On Sun, May 17, 1998 at 01:16:58AM -0000, Michael Shields wrote:
Ok, so I only lose 16 T1 customers instead of 1024.
If you lose 16 T1 customers during a renumbering of a /20, either you don't know how to renumber, or they were already unhappy for some other reason.
If you tell your customers "You need to renumber because evil forces are colluding against us," they won't be very amenable... try explaining that they'll get better connectivity.
The social and technical problems of renumbering a /20 are nonzero but not large.
I've done it.
Why should someone with significant installed base do it at all? Explaining that they'll get "better connectivity" rings hollow. Their obvious question would then be "uh, what's wrong with our connectivity now?" followed by a few more that you might not want to answer. Yes, it can be done. No, its not a reasonable request to make of a dedicated line customer with significant infrastructure who you had, have, and want to keep. We have some customers right now which encompass multiple downline connected parties over large geographic areas, and some of their equipment is incapable of doing things like DHCP (one comes to mind that happens to be a state agency). Renumbering THEM would be a job out of the depths of Hades itself; even broaching the subject would likely cost us the account. Any significant ISP has customers like this; there is no reason to impose these costs on you because you're smaller than someone else - no technical reason that is. -- -- Karl Denninger (karl@MCS.Net)| MCSNet - Serving Chicagoland and Wisconsin http://www.mcs.net/ | T1's from $600 monthly / All Lines K56Flex/DOV | NEW! Corporate ISDN Prices dropped by up to 50%! Voice: [+1 312 803-MCS1 x219]| EXCLUSIVE NEW FEATURE ON ALL PERSONAL ACCOUNTS Fax: [+1 312 803-4929] | *SPAMBLOCK* Technology now included at no cost