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Yes this inevitably leads to another instantiation of the Grande Olde Religious War on Settlements. However now the folk who are religiously tainted towards supporting the continued viability (or even absolute necessity in some versions of the War) of zero dollar interconnection now have the added hurdle of demonstrating how they can also solve the routing table scaling issues as a basic precursor of demonstrating that Zero Dollar settlements (aka free transit) is a Good Thing. Good luck and may the force be with them. And the forum in which this will happen? Personally I'm of the view this is not an area which naturally lends itself to the open processes of NANOG and the IETF. The most likely scenario is that the forum will either be smoke-filled back rooms or elevated views on the 150th floor, or both. And no, this is not a completely comforting answer for many. thanks, Geoff
In the same way that giving away IP addresses and giving away IP routing can only be described as a very bad case of irrational behaviour, especially when the underlying resource is under stress as it is at present, then I'd also note that giving away transit is similarly a case completely irrational behaviour!
Agreed, but doesn't this lead to the religious War On Settlements. Yakov's push/pull paper on route announcements coupled with traffic levies would seem to to address your point. Do you agree?
All this points to a desperate need for a more realistic economic structure to be used within a number of key aspects of Internet infrastructure.
Agreed, what are the forums, though? There are both techie questions to be answered as well as hard business case scenarios. NANOG seem unlikely to address the former, where the IETF seems ill equipped to answer the latter.
-scott
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Andrew's comments:
Half correct. Everyone in the area carries full routes for the block. Everyone outside the area can listen to only the /8 advertisement.
So these providers are providing the free transit to their non-customers?
This does not make any business sense; it will not happen. --asp@uunet.uu.net (Andrew Partan)