Numbering Really Big Networks

[Kent Crispin]

Howard C. Berkowitz allegedly said:
>
[...]
>
> An issue that concerns many people on the ARIN list is being "locked in" to
> a single upstream provider, assuming the general case is provider-based
> allocation.  One concern here is the disincentive for people to go with
> small providers, because they may need to renumber as the small provider
> grows.

This is not really the issue that I am concerned about, though, of course,
it is an issue.  There are two important places where your telephone
company analogy breaks down -- first, the Telco's are a regulated
monopoly, and there is political(public) oversight.  Second, there
aren't a hundred small direct competitors of Pacific Bell here in the SF Bay
area, all getting their telephone numbers *and routing service* from
PacBell.

A small ISP can be in *direct* competition with its upstream
provider.

> There are two ways to look at this.  One is that renumbering is
> anticompetitive and must not happen.  The other says there are technical
> reasons to renumber, and probably good ones.  Let's focus on making
> renumbering less painful, because it will be a fact of life.  Let's also
> realize there are significant real world examples where even large end
> users might face renumbering of their Internet interfaces, but would have
> to renumber a very small portion of their users.

I appreciate the technical issues, really I do.  But it is a simple
fact that small ISPs have to worry about renumbering, and big one's
essentially don't.  Small ISPs have the burden of an  undeniable
competitive disadvantage.  If they have to renumber all their
customers do as well -- oh, wait -- the customers wouldn't have to
renumber, if they changed ISPs.

So we have this technical problem.  The solution is to set up a
structure that will most likely, in the long run, get rid of small
ISPs.

Well, perhaps that's alarmist.  But I really don't think so.  Being
large doesn't make a company non-aggressive.

--
Kent Crispin                            "No reason to get excited",
kent at songbird.com,kc at llnl.gov           the thief he kindly spoke...
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