Value of telephone numbers

[Karl Denninger]

Uh, Chris, you're missing something.

ARIN can't guarantee that the addresses they give you will be "recognized"
by the Internet Community.

That is, unless you're redefined a bunch of laws overnight.

It can claim that *within its sphere of influence* it will make no overlapping
or duplicate allocations, but that's a different thing entirely.

The generic problem isn't address space -- its router manufacturers being
coddled by the Internet industry rather than being forced to produce equipment
that can handle the real load out there.  Why is it that I can buy a 100 MIPS
system -- a GENERAL PURPOSE system -- for well under $1,000 on the secondary
market (this pretty much establishes the price on the CPU, by the way) while
that same class of processor isn't at the core of any existing major router
doing BGP computations?

Why is it that nobody is producing a router where there is a *dedicated* 
CPU that does NOTHING OTHER than recompute BGP tables?  (I don't count
prototypes, and yes, I am aware that there is *one* such device in that
phase right now) Again, we're talking about something that isn't very 
expensive to do from a design perspective, and would obviate many of 
these discussions.

Now, add to that the other problem -- entropy of the tables.  This is
*caused* not by the little guys (look at the flap reports sometime for
proof) but by the *BIG* guys.  Fact is, if I look at my own dampened list 
I find that the huge majority of flapping prefixes are owned by people 
like MCI, Sprint, etc. -- virtually all of the time.

The BIG problem right now is:

	Entropy in the route tables.  Possible to resolve by setting
	standards within the community on the presentation of announcements
	and their withdrawal, enforced with existing dampening software in
	the routers on the mainstream market.  Violate the standards, and
	you get "penalized" by having your announcements which flap dampened 
	for a goodly period of time (say, 3-4 hours).  We are NOT running
	out of prefixes to assign, and attempts to prevent assignment of
	address space to those who need it *IS* acting to restrain trade.

	RAM is cheap.  CPU power is cheap too, but the geometric scale
	problem is real and valid.  Fixing the entropy problem will 
	resolve this to a large degree, leaving only the RAM issue (which 
	is really a matter of vendors putting appropriate numbers of sockets
	and address decoding hardware on their processor cards).

The *second* problem is (which is, by the way, being ignored):
	
	BGP *sucks* as a means to determine available bandwidth and proper
	routing configuration.  In fact, BGP does really only one thing 
	well - determining how many ASNs you must traverse to reach a
	destination.  Unfortunately, since there is *NO* standardization 
	of metrics and performance levels associated with them, using BGP 
	to determine *routing* (rather than reachability) leads to a host 
	of performance problems.  This cannot be fixed within the *current* 
	operational parameters of BGP4.  However, it NEEDS to be fixed, 
	and that probably means that we're overdue for either another
	version of BGP or something entirely different.

	What a *routing* protocol needs to be able to do is determine the
	*best* path to a given destination given the potential paths to
	select from.  "BEST" means, at least to me: 1) least congested
	and possibly 2) lowest latency.  (2) actually implies (1) most 
	of the time, but in some cases it might not.

	And yes, I understand that this is a tricky computation, and yes, I
	also understand that at present it doesn't appear that anyone has
	done the work required to even *quantify* this problem, say much
	less attempt to resolve it.

	But BGP doesn't take EITHER of those two items into account in 
	making its routing decisions, and that's a real issue.

--
-- 
Karl Denninger (karl at MCS.Net)| MCSNet - The Finest Internet Connectivity
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On Mon, Jun 30, 1997 at 09:13:57AM -0500, Chris A. Icide wrote:
> Is it so difficult to see that the fees, etc. that will be collected by ARIN
> are for recovery of the costs required to maintain an address registry?
> The value is not in the addresses, the value is in the maintenance of
> a registry that all members of the Internet recognize.  Without either
> the registry or the recoginition of said registry, the addresses are
> worthless.
> 
> Therefore, what members and users of ARIN are paying for is not a
> block or blocks of IP addresses, but the guarantee that the addresses
> that you do have are recognized by the Internet community and thus
> usable.
> 
> Chris A. Icide
> Nap.Net, L.L.C.
> 
> ----------
> From: 	Fox, Thomas L.[SMTP:tfox at FOXBERRY.COM]
> Sent: 	Monday, June 30, 1997 6:49 AM
> To: 	naipr at arin.net; 'karl at CAVEBEAR.COM'
> Subject: 	OT: Value of telephone numbers
> 
> Let me comment on just this one part:
> 
> 
> >For example, if I have a lease on office space at a rate below current
> >market rates and you have the right to sublet,then I have a valuable asset
> >that needs to be listed.
> >
> >The reason that one typically doesn't report assets like the right to use
> >a phone number is that the value is generally accepted to be too small to
> >be of concern.
> 
> Many business carry their phone numbers on the books as an asset,
> especially older, more established ones -- there is a value to having
> a telephone number that is easily recognizable and memorable.
> Anyone call 1-800-Flowers lately?
> 
> --tlf
> 
> 
> 
>