I propose that a large block (say, /8 to /10) be allocated to an independent authority which will then reallocate growable blocks to small to mid level ISPs in the northern california region who are connecting via providers attached to MAE-W, CIX, or PacBell's NAP and topologically "at" those connect points. These addresses can then be filtered out of announcements to routers anywhere else in the world and replaced with a /8 aggregate announcement; only routers within the topology zone would require full information on the connected entities. These addresses will be relatively easy to dual-home within the area, yet will have minimal impact on the global routing infrastructure.
I don't think that this will work for a business viewpoint - someone will end up giving at least some of these ISPs free transit. See the attached message that I sent to big-internet earlier this month. My comments apply to metro-based addressing or interconnect-based addressing or similar schemes. --asp@uunet.uu.net (Andrew Partan)
From: asp@uunet.uu.net (Andrew Partan) Subject: Geographinc addressing To: big-internet@munnari.OZ.AU Date: Mon, 4 Sep 1995 22:33:41 -0400 (EDT)
People have talked about geographic addressing.
Lets look at this in a bit more detail.
Lets assume that everyone on the Boston area has a geographic address and that AlterNet and some other ISP (SmallGuy) have some customers in this area, and that AlterNet and SmallGuy peer at some Boston area exchange point.
Now AlterNet has to have explicate routes to all sites in the Boston area - our own Boston customers plus all Boston customers of all other Boston ISPs. Humm, I don't see any aggregation here. But to continue.
Now the idea is that outside of the Boston area, all ISPs will aggregate all Boston area routes (for all of their own customers and all customers of all other Boston ISPs) into one large Boston route.
Now if I peer with some other ISP in some other area (say someone in San Francisco), then I am supposed to send them just one route for the Boston area.
I have now suddenly offered transit for SmallGuy between San Francisco and Boston.
If SmallGuy is not paying me for transit, then I am not going to do this.
The only way of not doing this is to not advertise the single Boston route, but rather to advertise all of my Boston area customers individually - suddenly no more aggregation.
So either there is free transit or no aggregation.
Geographic addressing is not going to fly. --asp@uunet.uu.net (Andrew Partan)