Hello Bill:
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of William Herrin Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 7:55 AM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Cost per prefix [was: request for help w/ ATT and terminology]
On Jan 21, 2008 10:28 PM, Jon Lewis <jlewis@lewis.org> wrote:
Is there really any point in trying to put a $ figure on each route?
Jon,
Emphatically Yes!
Right now we rely on ARIN and the RIRs to artificially suppress the growth of the prefix count and with it the availability of PI space. This is a Really Bad Thing on so many levels, but absent a viable market-based solution to the problem, authority-based rationing is really the only thing we can do.
If we can determine the cost to announce a prefix then we could develop a market-based solution to the problem... One where instead of suppressing the prefix count and dealing with it as business overhead, we GET PAID for announcing and propagating prefixes.
There are several market models that could work, but they all depend on having a reliable metric for the cost of announcing a prefix. So, if you think you'd like to get paid for announcing routes instead of continuing to give the service away for free then yes, there is a point to determining the cost of a prefix.
Hmm, who gets paid? It sounds like your hinting around a telco-type reciprocal payment model (correct me if I'm wrong). Do I pay my upstreams who in turn pay there upstreams and so on and so on? Or, is there some central, uber-authority that gets paid by all of us? It seems to me that there are many billing models that accommodate point-to-point relationships, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a mental model of payment in the many-to-many environment in the DFZ. Regards, Michael Smith