-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160 There is a pretty simple solution to this problem. It should be implemented at the MAN level as it seems difficult to get large providers to cooperate well enough for this to work, but it is probably feasable for smaller organisations. A small group if service providers in the same geographical area jointly apply for a good sized block of address space, say a /18. They also jointly apply for an ASN from which this address space will be advertised (they could just as well each advertise it from within their own AS, but some people don't like seeing inconsistent ASs in the global BGP tables). When they get a customer that may only need a /24 that wants to be multi-homed, they suggest that they get a feed from one of the other providers in the group. The group of providers can transfer routing information between themselves using the routing protocol of their choice. This would mean a small increase in the size of local (i.e. within the ASs of the group) routing tables, but a negligible increase in the size of the global BGP tables. - -w - -- Will Waites \________ ww@shadowfax.styx.org\____________________________ Idiosyntactix Ministry of Research and Development\ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.1 (OpenBSD) Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.5 and Gnu Privacy Guard <http://www.gnupg.org/> iQEXAwUBOR4dXQ4cK24IcAwYFAPyngP/T5sKGx+26Q63DbZVJVrs0qnIGet8u7KM wz/MQtfjPi6JKiGFKAn/5G2VWxAH9HXUr80vygxLZYfChinczLiHTVygVi9HvME5 dbCSbwQ/Ikzw6I1se2n9N5TGypWElzGZEVlqzjkVuQ/qn/lDDflzSxogAzgCF874 ecVYP+pssYIEAJZX+YvAAI4VVHDVZpz5ueC500p24rOW49eOGlokwotP4Mt6VOUu B1MrOS17hN4+miW3gIcrVRPiqnydtGcXtcNIIYBNzmF1bdNV0njF1s16dXJxWW4/ KdQEpvX86q9K9QNgm4Icze9ctMeSJDMTj9+5/xsKUdVQKCLjrNr4PeGn =AKZ3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----