Sanjay Dani <sanjay@professionals.com> writes:
There are backbone providers and there are providers of specialized ISP or hosting or security etc. services that need independent* IP address space and do not have to waste resources on building a private "backbone".
NAT. Sean. (read an old message by Paul Vixie prior to some NANOG that wasn't worth going to really where I think he might have said pretty much the same things he wrote) P.S.:
I had thought predicting consolidation in the Internet services market was an exclusive realm of only the clueless "market research" firms. Even they seem to be wisening up.
"Internet services" is a rather broad term. I think the "consolidation is coming" crowd is looking more at transport. People watching UUWHO recently might see some justification for the "consolidation is coming" predictions. On the other hand there are models which are attractive beyond the "we run a backbone and dialup and web hosting and this and that and this and that and what else is on your checklist, oh yah, we do that too or are buying up a company that does it already" as such a model tends to scale poorly vs. the number of working brain cells in any given organization needed to offer reliable and coherent service over time.
On Wed, Sep 10, 1997 at 09:11:55PM -0400, Sean M. Doran wrote:
Sanjay Dani <sanjay@professionals.com> writes:
There are backbone providers and there are providers of specialized ISP or hosting or security etc. services that need independent* IP address space and do not have to waste resources on building a private "backbone".
NAT.
Perhaps I misunderstood Sanjay, Sean, but I believe his concern was that the addresses _not be the property of an upstream (ie: backbone) provider_ to provide flexibility of connection choice. NAT will not solve this problem; it resides at too low a level of the theoretical architecture, being used primarily to avoid renumbering of internetworks. This isn't a network numbering problem, it's a routing problem. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "People propose, science studies, technology Tampa Bay, Florida conforms." -- Dr. Don Norman +1 813 790 7592
At 2:02 PM -0400 9/11/97, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
On Wed, Sep 10, 1997 at 09:11:55PM -0400, Sean M. Doran wrote:
Sanjay Dani <sanjay@professionals.com> writes:
There are backbone providers and there are providers of specialized ISP or hosting or security etc. services that need independent* IP address space and do not have to waste resources on building a private "backbone".
NAT.
Perhaps I misunderstood Sanjay, Sean, but I believe his concern was that the addresses _not be the property of an upstream (ie: backbone) provider_ to provide flexibility of connection choice.
NAT will not solve this problem; it resides at too low a level of the theoretical architecture, being used primarily to avoid renumbering of internetworks. This isn't a network numbering problem, it's a routing problem.
Please, let's think this through carefully before making such pronouncements. If the problem to be solved is providing flexibility of choice, then Sean is quite right and NAT (plus other renumbering technologies) is the solution for most people. If you use NAT and renumbering technologies then you don't give a darn what your IP address is or who gave it to you as long as it is globally routable. You still have flexibility of choice in that you can switch upstream providers on a whim and use Paul Vixie's BSD tricks to multihome if that matters. NAT may not be the solution to every problem but it certainly does provide flexibility of choice which is one of the reasons many companies use it today. You can't give everyone globally routable and portable address space on the Internet. To do so would be tantamount to making everyone equal and flattening the hierarchy of the network. But this creates an unmanageble mess in which the network becomes a sort of amorphous blob with no discernable internal structure like some sort of slime mode. What we are trying to do is evolve the network into an organism that is strong and resilient. This requires that the network have discernable internal structure and that requires hierarchy and layering and a thick skin to protect the organism from the outside world. Hierarchy means that some addresses are better than others, i.e. portable, but it also allows us to carve the network up into manageable pieces and then to manage it in a reasonably stable and reliable way. Routing problems involve how to design, manage and operate this internal traffic distribution hierarchy and are essentially engineering problems, not policy problems or social problems. I think that the desire for portable address space is not a routing problem. ******************************************************** Michael Dillon voice: +1-650-482-2840 Senior Systems Architect fax: +1-650-482-2844 PRIORI NETWORKS, INC. http://www.priori.net "The People You Know. The People You Trust." ********************************************************
On Thu, Sep 11, 1997 at 01:01:45PM -0700, Michael Dillon wrote:
At 2:02 PM -0400 9/11/97, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
On Wed, Sep 10, 1997 at 09:11:55PM -0400, Sean M. Doran wrote:
Sanjay Dani <sanjay@professionals.com> writes:
There are backbone providers and there are providers of specialized ISP or hosting or security etc. services that need independent* IP address space and do not have to waste resources on building a private "backbone".
NAT.
Perhaps I misunderstood Sanjay, Sean, but I believe his concern was that the addresses _not be the property of an upstream (ie: backbone) provider_ to provide flexibility of connection choice.
NAT will not solve this problem; it resides at too low a level of the theoretical architecture, being used primarily to avoid renumbering of internetworks. This isn't a network numbering problem, it's a routing problem.
Please, let's think this through carefully before making such pronouncements. If the problem to be solved is providing flexibility of choice, then Sean is quite right and NAT (plus other renumbering technologies) is the solution for most people. If you use NAT and renumbering technologies then you don't give a darn what your IP address is or who gave it to you as long as it is globally routable. You still have flexibility of choice in that you can switch upstream providers on a whim and use Paul Vixie's BSD tricks to multihome if that matters.
Ok; I've taken this private, because I'm only close to getting what you're saying, and my feet are too big. [ reads, thinks, chnages mind ] Oh. Shit. <thunk> Number the internal stuff privately and use NAT to renumber the external appearances when necessary. Fix the DNS when you do. Forgive me, all; I'm climbing back under my rock now. Cheers, -- jr '/24' a -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "People propose, science studies, technology Tampa Bay, Florida conforms." -- Dr. Don Norman +1 813 790 7592
On Thu, 11 Sep 1997, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
Sanjay Dani <sanjay@professionals.com> writes:
There are backbone providers and there are providers of specialized ISP or hosting or security etc. services that need independent* IP address space and do not have to waste resources on building a private "backbone". Perhaps I misunderstood Sanjay, Sean, but I believe his concern was
On Wed, Sep 10, 1997 at 09:11:55PM -0400, Sean M. Doran wrote: that the addresses _not be the property of an upstream (ie: backbone) provider_ to provide flexibility of connection choice.
Thats the position I find myself in, hosting/specialized ISP, who needs a large enough independent block to be fully routable and multi-homed.... but don't have a /19 or mores worth of hosts yet... Seems the standard answer for what to do in this situation is "tell the internic (now arin?) what you have to then, even if its partially lies, to get the block and AS number".....
This isn't a network numbering problem, it's a routing problem.
Precisely, its only a numbering problem in the sense of how that affects routing/routablility....at least in my case... -David Mercer infiNETways, Inc. Tucson, AZ
participants (4)
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David Mercer -
Jay R. Ashworth -
Michael Dillon -
Sean M. Doran