Hi, I might be being slow, or you might not understand my question - I am not sure it has been a long day. I want a filter that will automatically match the shorter prefixes that match any longer prefix, once I can match them I can drop them. I don't want to manually configure a static prefix list for lots and lots and lots of reasons. If the longer prefix disappears from the route table I want to stop filtering the shorter prefixes - automatically. -----Original Message----- From: Mike Walter [mailto:mwalter@3z.net] Sent: 15 January 2008 16:52 To: Ben Butler; nanog@merit.edu Subject: RE: BGP Filtering Ben, Look here. They show an example of prefix filtering on the 128.0.0.0/8 network. I would assume you could extrapolate and come up with your own rule. http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_0/np1/configuration/guide/1cbgp.h tml#wp7487 Mike Walter, MCP Systems Administrator 3z.net a PCD Company http://www.3z.net -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Ben Butler Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 11:45 AM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: RE: BGP Filtering Hi Jason, Fantastic news, it is possible. We are using Cisco - would you be so kind as to give me a clue into which bit of Cisco's website you would like me to read as I have already read the bits I suspected might tell me how to do this but have guessed wrong / the documentation hasn't helped - so a handy pointer would be appreciated. Kind Regards Ben -----Original Message----- From: Jason Dearborn [mailto:jasondearborn@gmail.com] Sent: 15 January 2008 16:35 To: Ben Butler Subject: Re: BGP Filtering That's typically a function of your router software. Juniper, Force10, and Cisco all have support for this. Check your manual. On Jan 15, 2008 8:11 AM, Ben Butler <ben.butler@c2internet.net> wrote:

Hi,

Considering:

http://thyme.apnic.net

Total number of prefixes smaller than registry allocations:

113220

!!!!!

/20:17046 /21:16106 /22:20178 /23:21229 /24:126450

That is saying to me that a significant number of these smaller prefixes are due to de-aggregation of PA and not PI announcements.

My question is - how can I construct a filter / route map that will filter out any more specific prefixes where a less specific one exists

in the BGP table.

If my above conclusion is correct a significant portion ~47% of the number of the prefixes in the table could be argued to be very unnecessary at one level or another.

Is such a filter possible easily or would it have to be explicitly declared, any chance of a process the automatically tracks and publishes a list of offending specifics similar to Team Cymru's Bogon BGP feed.

As a transit consumer - why would I want to carry all this cr*p in my routing table, I would still be getting a BGP route to the larger prefix anyway - let my transit feeds sort out which route they use & traffic engineering.

Thoughts anyone?

Kind Regards

Ben

On Jan 15, 2008 2:02 PM, Jon Lewis <jlewis@lewis.org> wrote:

On Tue, 15 Jan 2008, Ben Butler wrote:

...

I want a filter that will automatically match the shorter prefixes that match any longer prefix, once I can match them I can drop them. I don't want to manually configure a static prefix list for lots and lots and lots of reasons. If the longer prefix disappears from the route table I want to stop filtering the shorter prefixes - automatically.

This was talked about / requested several months ago on cisco-nsp. IIRC, the thread ended along the lines of don't hold your breath. Implementation of this sort of feature is very icky (lots of details you may not be considering) and why should cisco spend time writing this code when they can sell you a bigger router instead?

Jon, didn't you start: http://www.wibble.co.uk/archives/nanog/2007/msg05265.html and Ben, is this sort of what you are looking for? Or would it accomplish the same thing for you? -Chris

Hi Folks, 1. UK: UKNOF; http://www.uknof.org.uk/ I just attended the last meeting Monday. Free and a good lunch included! Please do not confuse UKNOF with the United Kingdom Nitric Oxide Forum. Nitric Oxide keeps your arteries relaxed and your blood pressure under control 2. Europe: RIPE; http://www.ripe.net/ The Big Meeting is in Berlin in early May. 3. France: FRnOG; http://www.frnog.org/ Has several meetings each year. Has interesting discussions in French on its mailing list. Moderator makes Stalin look easy going. 4. UK: LINX; https://www.linx.net/ Has four meetings each year. Not difficult to get invited if you are not a member. 5. LAMBDANET hosts several German ISP meetings; http://www.lambdanet.net/index.php?p=92&l=1&sid=ee8bc11d266a13bffdcd59ceb45c329d. Language is German. Please do not confuse with the Intranet for the Brothers of Lambda Theta Phi, Latin Fraternity Inc. 6. I am not aware of any Dutch per se ISP conferences although that market is certainly quite vibrant. I am also disappointed to see the Canadians and Irish have next to nothing despite Ireland being the European base of operations for Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo. And Canada has over 30 million people. Where is the National Pride? 7. It is worthing mentioning that DEC-IX has started the practice of hosting carrier meetings a la Telx. These are not conferences with lectures, but networking events where each provider has a booth where they can push their products and services. Tends to be more carrier than ISP, but as you know the union of these two sets is not the null set. Quite a bit of overlap. 8. Both DEC-IX and AMS-IX have member meetings each year. Not clear how difficult to get invited if you are not a member. 9. I believe there are some Northern England ISP meetings. Probably MANAP. Roderick S. Beck Director of European Sales Hibernia Atlantic 1, Passage du Chantier, 75012 Paris http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com Wireless: 1-212-444-8829. Landline: 33-1-4346-3209. French Wireless: 33-6-14-33-48-97. AOL Messenger: GlobalBandwidth rod.beck@hiberniaatlantic.com rodbeck@erols.com ``Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.'' Albert Einstein.

Suresh Ramasubramanian schrieb:

APRICOT - http://www.apricot2008.net next month in Taipei. SANOG - www.sanog.org - going on right now in Dhaka, Bangladesh

SwiNOG - http://www.swinog.ch/ - two meetings per year in Berne, Switzerland, active mailing list, IRC and regional beer events. Regards, Fredy

On Wed, 16 Jan 2008, Simon Lockhart wrote:

On Wed Jan 16, 2008 at 12:09:48PM -0000, Rod Beck wrote:

...

6. I am not aware of any Dutch per se ISP conferences although that market is certainly quite vibrant. I am also disappointed to see the Canadians and Irish have next to nothing despite Ireland being the European base of operations for Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo. And Canada has over 30 million people. Where is the National Pride?

Inex, the Dublin internet exchange runs member meetings a few times a year. (But, like LINX, DE-CIX & AMS-IX member meetings, they're designed for members, not for the general community).

NANOG occasionally holds meetings in Canada.

...

8. Both DEC-IX and AMS-IX have member meetings each year. Not clear how difficult to get invited if you are not a member.

There's also the EPF (European Peering Forum) co-run by LINX, DE-CIX and AMS-IX once a year.

IL-ops for Israeli operators

Simon

Rod Beck wrote:

I am also disappointed to see the Canadians and Irish have next to nothing despite Ireland being the European base of operations for Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo.

the Canadians tend to keep things quiet, as all their good ideas are taken by the Americans (ie. light bulb and basketball) -- Jim Mercer jim@reptiles.org +971 55 410-5633 "I'm Prime Minister of Canada, I live here and I'm going to take a leak." - Lester Pearson in 1967, during a meeting between himself and President Lyndon Johnson, whose Secret Service detail had taken over Pearson's cottage retreat. At one point, a Johnson guard asked Pearson, "Who are you and where are you going?"

On Fri, 18 Jan 2008, Rod Beck wrote:

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/rsstory/61251.html

So, anyone but me think that this will end in disaster? I think the model where you get high speed for X amount of bytes and then you're limited to let's say 64kilobit/s until you actually go to the web page and buy another "token" for more Y more bytes at high speed? We already have this problem with metered mobile phones, which of course is even more complicated for users due to different rates depending on where you might be roaming. Customers want control, that's why the prepaid mobile phone where you get an "account" you have to prepay into, are so popular in some markets. It also enables people who perhaps otherwise would not be eligable because of bad credit, to get these kind of services. I'm also looking forward to the pricing, all the per-byte plans I have seen so far makes the ISP look extremely greedy by overpricing, as opposed to "we want to charge fairly for use" that is what they say in their press statements. -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se

According to the article these types of plan are well established like Australia. And that makes sense. The cost of private line connectivity into Australia is very high, although it has probably fallen due to Southern Cross raising their capacity. Whenever this packet-switched network gets stressed, these types of pricing schemes are probably only solution outside of rationing 'the bandwidth hogs'. Roderick S. Beck Director of European Sales Hibernia Atlantic 1, Passage du Chantier, 75012 Paris http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com Wireless: 1-212-444-8829. Landline: 33-1-4346-3209. French Wireless: 33-6-14-33-48-97. AOL Messenger: GlobalBandwidth rod.beck@hiberniaatlantic.com rodbeck@erols.com ``Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.'' Albert Einstein.

I always find it interesting that people with a telco background keep trying to go back to the ma bell days and ways, even as the telcos themselves are abandoning those models for phone service. One of the things about usage based pricing in the Internet is that the system doesn't have the facilities to do that built into it by design, so you have to add a lot of equipment and software to do it. This tends to cost more than the incremental revenue, especially when you consider the additional customer service costs and churn (there's always a competitor who pops up offering flat-rate pricing). The problem in the ISP industry isn't lack of usage based pricing. It's that the going rate for basic connectivity was driven below that which is economically sustainable by the ILECs when they engaged in predatory pricing to drive the CLECs out of business in the late 90s. Now that they own the market, they find that, having driven the prices down, they can't raise them, so they are engaging in various subterfuges that are designed to cover up the basic thing they are doing: trying to charge more for the exact same service.

-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Jeff Shultz Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 11:38 AM To: NANOG list Subject: Re: An Attempt at Economically Rational Pricing: Time Warner Trial

Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:

...

On Fri, 18 Jan 2008, Rod Beck wrote:

...

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/rsstory/61251.html

So, anyone but me think that this will end in disaster? I think the model where you get high speed for X amount of bytes and

...

limited to let's say 64kilobit/s until you actually go to

...

and buy another "token" for more Y more bytes at high speed? We already have this problem with metered mobile phones, which of course is even more complicated for users due to different rates depending on where you might be roaming.

Customers want control, that's why the prepaid mobile phone where you get an "account" you have to prepay into, are so popular in some markets. It also enables people who perhaps otherwise would not be eligable because of bad credit, to get these kind of services.

I'm also looking forward to the pricing, all the per-byte

...

seen so far makes the ISP look extremely greedy by overpricing, as opposed to "we want to charge fairly for use" that is what

then you're the web page plans I have they say in

...

their press statements.

I think that all those people who think their kids spend a fortune on their Cell Phones are in for a very rude awakening... when their "plan" runs out of bandwidth on the 6th of the month.

Flat rate text messaging was created for a reason... this is fighting that reason.

-- Jeff Shultz

On Jan 18, 2008 2:53 PM, Patrick W. Gilmore <patrick@ianai.net> wrote:

IOW: Usage-based billing makes sense commercially, whether you are a propeller-head or a bell-head.

And since Internet providers tend to be for-profit businesses, doing what "makes sense commercially" is kinda required.

Then again, I Am Not An Isp, so what do I know? If you think things are out of whack, sounds like a business opportunity to me! You should be able to take your superior knowledge and make a killing implementing a proper network.

-- TTFN, patrick

I'll be honest, when this thread first started the first thing I thought was "I should find out how my local municipal fiber co-op is coming along with their buildout". For customers, going from unlimited to constrained is always painful (vs the opposite). My academic question is, where are costs killing consumer ISPs? Is it the last mile? Transit? Under-capacity peering points? -brandon

The problem in the ISP industry isn't lack of usage based pricing. It's that the going rate for basic connectivity was driven below that which is economically sustainable by the ILECs when they engaged in predatory pricing to drive the CLECs out of business in the late 90s. Now that they own the market, they find that, having driven the prices down, they can't raise them, so they are engaging in various subterfuges that are designed to cover up the basic thing they are doing: trying to charge more for the exact same service.

Sooner or later, somebody is going to try to apply Google's approach to hardware in a network backbone. Imagine a network backbone with no Cisco or Juniper boxes in it, just lots of commodity boxes with triple-redundancy everywhere (quintuple in NFL cities). Vadim Antonov tried to build something like this into a backbone router, but the market for IP backbone equipment is so incredibly conservative, and the pricing was up there with the big boys, so he never had a chance at it. I don't know if Google is doing something like this between their data centers, but I think that the fundamental price of fiber is low enough that with commodity router/switches and triple the fiber miles, we can have a reliable IP packet moving service without jacking prices up. Even if prices do go up, it will be a short term thing because sooner or later, Google, or somebody who thinks as bold as they do, will build a true commodity packet-moving service, and the telecoms industry will fall back into the razor-thin margin utility sector where it belongs. I'm sure many of you will think I am crazy because you know just how much those high-speed ports cost and you can't see any letup in bandwidth growth. But the fact is that ports are not the fundamental components of routers. Chips are, and as we all know, chips keep getting smaller, cheaper, faster and more powerful. FPGAs, SOCs, multicore CPUs and so on. The company that cracks the Internet utility problem might even design and build their own devices rather than outsourcing that, at a high price, to the benevolent vendors. --Michael Dillon

On Jan 18, 2008 4:16 PM, <michael.dillon@bt.com> wrote:

Sooner or later, somebody is going to try to apply Google's approach to hardware in a network backbone. Imagine a network backbone with no Cisco or Juniper boxes in it, just lots of commodity boxes with triple-redundancy everywhere (quintuple in NFL cities).

Michael, There's a missing piece here. You'd need a way to go from the 1-gige interfaces that commodity hardware can keep up with to the 10gige-plus interfaces that the backbone requires. Suppose you build 10-gige mux/demuxes for $2000 each so that you can break the backbone data rates down to 1gbps. The mux/demux would have one 10-gige port and 12 1-gige ports. Packets received on the 1-gige ports would be transmitted on the 10-gige port in the order received. Packets received on the 10-gige port would be transmitted on the 1-gige ports in a more or less round-robin fashion. Two of the 1-gige ports would always be configured as backups with the carrier held low until a piece of equipment attached to one of the active ports failed. You could then build a highly available 3 x 10gige port plus 22x1-gige port "router" with the following components: 3 $2000 10gige mux/demuxes 10 $3000 1U servers (packet forwarders, 5 gig-e ports each) 1 $3000 1U server (BGP route manager, 2 gig-e ports) 2 $3000 1U servers (hot spares, 5 gig-e ports each) 2 $2000 24-port gig-e switch (interlink the 13 servers with redundancy) 62 gig-e cables 18 rack units $50,000 total. But you can start to get Cisco and Juniper routers with 3 10-gige interfaces in the neighborhood of $50k and they neither take up 18 rack units nor consume as much electricity as those 13 servers. On the other hand, commodity memory is cheap. You could expand those 1-gige software-based forwarders to handle 100M routes in the FIB for maybe another $10k. Since the theoretical limit for the count of prefixes /24 and shorter is less than 34M, that could be handy. A similar expansion in Cisco or Juniper big iron is not just expensive, its hard. And too, the notion of a Linux routing cluster is undeniably hot. :) Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004

Do other industries have mixed pricing schemes that successfully coexist? Some restuarants are all-you-can-eat and others are pay by portion. You can buy a car outright or rent one and pay by the mile. Roderick S. Beck Director of European Sales Hibernia Atlantic 1, Passage du Chantier, 75012 Paris http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com Wireless: 1-212-444-8829. Landline: 33-1-4346-3209. French Wireless: 33-6-14-33-48-97. AOL Messenger: GlobalBandwidth rod.beck@hiberniaatlantic.com rodbeck@erols.com ``Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.'' Albert Einstein.

On Jan 18, 2008, at 3:11 PM, Michael Holstein wrote:

The problem is the inability of the physical media in TWC's case (coax) to support multiple simultaneous users. They've held off infrastructure upgrades to the point where they really can't offer "unlimited" bandwidth. TWC also wants to collect on their "unlimited" package, but only to the 95% of the users that don't really use it, and it appears they don't see working to accommodate the other 5% as cost-effective.

I seriously doubt it the coax that is the problem. And even if that is a limitation, upgrading the last mile still will not allow for "unlimited" use by a typical set of users these days. Backhaul, peering, colocation, etc., are not free, plentiful, or trivial to operate.

My guess is the market will work this out. As soon as it's implemented, you'll see AT&T commercials in that town slamming cable and saying how DSL is "really unlimited".

I do not doubt that. But do you honestly expect the at&t DSL line to provide faster / more reliable access? Hint: Whatever your answer, it will be right or wrong for a given time in the near future. -- TTFN, patrick

Why does the industry as a whole keep trying to drag us back to the old days of Prodigy, CompuServe, AOL and really high rates per minute of access. I am old enough to remember BOS>c202202 <return> The 'Internet' only took off in adoption once flat rate pricing became the norm for access. Yes there are P2P pigs out there but a more common scenario is the canonical "Little Old Lady in a Pink Sweater" with a compromised box which is sending spam at a great rate. Should she pay the $500 bill when it arrives or would a more prudent and rational approach be like some universities do. i.e. Unthrottled pipe until you hit some daily limit like 1-2 gb and then your pipe drops to something like 64k until midnight or so. This keeps the 'pigs' in line and you might want to add a SUPER tier which would allow truly unlimited use of the pipe for $200-300 because for some people it would be worth it for them. It's human nature to desire a degree of predictability in day to day affairs and as another poster noted that's why prepaid phones are popular now. Further with the compromised system analogy I purchased a prepaid phone for my wife who is a teacher so in the event it was stolen at school the financial loss would be limited to the prepaid balance, no multi-thousand dollar bill for overseas calls. "You used the minutes (bandwidth) didn't you?". Ultimately there is no option but to build out the network as we have found on the university side of the house as digital instructional materials and entertainment delivery over the net will become the norm instead of sending bits of plastic through the mail (except for luddites like me ;-}). Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

On Jan 18, 2008, at 3:11 PM, Michael Holstein wrote:

...

The problem is the inability of the physical media in TWC's case (coax) to support multiple simultaneous users. They've held off infrastructure upgrades to the point where they really can't offer "unlimited" bandwidth. TWC also wants to collect on their "unlimited" package, but only to the 95% of the users that don't really use it, and it appears they don't see working to accommodate the other 5% as cost-effective.

I seriously doubt it the coax that is the problem.

And even if that is a limitation, upgrading the last mile still will not allow for "unlimited" use by a typical set of users these days. Backhaul, peering, colocation, etc., are not free, plentiful, or trivial to operate.

...

My guess is the market will work this out. As soon as it's implemented, you'll see AT&T commercials in that town slamming cable and saying how DSL is "really unlimited".

I do not doubt that. But do you honestly expect the at&t DSL line to provide faster / more reliable access?

Hint: Whatever your answer, it will be right or wrong for a given time in the near future.

Because the industry needs to attract capital, which is difficult when the payback period on capital expenditures continunes to climb and hence the rate of return continues to fall. The incumbents love to talk about what a great quarter they had selling DSL. But very few (if any) will disclose a profit and loss or cash flow statement for their broadband services. The incumbents provide very little visibility and one reason might be the underlying picture is UGLY. Regards, Roderick S. Beck Director of European Sales Hibernia Atlantic 1, Passage du Chantier, 75012 Paris http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com Wireless: 1-212-444-8829. Landline: 33-1-4346-3209. French Wireless: 33-6-14-33-48-97. AOL Messenger: GlobalBandwidth rod.beck@hiberniaatlantic.com rodbeck@erols.com ``Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.'' Albert Einstein. -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu on behalf of David Conrad Sent: Fri 1/18/2008 11:06 PM To: Scott McGrath Cc: North American Network Operators Group Subject: Re: An Attempt at Economically Rational Pricing: Time Warner Trial On Jan 18, 2008, at 2:00 PM, Scott McGrath wrote:

Why does the industry as a whole keep trying to drag us back to the old days of Prodigy, CompuServe, AOL and really high rates per minute of access.

Because they want to make more money and not be a provider of a commodity (see: NGN)? Regards, -drc

On Fri, 18 Jan 2008, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

On Jan 18, 2008, at 3:11 PM, Michael Holstein wrote:

...

The problem is the inability of the physical media in TWC's case (coax) to support multiple simultaneous users. They've held off infrastructure upgrades to the point where they really can't offer "unlimited" bandwidth. TWC also wants to collect on their "unlimited" package, but only to the 95% of the users that don't really use it, and it appears they don't see working to accommodate the other 5% as cost-effective.

I seriously doubt it the coax that is the problem.

And even if that is a limitation, upgrading the last mile still will not allow for "unlimited" use by a typical set of users these days. Backhaul, peering, colocation, etc., are not free, plentiful, or trivial to operate.

To elaborate on what Patrick said, consider what the access providers are up against here. We've spent the last several years in a state where bandwidth between major American, European, and East Asian cities seemed free and unlimited. There was a huge glut of fiber, interface speeds kept getting faster, and what users were downloading was mostly web sites. We've now got 40 Gb/s backbones, which would have seemed like a staggering speed just a few years ago. But look at the content that's being pushed hard now. People have gone from downloading web pages with a few pictures to downloading TV shows and full-length movies. To use Apple's iTunes video as an example, a 40 minute TV show represents half a gigabyte of data. A two hour movie represents 1.5 Gigabytes. In terms of Internet bandwidth, that's two megabits per viewable second. Assuming video downloading continues to grow, that people are still going to want to watch movies and TV in "Prime Time", those 40 Gb/s backbone links don't look so big anymore. One of those super-fast backbone links can handle 20,000 simultaneous users, which isn't very many in the grand scheme of things. Real HDTV data rates are considerably higher than current iTunes video data rates, so the number of viewers that can be supported by a 40 Gb/s backbone link is likely to fall further. There are a number of things the ISPs could do about this, as far as getting content closer to the users and the like, and backbone links will certainly continue to get faster. Still, it also seems likely that the era of capacity being so plentiful that it's not worth charging for will come to an end.

...

My guess is the market will work this out. As soon as it's implemented, you'll see AT&T commercials in that town slamming cable and saying how DSL is "really unlimited".

In a commodity market, which Internet access is, charging more than a competitor for the same service is difficult. If AT&T is selling unlimited service, and Time Warner is selling metered service at the same speed, Time Warner's base rate will likely have to be a bit lower than AT&T's to compete. But once they've got that lower base rate, they may have an easier time drawing in those who just want to check their mail or look at web pages, which are the easy customers for them to support. If the really demanding customers go elsewhere, they may even see that as advantageous. Anyhow, if a customer really wants to be able to download lots of video, they may prefer to be charged extra than to get sent random TCP resets, which seems to be becoming the current way of handling such things. -Steve

On Sun, 20 Jan 2008, Buhrmaster, Gary wrote:

...

My guess is the market will work this out. As soon as it's implemented, you'll see AT&T commercials in that town slamming cable and saying how DSL is "really unlimited".

If I were the DSL companies, I would consider advertising with a commercial recalling the fable of the tortoise and the hare. You see a starting line, the rabbit jumps out early (8mb/s), and then crawls forward (64kb/s). The turtle starts a little slower (3mb/s), but just keeps going, beating the rabbit easily.

... except that for the majority of users, the length of the racecourse is well and truly within the sprinting distance of the rabbit. Guys, this isn't exactly a new idea if you include parts of the world outside of the USA. For example, on my residential DSL service i've used 4.7G this month. With 1/3 of the month left, I have more than half of my self-selected 10Gig cap available. (And I grabbed at least two CD ISO's the other day.) The model works. What remains to be seen is whether it's actually feasible in a market where truly flat-rate services are hitting the market at margins where they can barely pay for themselves. Mark.

On 21/01/2008, at 7:53 AM, Jeff Johnstone wrote:

All of these discussions ignore the developments taking place in the consumer electronics marketplace. A quick glance at this years consumer electronics show in Vegas shows a HUGE variety of home, mobile and automobile consumer devices using IP services. These devices, AppleTV as an example, will require large bandwidth commitments.

Sure. But it isn't an ISP's job to provide below-cost infrastructure to subsidize the bandwidth requirements of Sony and Apple. Pricing should be set without reference to the application developers. If the application developers end up building applications which are too expensive to use, then that's their loss. Nobody in the service- provider industry should be going out of business because they can't afford the infrastructure needed to give their AppleTV users 20 Gbit/sec ports when Cupertino comes out with HHHHHD Video in a few years time.

Add this to IP based telephony and you can't just "shut off" a users service after they reach a cap, you would be removing their emergency services access.

Why can't you? We do it all the time. You shape to 64kbps, which is more than enough bandwidth to run a SIP session with a low-end CODEC. Phone calls still work, hardly anything else does. (performance on a Virtual-Access interface with a rate-limit on it is way worse than performance on a BRI interface without a rate-limit because rate-limits lead to tail-drops, which spooks TCP very, very badly. So 64kbps is actually worse than it sounds for TCP applications, but constant bitrate CODECs deal with it just fine)

Hopefully we won't be seeing "basic" internet services of a couple of gig per month and "channel" offerings of AppleTV, all you can eat as "tier 2 plan", or "other service" as "teir 3 plan".

You guys seem to be behaving as if this stuff hasn't happened before. No, you won't see "basic" internet on a couple of gig per month. You'll see "basic" internet on 40 - 60 Gbytes per month, which is more than most mortals use in any given 30 day period (like, ferchrissakes, who needs 2 Gbytes per day, day in day out? Grandma certainly doesn't use that much when she's checking her email...)

Alongside this discussion is AT&T's direction of content censorship and its impact on end users.

No, the two issues are completely orthogonal. You're supposed to be a network operator, stop thinking like an end user.

Our help desks are going to take a huge hit in the future as we start trying to troubleshoot issues where the general rule of "I'll pass any packet I get" becomes "I will pass any packet I am payed for and have dissected for content, and after I have determined that the rest of the stream won't push my end user over his network cap this month".

No, metering means the network neutrality debate undergoes gravitational collapse, and caring about what's inside a packet turns into a total waste of time. You don't need to care about whether a packet has been paid for because you know that every packet has been paid for. That's what metering delivers. Why do you think the DPI vendors haven't had much traction outside of Europe and North America? It isn't because the rest of the world can't afford them. It's because Europe and North America are where all the "unlimited" access services are sold, so they're the places where DPI is actually needed. Would you need to spend millions with Ellacoya or Sandvine if your customers imposed their own self-created backpressure against P2P usage? Again: Some of the significant economies on the Internet have done this already. The TWC paper isn't trailblazing, and every issue you can think of to explain why it'll be horrible and won't work has already been demolished by real-life day-to-day business in other countries. You guys who are behaving as if the sky will fall are going to have to explain why the Internet industry hasn't ceased to function in .au and .nz before you get on to explaining why its collapse would be inevitable in the USA. - mark -- Mark Newton Email: newton@internode.com.au (W) Network Engineer Email: newton@atdot.dotat.org (H) Internode Systems Pty Ltd Desk: +61-8-82282999 "Network Man" - Anagram of "Mark Newton" Mobile: +61-416-202-223

Condensing a few messages into one: Mikael Abrahamsson writes:

Customers want control, that's why the prepaid mobile phone where you get an "account" you have to prepay into, are so popular in some markets. It also enables people who perhaps otherwise would not be eligable because of bad credit, to get these kind of services.

However, if you look, all the prepaid plans that I've seen look suspiciously like predatory pricing. The price per minute is substantially higher than an equivalent minute on a conventional plan. Picking on AT&T, for a minute, here, look at their monthly GoPhone prepaid plan, $39.99/300 anytime, vs $39.99/450 minutes for the normal. If anything, the phone company is not extending you any credit, and has actually collected your cash in advance, so the prepaid minutes ought to be /cheaper/. Roderick S. Beck writes:

Do other industries have mixed pricing schemes that successfully = coexist? Some restuarants are all-you-can-eat and others are pay by = portion. You can buy a car outright or rent one and pay by the mile.=20

Certainly. We already have that in the Internet business, in the form of business vs residential service, etc. For example, for a residential circuit where I wanted to avoid a disclosed (in the fine print, sigh) monthly limit, we instead ordered a business circuit, which we were assured differed from a T1 in one way (on the usage front): there was no specific performance SLA, but there were no limits imposed by the service provider, and it was explicitly okay to max it 24/7. This cost all of maybe $15/month extra (prices have since changed, I can't check.) Quinn Kuzmich writes:

You are sadly mistaken if you think this will save anyone any cash, even light users. Their prices will not change, not a chance. Upgrade your network instead of complaining that its just kids downloading stuff and playing games.

It is certainly true that the price is resistant to change. In the local area, RR recently increased speeds, and I believe dropped the base price by $5, but didn't tell any of their legacy customers. The pricing aspect in particular has been somewhat obscured; when I called in to have a circuit updated to Road Runner Turbo, the agent merely said that it would only cost $5/month more (despite it being $10/ more, since the base service price had apparently dropped $5). They seemed hesitant to explain. Michael Holstein writes:

The problem is the inability of the physical media in TWC's case (coax) to support multiple simultaneous users. They've held off infrastructure upgrades to the point where they really can't offer "unlimited" bandwidth. TWC also wants to collect on their "unlimited" package, but only to the 95% of the users that don't really use it,

Absolutely. If you can do that, you're good to go. Except that you run into this dynamic where someone else comes in and picks the fruit. In Road Runner's case, they're going to be competing with AT&T who is going to be trying to pick off those $35-$40/mo low volume customers into a less expensive $15-$20/mo plan.

and it appears they don't see working to accommodate the other 5% as cost-effective.

Certainly, but only if they can retain the large number of high-paying customers who make up that 95%.

My guess is the market will work this out. As soon as it's implemented, you'll see AT&T commercials in that town slamming cable and saying how DSL is "really unlimited".

Especially if AT&T can make it really unlimited. Their speeds do not quite compete with Road Runner Turbo, but for 6.0/768 here, AT&T Y! is $34.99/mo, while RR appears to be $40(?) for 7.0/512. The difference is that's the top-of-the-line legacy (non-U-verse) AT&T DSL offering; there are less expensive ones. Getting back to what Roderick Beck said, AT&T is *effectively* offering mixed pricing schemes, simply by offering various DSL speeds. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.

...

However, if you look, all the prepaid plans that I've seen look suspiciously like predatory pricing. The price per minute is substantially higher than an equivalent minute on a conventional plan. Picking on AT&T, for a minute, here, look at their monthly GoPhone prepaid plan, $39.99/300 anytime, vs $39.99/450 minutes for the normal. If anything, the phone company is not extending you any credit, and has actually collected your cash in advance, so the prepaid minutes ought to be /cheaper/.

I disagree. Ever heard of volume discounts?

Picking on at&t again, a typical iPhone user signs up for 24 months @ ~ $100/month, _after_ a credit check to prove they are good for it or plunking down a hefty deposit.

Compare that $2.4 kilo-bux to the $40-one-time payment by a pre-paid user. Or, to be more far, how about $960 ($40/month for voice only) compared to $40 one-time?

Hell yes I expect more minutes per dollar on my long-term contract.

Hrmm, wonder if someone will offer pay-as-you-go broadband @ $XXX (or $0.XXX) per gigabyte?

Actually, I was fairly careful, and I picked monthly recurring plans in both cases. The typical prepaid user is NOT going to pay a "$40-one- time" payment, because the initial cost of the phone is going to be a deterrent from simply ditching the phone after $40 is spent. The lock-in of contracts is typically done to guarantee that the cell phone which they make you buy is paid for, and it is perfectly possible (though somewhat roundabout) to get the cheaper postpaid plan without a long contract - assuming you meet their "creditworthiness" guidelines. Even without that, once you've gone past your one or two year commitment, you continue at that same rate, so we can still note that the economics are interesting. The iPhone seems to be some sort of odd case, where we're not quite sure whether there's money going back and forth between AT&T and Apple behind the scenes to subsidize the cost of the phones (or I may have missed the news). So talking about your iPhone is pretty much like comparing Apples and oranges, and yes, you set yourself up for that one. To put it another way, they do not give you a better price per minute if you go and deposit $2400 in your prepaid account. You can use your volume discount argument once you come up with a compelling explanation for that. ;-) ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.

To put it another way, they do not give you a better price per minute if you go and deposit $2400 in your prepaid account.

Actually, AT&T did (when I last looked at at least one of their prepaid plans a year or so ago for a friend). Deposit $100, get a $20 "bonus". Or something like that. Personally, I do not know how the Time Warner trial will work out (for them, for the consumer, or for other providers), but I do give them credit for experimenting with a different model. Gary

Of course, there are ways around this, such as pricing the "base GB" below the unlimited plans. Then parents who surf the web for 20 minutes a day might beat their kids into turning off eDonkey and save some cash. Suddenly _everyone_ is happy - except the kids. But since they don't pay cable bills, no one cares.

You are sadly mistaken if you think this will save anyone any cash, even light users. Their prices will not change, not a chance. Upgrade your network instead of complaining that its just kids downloading stuff and playing games. Q

On Fri, 18 Jan 2008, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:

If the cheap flatrate broadband were to go away and be replaced by a metered one, we as an industry need to figure out how to do billing in a customer-friendly manner. We do not have much experience with this in many markets.

Caps/fair use plans are common in 20 out of 30 OECD countries. Although Sweden and the USA may not have much experience with it, it seems like other countries do have some experience. And more than likely the billing software vendors from other OECD countries would be more than happy to expand into a new market like the USA. Probably all you need to do is call up your favorite networking vendor sales person and ask them how do I do it. They probably already have a bunch of white papers and stuff you can buy. http://www.oecd.org/document/54/0,3343,en_2825_495656_39575670_1_1_1_1,00.ht... Large enterprise users have had 95/5, avg, peak, etc Internet billing for a decade. Although I think all carrier's billing systems are deliberately fubarred, it hasn't been an insurmountable problem.

Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:

I'm also looking forward to the pricing, all the per-byte plans I have seen so far makes the ISP look extremely greedy by overpricing, as opposed to "we want to charge fairly for use" that is what they say in their press statements.

I see it more as an experiment driven by the P2P issues and the net neutrality arguments. If we have to throw away the established flat rate / oversubscription models due to P2P upload then something has to give - either per byte pricing arrives, traffic shaping becomes more common, upstream rates are reduced, or the entire last mile is replaced. P2P is not going to go away and it's hiding itself more every day. Rate limiting hurts all the customers while per byte pricing hurts only a few users. It took 20 years to build the existing last mile. I don't see it being replaced en mass. I'm going out on a limb here but per-byte is going to be the answer in the end - and marketing is going to have some work ahead of them in selling it. Now it becomes a game of chicken to see who blinks first. Mark

On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 01:44:00PM +0100, Phil Regnauld wrote: [snip] Also missed Middle East Network Operators Group (MENOG): http://www.menog.net/ Better still would be some links to aggregate lists: - http://www.nanog.org/orgs.html - http://www.bugest.net/nogs.html - http://nanog.cluepon.net/index.php/Other_Operations_Groups ...and aggregated calendars: - http://www.icann.org/general/calendar/ - http://www.isoc.org/isoc/conferences/events/ Cheers, Joe -- RSUC / GweepNet / Spunk / FnB / Usenix / SAGE

the folk who actually schedule the meetings use http://ws.edu.isoc.org/calendar/ note that this is not the normal isoc calendar, rather one they kindly host for the ops meeting committees. but few of the national nogs we have seen mentioned here use it. and it did not prevent nanog from rudely scheduling right over afnog (which announced a good while before) next june, causing a mess for a number of us. but it's what we've got. randy

Rod Beck (Rod.Beck) writes:

3. France: FRnOG; http://www.frnog.org/ Has several meetings each year. Has interesting discussions in French on its mailing list. Moderator makes Stalin look easy going.

<sarcasm>Interesting point of view, I'm sure it's impartial.</sarcasm> Note that Scandinavia doesn't have anything formal network operator meeting either, even though it's a very active area.

On Thu, 17 Jan 2008, Bill Woodcock wrote:

Patrik, Kurtis, et al organized a few NordNOGs; I think there were three of them, but it didn't seem to get much traction outside of Sweden, and I think they got tired of being the only ones pushing it forward.

SOF, Swedish Operator Forum meets a 4-5 times a year, but it's usually just 2-3 hours and almost exclusively concerns national matters. It's more of a "Netnod-IX customer club" than anything else. http://sof.isoc-se.a.se (webpage isn't being updated much either, and is in swedish only). -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se

On 17/01/2008, at 1:55 AM, Skeeve Stevens wrote:

NZNog – The New Zealand Operator Group - http://www.nznog.org/

- 2008 Conference will be held in a couple of week - http://2008.nznog.org/

s/a couple of/1/ It starts this coming Wednesday, and goes until Friday. -- Nathan Ward

On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 12:09:48 -0000 "Rod Beck" <Rod.Beck@hiberniaatlantic.com> wrote:

6. I am not aware of any Dutch per se ISP conferences although that market is certainly quite vibrant. I am also disappointed to see the Canadians and Irish have next to nothing despite Ireland being the European base of operations for Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo. And Canada has over 30 million people. Where is the National Pride?

There is an IENOG (www.ienog.org), however I believe it has been inactive for a long time. Much of the discussion occurs on the INEX (www.inex.ie) mailing lists and IRC channel. rg -- Rob Gallagher | Public Key: 0x1DD13A78 HEAnet Limited, Ireland's Education and Research Network 1st Floor, 5 George's Dock, IFSC, Dublin 1. Registered in Ireland, no 275301 T: (+353-1) 6609040 F: (+353-1) 6603666 WWW: http://www.heanet.ie/

Hi, JANOG, Japan Networks Operators' Group(http://www.janog.gr.jp/) discuss on mailing list in japanese, and has meetings twice a year. We will hold 21st meeting next week(2008/01/24-2008/01/25) in Kumamoto city, Japan. -- Masaru MUKAI / JANOG From: "Rod Beck" <Rod.Beck@hiberniaatlantic.com> Subject: Network Operator Groups Outside the US Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 12:09:48 -0000

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

Hi Folks,

1. UK: UKNOF; http://www.uknof.org.uk/ I just attended the last meeting Monday. Free and a good lunch included! Please do not confuse UKNOF with the United Kingdom Nitric Oxide Forum. Nitric Oxide keeps your arteries relaxed and your blood pressure under control

2. Europe: RIPE; http://www.ripe.net/ The Big Meeting is in Berlin in early May.

3. France: FRnOG; http://www.frnog.org/ Has several meetings each year. Has interesting discussions in French on its mailing list. Moderator makes Stalin look easy going.

4. UK: LINX; https://www.linx.net/ Has four meetings each year. Not difficult to get invited if you are not a member.

5. LAMBDANET hosts several German ISP meetings; http://www.lambdanet.net/index.php?p=92&l=1&sid=ee8bc11d266a13bffdcd59ceb45c329d. Language is German. Please do not confuse with the Intranet for the Brothers of Lambda Theta Phi, Latin Fraternity Inc.

6. I am not aware of any Dutch per se ISP conferences although that market is certainly quite vibrant. I am also disappointed to see the Canadians and Irish have next to nothing despite Ireland being the European base of operations for Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo. And Canada has over 30 million people. Where is the National Pride?

7. It is worthing mentioning that DEC-IX has started the practice of hosting carrier meetings a la Telx. These are not conferences with lectures, but networking events where each provider has a booth where they can push their products and services. Tends to be more carrier than ISP, but as you know the union of these two sets is not the null set. Quite a bit of overlap.

8. Both DEC-IX and AMS-IX have member meetings each year. Not clear how difficult to get invited if you are not a member.

9. I believe there are some Northern England ISP meetings. Probably MANAP.

Roderick S. Beck Director of European Sales Hibernia Atlantic 1, Passage du Chantier, 75012 Paris http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com Wireless: 1-212-444-8829. Landline: 33-1-4346-3209. French Wireless: 33-6-14-33-48-97. AOL Messenger: GlobalBandwidth rod.beck@hiberniaatlantic.com rodbeck@erols.com ``Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.'' Albert Einstein.

Hi All, Ukrainian NOG: uanog@uanog.kiev.ua, no site (yet?), almost all discussions are in Russian (some few - in Ukrainian). Meets near Kiev (the capital of Ukraine) every last weekend of May ("Provaiderovka"), but this meetings are not open for everybody. -- WBR, Max Tulyev (MT6561-RIPE, 2:463/253@FIDO)