The zero-settlement scheme works ok as long as interconnected parties are of about the same size. That makes them suffer equally from routing bloat. Incidentally, that was part of the reasoning after Sprint's IXP peering policy. In any case having zillions of small ISPs to be at top-level IXPs is economical and technical insanity, and it seems that it can only be fixed by rather steep settlements at IXPs to make it a very expensive prestige shopping. BTW, "settlements for routes" is a rather interesting thing. Imagine, say, Sprint peering with Joe Blow Internet-And-Burgers. Let's assume that route costs $100/yr, so Sprint pays $1M/yr to JBIB and JBIB pays back $300/yr. Sounds like a good business for JBIB :) The better idea is auctioning and trading the routing slots, though it is unclear where the proceeds from the initial auction should go. Probably to fund the Network Police which would chase the bootleg route injectors. I don't know what you make of it, but i think that sucks a lot more than the zero-sum model we have now. --vadim Not speaking for Sprint. PS Given the choice between fixing the technology and fixing the society it is always more prudent to go after technology.

From list-admin@merit.edu Tue Jan 30 20:56:10 1996 Received: from merit.edu (merit.edu [35.1.1.42]) by titan.sprintlink.net (8.6.9/8.6.9) with ESMTP id UAA11534 for <avg@titan.sprintlink.net>; Tue, 30 Jan 1996 20:56:08 -0500 Received: from nico.aarnet.edu.au (nico.aarnet.edu.au [139.130.204.16]) by merit.edu (8.7.3/merit-2.0) with SMTP id TAA25560 for <nanog@merit.edu>; Tue, 30 Jan 1996 19:59:35 -0500 (EST) Received: (from gih@localhost) by nico.aarnet.edu.au (8.6.10/8.6.10) id LAA25214; Wed, 31 Jan 1996 11:56:53 +1100 From: Geoff Huston <G.Huston@aarnet.edu.au> Message-Id: <199601310056.LAA25214@nico.aarnet.edu.au> Subject: Re: Policy Statement on Address Space Allocations To: huddle@mci.net (Scott Huddle) Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 11:56:53 +1100 (EST) Cc: asp@uunet.uu.net, G.Huston@aarnet.edu.au, cidrd@iepg.org, nanog@merit.edu In-Reply-To: <199601310009.TAA06568@new6.Reston.mci.net> from "Scott Huddle" at Jan 30, 96 07:09:12 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Status: R

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

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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?

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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:

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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)