At 07:13 PM 6/8/97 -0700, Bill Manning wrote:
Should InterNIC grant small ISPs (this one serves a rural area between Dallas and Oklahoma City) fully routable and portable IP space?
Larry Vaden, founder and CEO help-desk 903-813-4500
A long time ago, a group asked the same question. The answer turned out to be that the Internic, not being an ISP, has no clue about the routability of -any- prefix that is delegated. No delegation registry can ensure the routability of any given prefix.
Thngs may have changed, can you describe to me what you consider a "fully routable and portable IP space" might look like and how such conditions might be enforced?
I think a better question to ask is whether Sprint and others who are filtering out routes, forcing the issue of getting /19 blocks or not getting portable space at all, are being Anti-competitive in the sense of the Sherman Anti-trust act. By their actions the large network providers are essentially limiting the ability of many small to mid-sized ISP businesses from being able to compete in offering high-reliability (i.e. multihomed) services to their customers. This could be seen as an effort to limit the number of ISP vendors to the big, national folks, and those who have existed long enough to have their own resources (independent address space). Folks have said the InterNIC, not being an ISP, is not in a position to understand this issue, and that makes sense. The large ISPs are concerned about the size of routing tables in their routers, and that is certainly a reason to be concerned about having smaller independent address blocks. The problem of large routing tables can be solved by making routers that support more memory and/or routers that use their memory more efficiently. Dan The thoughts expressed here are my own ramblings and do not in any way reflect any position, policy or opinion of my employer.