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Comcast email block list human point of contact...
by Jason West 22 Jan '08

22 Jan '08

I have tried numerous times to get a couple of different IPs of mailservers (our corporate mail server as well as a few of our customers'). I have gone through the web page automated removal process, and each time I do, I receive notice that the blocks have been removed, but then test emails sent to comcast.net still fail. I would like to talk to an actual person who can actually help get this resolved. Thanks, Jason

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Re: An Attempt at Economically Rational Pricing: Time Warner Trial
by Scott McGrath 22 Jan '08

22 Jan '08

No we do not however we are allocated a invariant budget to deliver services for a fixed period of time. We cannot 'raise' prices as the pot of funds needs to be allocated to scholarship, teaching, housing and all the other things which make up a university we provide a service which must be available 7x24 for a fixed amount of funds. So even though we do not face a profit/loss calculus cost control is a key driver for us as every dollar not spent for IT can be redirected into scholarships for deserving students. Our problem on the residential networking side is finding the balance between unfettered access which is untenable and providing a service which allocates the available pool of bits fairly among the average customers and trying to accomodate the large users who are downloading the latest Ubuntu ISO's without causing undue pain for either. For instance at Columbia resnets implement the same policy I posited in my initial response. But I REALLY dont want to go back to the days of .25cts/minute access to the internet if we do that the entire thing will collapse due to the financial uncertainty and the internet will go back to being a curiosity for Education and Government as it will be deemed 'too expensive' by the masses. But it just seems that the telco's just cannot give up the concept of metered access for instance I use DSL at home which is PPPoE which means many 'broadband' devices are unusable here sure it terminates on a PIX but the PIX does not have a finger to press the reset button on the 'required by contract' access device sure I could directly terminate it but since I live in a rural area I need my ISP more than the ISP needs me hence devices which need 'always on' access are a pipe dream as my service is 'on most of the time'. Roderick Beck wrote: > Universities don't face a profit calculus. > > And universities are also instituting rationing as well. > > -R. > Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Scott McGrath <mcgrath(a)fas.harvard.edu> > > Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:00:19 > To:"Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick(a)ianai.net> > Cc:nanog@merit.edu > Subject: Re: An Attempt at Economically Rational Pricing: Time Warner Trial > > > > Why does the industry as a whole keep trying to drag us back to the old > days of Prodigy, CompuServe, AOL and really high rates per minute of > access. I am old enough to remember BOS>c202202 <return> > > The 'Internet' only took off in adoption once flat rate pricing became > the norm for access. Yes there are P2P pigs out there but a more > common scenario is the canonical "Little Old Lady in a Pink Sweater" > with a compromised box which is sending spam at a great rate. Should > she pay the $500 bill when it arrives or would a more prudent and > rational approach be like some universities do. > > i.e. Unthrottled pipe until you hit some daily limit like 1-2 gb and > then your pipe drops to something like 64k until midnight or so. This > keeps the 'pigs' in line and you might want to add a SUPER tier which > would allow truly unlimited use of the pipe for $200-300 because for > some people it would be worth it for them. It's human nature to > desire a degree of predictability > in day to day affairs and as another poster noted that's why prepaid > phones are popular now. Further with the compromised system analogy I > purchased a prepaid phone for my wife who is a teacher so in the event > it was stolen at school the financial loss would be limited to the > prepaid balance, no multi-thousand dollar bill for overseas calls. "You > used the minutes (bandwidth) didn't you?". > > Ultimately there is no option but to build out the network as we have > found on the university side of the house as digital instructional > materials and entertainment delivery over the net will > become the norm instead of sending bits of plastic through the mail > (except for luddites like me ;-}). > > Patrick W. Gilmore wrote: > >> On Jan 18, 2008, at 3:11 PM, Michael Holstein wrote: >> >> >>> The problem is the inability of the physical media in TWC's case >>> (coax) to support multiple simultaneous users. They've held off >>> infrastructure upgrades to the point where they really can't offer >>> "unlimited" bandwidth. TWC also wants to collect on their "unlimited" >>> package, but only to the 95% of the users that don't really use it, >>> and it appears they don't see working to accommodate the other 5% as >>> cost-effective. >>> >> I seriously doubt it the coax that is the problem. >> >> And even if that is a limitation, upgrading the last mile still will >> not allow for "unlimited" use by a typical set of users these days. >> Backhaul, peering, colocation, etc., are not free, plentiful, or >> trivial to operate. >> >> >> >>> My guess is the market will work this out. As soon as it's >>> implemented, you'll see AT&T commercials in that town slamming cable >>> and saying how DSL is "really unlimited". >>> >> I do not doubt that. But do you honestly expect the at&t DSL line to >> provide faster / more reliable access? >> >> Hint: Whatever your answer, it will be right or wrong for a given time >> in the near future. >> >>

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Re: An Attempt at Economically Rational Pricing: Time Warner Trial
by odlyzko＠dtc.umn.edu 22 Jan '08

22 Jan '08

Such caps, if they are high enough, may be a reasonable compromise. As Mark Newton wrote a few days ago, about Australia, The more sensible end of town pays about $80 per month for about 40 Gbytes of quota, give or take, depending on the ISP. After that they get shaped to 64 kbps unless they want to pay more for more quota. Bytecounts are retrieved via SNMP (for business customers) or Radius (for DSL, dial, ISDN, etc). When transit is costing $250 per megabit per month, there aren't many other options. Given Australia's level of Internet traffic (see http://www.dtc.umn.edu/mints/) it seems that only a tiny fraction of the users will hit the 40 Gbytes of quota. But if your transit costs $10 per megabit per month, other factors may dominate. I have a discussion of these issues in the paper "Internet pricing and the history of communications," published in Computer Networks 36 (2001), pp. 493-517, available at http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/history.communications1b.pdf Some of these issues are also dealt in the more recent paper with David Levinson, "Too expensive to meter: The influence of transaction costs in transportation and communication," Phil. Trans. Royal Soc. A, to appear, http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/metering-expensive.pdf Overall, telecom policy makers, both inside service providers and in regulatory bodies, have been fixated on a particular economic model that denigrates flat rate plans. Now I am not a flat rate bigot, and understand their limitations. But it seems imperative to appreciate that there are several other factors that matter, discussed in the papers mentioned above. One is that people are willing to pay more for flat rates. Second is that flat rates stimulate usage, something that I claim telcos should be striging to do, as transmission capacity is growing. But few people appear willing to learn that lesson. Andrew > On Sun Jan 20, Matthew Moyle-Croft wrote: Simon Leinen wrote: > While I think this is basically a sound approach, I'm skeptical that > *slightly* lowering prices will be sufficient to convert 80% of the > user base from flat to unmetered pricing. Don't underestimate the > value that people put on not having to think about their consumption. > As long as the companies convince people that the "cap" is large enough to be essentially the same as unmetered then most people won't care and will take the savings. The other angle is to convince the 95% of customers that caps will actually deliver them a faster speed as the "evil 5%ers" won't be slowing them down by hogging the bandwidth. Having a cap and slowing down afterward (64kbps or 128kbps are typical) is what worked here in Oz. It also removes a whole lot of credit related issues. Consumers get a product where they know what they're getting - it's fast upto a point and then it slows down. -- Matthew Moyle-Croft - Internode/Agile - Networks Level 3, 132 Grenfell Street, Adelaide, SA 5000 Australia Email: mmc(a)internode.com.au Web: http://www.on.net Direct: +61-8-8228-2909 Mobile: +61-419-900-366 Reception: +61-8-8228-2999 Fax: +61-8-8235-6909 "The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones" - John Maynard Keynes

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Re: Lessons from the AU model
by Tom Vest 22 Jan '08

22 Jan '08

On Jan 21, 2008, at 8:20 PM, Roderick Beck wrote: > Tom, > > With all due respect, what are you trying to say in simple, clear > English? > > It is plain wrong to claim the DWDM can explain today's prices on > the Atlantic Is it? Sorry, how do you explain it then? An unanticipated/ undiscounted DWDM-driven windfall in salable supply (1), plus competition (2), plus financial distress (3), plus "innovative" transactions (4) are my prime suspects; the fact that every increment of private line capacity sold or otherwise transferred is fungible and can be further multiplexed just accelerates the (2-4) dynamic. I believe that the same thing -- (2) leading to price collapse, leading to (3) -- would have happened even if there been only two TA cables, assuming of course that (2) still applied -- maybe even if there were only one cable with enough upgradeable fiber pairs. Sure, "overinvestment" played some marginal role, but each new facilities platform added a multiple to the available supply, 1x, 2x... 8x... whereas DWDM advances that really kicked in only after gen1 entepreneurial cables were already planned if not in the water, added/ continues to add exponents (1x)^4, (2x)^6... (8x)^n? > and that DWDM allows providers to make sufficient ROI.. I didn't say that; I did say that I don't know how to define, much less calculate, "sufficient" ROI. Sufficient for what? When is "sufficient" ever sufficient, assuming you can extract more? If I can build one house, and rent it, manage it, and and maintain it at an overall return that will enable me to subsidize 100% of the purchase of another identical lot and identical materials and labor to build a second house, then maybe I'll decide that that's not really sufficient, e.g., because people demand bigger houses today, or maybe I think I could squeeze harder and get enough for three houses, or maybe four... Which one is "sufficient"? What if I've already got a lot of empty houses, but the market for housing won't deliver prices that satisfy my preferred sufficiency test? I have to believe that the financial authorities (public and private) will recognize these new, previously undiscounted developments, and find a way to integrate this new, previously unrecognized abundance into the broader economy -- e.g., by bankrolling future capacity builds (when there is real demand) even though their builders can't promise and won't deliver bubble-era returns. I have to believe it because I'm not cynical or paranoid enough to buy into any worldview that would lead to other assumptions. I might be proven wrong -- but if I do I'd have to start wondering about all sorted of things, e.g., the 200mpg combustion engine, etc... TV > About 70 percent of the operating costs of a TransAtlantic cable > are undersea maintenance and undersea maintenance costs are rising > (think fuel costs). > You can spread those fixed costs over more waves as DWDM improves, > but it is not enough in general. > I was comparing initial build/launch capex to the incremental capex required for upgrades (granted these costs vary by platform/ technology generation). I'm not surprised that a large/rising share of opex is O&M. The fuel component of O&M isn't incrementing in parallel with additional capacity sales, so why isn't expansion of the de facto sponsorship pool one way to offset the rising costs? TV > > Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Tom Vest <tvest(a)eyeconomics.com> > > Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:51:24 > To:Mark Newton <newton(a)internode.com.au> > Cc:roderickbeck@tmo.blackberry.net,owner-nanog@merit.edu,"Geoff > Huston" <gih(a)apnic.net>,"Matthew Moyle-Croft" > <mmc(a)internode.com.au>,"Randy Bush" <randy(a)psg.com>,"Andy Davidson" > <andy(a)nosignal.org>,"Andrew Odlyzko" > <odlyzko(a)dtc.umn.edu>,nanog(a)merit.edu > Subject: Re: Lessons from the AU model > > > > > On Jan 21, 2008, at 6:10 PM, Mark Newton wrote: > >> On 21/01/2008, at 10:49 PM, Tom Vest wrote: >> >>> In the absence of competition (and esp. in the presence of risk of >>> empowering competitive entrants), supply has no general/necessary >>> effect on prices at all. >>> So excess capacity of a product that is completely monopolized (or >>> priced by cartel fiat, ala OPEC or SC) is largely irrelevant. >> >> It goes a bit deeper than that when the monopoly can compound the >> problem my artificially constraining capacity by underspending on >> infrastructure (e.g., only lighting one pair on a multi-pair cable) >> >> So infrastructure spending can (and does) affect the price. > > Hi Mark, > > So you're saying that if a cable owner/monopolist simply lit another > fiber pair, that would cause them to reduce prices? > This mistakes a contingent symptom or tactic or mechanism -- i.e., > the intentionally misleading public explanation ("we're sold out") -- > with the real cause/strategy/motives behind "artificially" high > prices... > >> We get that every day in .au (Transmission on the monopoly route >> between Melbourne and Hobart costs 3 times more than transmission >> between Sydney and LA; and other potential cable operators have >> always known that the monopoly has an excess of supply hidden away >> somewhere which they can roll out at bargain basement prices if >> a competitor ever arrives in the market) >> >>> [ housing ] >>> Come to think of it, our sector has been struggling with its own >>> roughly similar terms-of-exchange crisis since about 2004-2005... >>> arguably driven by very similar prior circumstances as well... >>> worth investigating a bit further perhaps... >> >> I think the dominant factor that the American internet sector has >> been grappling with goes back further than that. It has its origins >> in the dot-com boom, when lots of people who didn't have any real >> money rolled out enormous infrastructure buildouts. When they >> inevitably went broke their infrastructure was bought at cents in >> the dollar, enabling the current generation of Internet companies >> to behave as if the infrastructure they're using was a lot cheaper >> than it really is. >> >> So hardly anyone has been selling below cost, but almost everyone >> has been selling below replacement cost. > > > This makes perfect sense for resources that are not subject to > "multiplexing effects" -- esp. unanticipated (undiscounted) > multiplexing effects. > Put it this way: how would you define (much less calculate) > "replacement cost" for an asset whose financing was predicated on a > useful of capacity of (x), but which, with fractional additional > investment relative to the original outlay, can be leveraged to > deliver (x)^4-n capacity -- with n yet to be determined? Must every > increment of the now vastly larger resource be priced as it would > have been assuming the "original" max cap? How much must the > "replacement cost" replace? The original (x) capacity? The as-yet > indeterminate (x)^n capacity? The originally anticipated/full > scarcity-based/monopoly-backed profits? > >> So everyone can extract profits for years, making out like bandits >> as they grow in to the >> excess capacity that was installed between 1999 and 2001, and they >> won't have a day of reckoning until they run out of capacity and >> find that they haven't been earning enough from their networks to >> service the debt they're going to need to take out to perform the >> next round of infrastructure upgrades. >> >> Example: You cannot seriously expect me to believe that the price >> of transatlantic connectivity actually reflects the cost of laying >> cables across the Atlantic. It defies common sense that a Gig-E >> tail from NYC to London is priced within an order of magnitude >> of a Gig-E tail from NYC to Boston. > > Once you get acquainted with the power of that ^n, you'll believe ;-) > Unfortunately, your location gives you few opportunities to > familiarize yourself. > >> Metered charging systems are, to me, evidence of a realization that >> the business model underlying much of the Internet's last five years >> is unsustainable. You guys might think they're a novel and >> unwelcome arrival at the moment, but give it a few years and we'll >> see what happens :-) > > If fine-grained metered pricing comes to the rest of the world, it'll > be because people roll over for it (you guys weren't given a choice). > If/when that happens, I'll be lobbying my local gov to turn over the > water infrastructure to me so I can replace it with > household Evian vending machines; and I'd recommend you all get in on > the ground floor in the air market ASAP. > Better be quick though, because the revolution will be just around > the corner... > > TV

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Re: An Attempt at Economically Rational Pricing: Time Warner Trial
by Mark_Andrews＠isc.org 22 Jan '08

22 Jan '08

Another view from OZ. I've got a plan that is labeled as Unlimited (12G) Cable. 12G/M (12:00:00-23:59:59) 24G/M (00:00:00-12:59:59) (Disappears if the base 12G is used up) Once the 12G is used up it drops to 64k. Every 4th month is free as I also have a telephone with this provider. The cost actually dropped this month which is a free month. Previously the alotted transfer has gone up twice (from memory) with no fee increase. When I got the initial plan there wasn't a differentiation between AM and PM and the the allowance was for the whole 24 hour period. There are plans above and below this one. I can move up at any time in the month and have it take effect straight away (untested) and move down at the end of the current billing cycle. If I have the choice on when to do a high volume operation I do it in the AM (24G period). My father has a 200MB plan which gives him 600MB. His use is basically email only and software updates. The later is what can cause him problems if he doesn't manage his usage correctly. I've a friend that works for the provider in question and he is on their highest plan. He has 4 children and a wife who are all active users and does max out his plan on occasions. The big advanatge of these plans is that the cost is fixed even if I've used up all my alotted transfer. Mark

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Re: Where is the nanog acronym glossary?, was Re: Lessons from the AU model
by ' =JeffH ' 21 Jan '08

21 Jan '08

FWIW.. http://nanog.cluepon.net/index.php/NANOG_Glossary =JeffH

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Level3/GTEI well-known DNS down?
by randal k 21 Jan '08

21 Jan '08

Anybody know what is up/down with the GTE/Level3 name-servers used the world over on 4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2? Suddenly started getting no responses from them for a couple of our side apps. I hope these servers stick around forever, they're kind of an Internet legend. Cheers, Randal

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Hollywood's 'Untraceable': Fact or fiction?
by Stephane Bortzmeyer 21 Jan '08

21 Jan '08

Very interesting interview of an Hollywood consultant (and former FBI agent) about the facts in the movie 'Untraceable'. Among the many technical details, I note: > Q: Any other elements in the movie the naysayers may call you and > the writers out on as being technically inaccurate? > A: The IP addresses in the movie are not real, for obvious > reasons. You can't use real IP addresses, because it will point to > real IP addresses. It's similar to the 555 area code for phone > numbers in movies. Does the movie uses RFC 3330's 192.0.2.0/24? :-) http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/011808-hilbert-q-a.html

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RE: Cost per prefix [was: request for help w/ ATT and terminology]
by Neil J. McRae 21 Jan '08

21 Jan '08

Joe How many E1 customers can I plug into that device? You can take a cross section on this issue at various points. Think of the huge (sub RSP8) 7500 estates still in production, GSR Engine <5, 7609 <RSP720 and Flexwan1 and I think the early Juniper boxes - that can cope with todays size of routing table. The cost per prefix on those devices is very expensive indeed as the step upgrade driver for those devices is now the size o the table. We are all paying for it margin reduction... Regards, Neil -----Original Message----- From: Joe Abley <jabley(a)ca.afilias.info> Sent: 21 January 2008 00:15 To: William Herrin <herrin-nanog(a)dirtside.com> Cc: Patrick W. Gilmore <patrick(a)ianai.net>; nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: Re: Cost per prefix [was: request for help w/ ATT and terminology] A new cisco 2851 can be found for under $10k and can take a gig of RAM. If your goal is to have fine-grained routing data, and not to carry gigs of traffic, that particular router is perfectly adequate. If you're prepared to consider second-hand equipment (which seems fair, since it's not as though the real Internet has no eBay VXRs in it) you could get better performance, or lower cost, depending on which way you wanted to turn the dial. Sometimes it's important to appreciate that the network edge is bigger than the network core. Just because this kind of equipment wouldn't come close to cutting it in a carrier network doesn't mean that they aren't perfectly appropriate for a large proportion of deployed routers which take a full table. Joe

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RE: Cost per prefix [was: request for help w/ ATT and terminology]
by Neil J. McRae 21 Jan '08

21 Jan '08

I'm sure they will make it work but there a long list of issues using PCs as routers that still applies capex goes to opex. -----Original Message----- From: Adrian Chadd <adrian(a)creative.net.au> Sent: 21 January 2008 02:23 To: Jeff McAdams <jeffm(a)iglou.com> Cc: nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: Re: Cost per prefix [was: request for help w/ ATT and terminology] On Sun, Jan 20, 2008, Jeff McAdams wrote: > A Linux box (*BSD, pick your poison) running Quagga or similar will do > the job at an extremely low price point. > > Yeah, again, not gonna want to pass gigs of traffic through it, but the > same concept does still apply. I dunno, the *NIXes seem suddenly interested in fixing up their internal network code to try and handle 10GE stuff "better". You might find that someone decides to drop in a crazy-looking intel e1000 NIC driver at some point thats tailored towards forwarding 64 byte frames at gige rate. The commercial guys hacking on FreeBSD routers/bridges keep telling me they've done it w/ custom coding on intel NICs on decent-looking PCIe hardware. It doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility nowdays. Adrian

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