As I already pointed out, I never passed a packet to Cogent. They were ready to provide service before I was ready to start using it. I paid setup, 1st month service, and then some. And your computer analogy is totally ridiculous. The only "service" I ever actually used was a /22 of IP space. A /19 from ARIN is $2500 for a year, so if Cogent wanted a couple hundred for my continued use of the /22 for 90 days I would have happily paid it. Ralph Doncaster principal, IStop.com div. of Doncaster Consulting Inc. On Mon, 6 May 2002, Scott Granados wrote:
Well don't forget its a two way street. If a customer isn't paying their bill then its the provider getting screwed. There is no insentive or in fact good reason to be helpful to this person. I won't be helpful to someone who decides to switch services and not pay me, ever! On the other hand if they are reasonable and if there is a friendly split both sides are more likely bo be reasonable. If someone buys a product say a computer from you, and doesn't pay you will you still service them? Better still if I'm the telephone company and you stiff me for x# of dollars and switch to another carrier do you really expect me to release the same telephone number for you so that you can switch uneffected. Its totally unreasonable to assume when someone isn't paid for their services that they will allow you to continue using their resources. And we're only talking a /20 here not to large a task.
On Mon, 6 May 2002, Ralph Doncaster wrote:
But it would seem that given the attitude many have expressed here of "if they're not your customer any more, screw 'em.", then relying on the honor system is unwise.
Ralph Doncaster principal, IStop.com div. of Doncaster Consulting Inc.
On Mon, 6 May 2002, Daniel Golding wrote:
Indeed, you have hit upon one of the significant weaknesses of the ARIN IP registry system - that it relies largely upon the integrity of it's members, in order to properly issue and conserve address space. ARIN is largely based upon the honor system, with one "check" on the potentially dishonest being a general unwilling to be branded an IP address cheat or poor internet citizen.
Of course, should one choose to be somewhat less upstanding of an internet citizen, posting one's intentions to do so on NANOG, frequented as it is by various ARIN people, might not be such a good idea.
- Daniel Golding
Ralph Doncaster angrily ruminated....
What it tells me is I should have wasted enough space to consume 8 /24s long ago, so I could get a /20 directly from ARIN. I assign IPs to customers very conservatively. Multiple DSL customers with static IPs are put on a shared subnet instead of one subnet per customer. I easily could have used 8 /24's a year ago and still conformed to ARIN rules. At the time I was only using 3 /24's. We recently reached 8 /24s and applied to ARIN a few weeks ago for a /20, but it sounds like the best thing to do is to use IPs in the most inefficient way possible (while still conforming to ARIN policy) in order to quickly qualify for PI space.
-Ralph