LET'S JUST GO AROUND IN C

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

At 8:55 AM -0500 2/3/97, Jeff Binkley wrote:

>
>PF>>It's kinda fun listening to the ISP voices saying "we wanna be
>PF>>independent, we wanna be the final authority, we wanna make our own
>PF>>choices without regard for anyone else."
>PF>>
>
>PF>ISP's can already do this; if they can justify PI address space, they
>PF>can decide to go to the InterNIC to obtain it. Once again, the fact
>PF>that it may or may not be routable is an orthogonal issue. Under the
>PF>ARIN proposal, the only functional difference is now they will pay
>PF>for the services rendered by ARIN in obtaining address space directly
>PF>from ARIN.
>
>
>Which brings us back to the whole purpose/benefit of this proposal.  Why
>should they be forced to pay for something they don't have to pay for
>today, only to have no/limited perceived benefit ?

But they don't pay for it today because it's been funded by NSF.  They do
get benefits of controlled unique addressing.  Addressing of this sort is a
prerequisite for global routability, but they are not the same thing.

>This whole thing reminds me of the government trying to levy taxes.

Take a different government example.  When I was a kid, and my mother took
me to visit a national park, there were no admission fees or very small
fees.  Jeff, you don't suggest here that there are no costs to running a
Yellowstone or Yosemite, do you?  The point I'm making is that the park
operations were subsidized by general tax funding.

As federal budgets become tighter, there's been more emphasis on user fees
for services, privatizing services, etc.  Same thing, in my mind, whether
it is the Park Service or NSF.

>I've watched much of
>the discussion going on here and many of the supporters tend not to be
>ISPs or folks who would be directly finacnially impacted by this
>proposal.

I really think you need to distinguish between the smaller ISPs that
emphasize customer connectivity, and the larger network service providers
(NSP).  Think of the latter as those firms with national or large regional
backbones, whose primary business is moving large numbers of bytes rather
than providing web services, dialup access, etc.  The latter don't seem to
be complaining here, and I think that is because they take registry
services as a cost of doing business.  NSPs have been quite active in the
IETF, NANOG, etc., so these proposals are not a surprise.  NSPs, I suspect,
feel they don't need to complain because they have already gone through the
discussions in the RFC2050 effort, etc.

Don't assume 2050 and related documents were things where it was easy to
reach consensus.  Sprint had pushed for the minimum allocation being /18,
and a lot of effort was to reach compromise on a /19.

For whatever reasons, the smaller ISPs are just starting to get exposed to
some fairly well-developed issues.

>From my unofficial counting the supporters tend to be:  NSI,
>hardware vendors, academic affiliated individuals and a few other
>interested parties.  The opposition/concered parties tend mostly to be
>the ISPs and network providers.

Other than arguments over the details of the proposal -- parts of which I
don't like either -- could you point out a NSP that has major technical
problems with the proposal?  Smaller ISPs, certainly.  Some of these
smaller ISPs also are demanding address portability and global routability
that no one knows how to do in a reliable and scalable way, regardless of
how many people scream "there _ought_ to be a way to do this."  In fact,
address portability is, IMHO, an obsolescent issue.  Current good practice
is to design systems such that they are easily renumbered, or to translate
addresses on a firewall or gateway that might be installed in any case.

Don't misinterpret what I am saying to mean I am opposed to smaller ISPs in
the market. I think they have a critical role in supporting end user
services, whether dialup access, web hosting, etc.  I'm writing this from a
personal account, and it is no accident that it is with a local ISP rather
than AT&T, MCI, etc.  But the smaller ISPs simply have not grown up aware
of the operational scalability issues necessary, at least in the short
term, to let the Internet grow and prosper.

>This is akin to the "not in my
>backyard" syndrome of where to build prisons and the like.  We all agree
>they are needed but don't build them next to where I live.  With ARIN is
>seems we agree there needs to be some control over address space (albeit
>we would probably disagree on how much control and what the real purpose
>of the control was for) but the supports are saying make the ISPs pay
>for it, while the ISPs are saying wait a minute.  They weren't even the
>ones asking for it from what I can see.  Paul's point is there will even
>be limietd benefit for them, even if they go along with it.  So why
>should they start coughing up money for something which has this little
>potential for them ?

It comes down to a simple question...you agree there is a need for "some
control over address space."  You agree, I belive, that providing such
control involves expenditure of funds.

Then my question to you:  who pays?  I don't really care who pays as long
as the function is funded, and I believe that costs will eventually be
reflected in pricing no matter who is charged.  I also believe that the
costs will be relatively small in relation to the profits to be made and
the benefits perceived by customers.