.  
>>
>> This will affect the issue of global routing table size and does have a
>> bearing on reducing the minimum allocation unit.  
> 
> This is exactly the situation that providing PI /24s could create 
> the inducement for many more users to multihome that I was 
> refering to and then create the tipping point Leo was refering 
> to.
> 
> Thinking a little out side the box here and I'm not even sure 
> something like this would be legal, it might be considered 
> colluding.  What if a pair of providers or maybe even a set of 
> providers were to jointly obtain a block of addresses to allow 
> customers to multihome.  Customers would connect to two or 
> more participating providers, announce there block to the 
> providers and then the providers contain the customer 
> announcements within there joint infrastructure and only 
> announce the aggeraget to the Internet.
> 
> As I said I'm not sure how to set this up legaly and we would 
> probablly need ARIN policy to enable it, as I beieve it would 
> probablly violate one or two policies.
> 
> As I don't work for an ISP, I'm not sure this could work from a 
> business model point of view either.  It would definitely take a 
> set of ISP with an enlightened view of competition to make it 
> work.
> 
> Could something like this work?  
> 

It could work and it would be legal.  The problem is that
it wouldn't last.  Remember, DSL/cable customers are least-cost
customers. (Hey, I have DSL at my house!)  All that would happen is the
customer would set this up, then observe both of their connections
for a year to 6 months.  After doing this they would decide which
ISP was more reliable and just cut service with the other ISP
to save money.

So you can imagine what would happen if, say, ISP A and ISP B
join forces to do this, then ISP A markets this solution to
their userbase, and then finds 6 months later that a user
which they had spent sales and marketing dollars to get on
to their own network, then spent more sales and marketing
dollars to pitch this multihomed solution to, just up and
disconnects from them and makes ISP B their only ISP.

This is why you don't see Pepsi Co running the "Pepsi Challenge"
advertising campaign much anymore.  They found out that
longtime Pepsi drinkers were taking the challenge and some
of them were preferring Coke, then switching to it.

There's big risks to advertising for your competition.

Ted