Scott,
I have asked the question many time. "What is a provider?". Once the CIDR allocation started the "Providers" came out of the woodworks. No one so far has given an answer to the question that the majority can agree with. I will not be at the regional tech meeting in CA but Mark will. I don't know a group better suited to answer the question that established providers. Do us a favor and come up with a proposed answer to "What is a provider". I will work with NSF and Postel to make it policy. This would make our life easier.
I think we have to be very careful here. When we make policy that adversely affects someone's business interests we're just begging for a suit. Especially with the *perceived* "shortage" or IPv4 addresses. It seems to me that it would be very difficult to exclude anybody from the category of "provider" (for the purpose of giving him or her addresses) who has even the flimsiest claim to being one. Perhaps some sliding scale based on demonstrated need would work. But it would have to be conservative (liberal?) and easily quantified to make it defensible. --Richard
Richard, I agree that we must be careful. However, we must setup guidlines that have a technical basis. If we are to achive efficent CIDRization of the address space then we can not give CIDR blocks to anyone who says they are a provider. I don't think that we have ever denined anyone address space. The complaint from Kansas was a person that requested space for Kansas's network and was given a block of 512 through MIDNET. MIDNET was the provider at the higher level. Now he wants to be a provider for himself connected to ???. I understand that the look of what is currently the NSFnet will change. What if tommorow I want to become a provider and request MY block of 256. I think we must ask the questions and make a smart allocation. Souldn't the provider to which he will connect be involved in the allocation? I understand that anyone should be able to switch providers at any level. I would assume that the block could go with them. Scott
Scott,
I have asked the question many time. "What is a provider?". Once the CIDR allocation started the "Providers" came out of the woodworks. No one so far has given an answer to the question that the majority can agree with. I will not be at the regional tech meeting in CA but Mark will. I don't know a group better suited to answer the question that established providers. Do us a favor and come up with a proposed answer to "What is a provider". I will work with NSF and Postel to make it policy. This would make our life easier.
I think we have to be very careful here. When we make policy that adversely affects someone's business interests we're just begging for a suit. Especially with the *perceived* "shortage" or IPv4 addresses. It seems to me that it would be very difficult to exclude anybody from the category of "provider" (for the purpose of giving him or her addresses) who has even the flimsiest claim to being one. Perhaps some sliding scale based on demonstrated need would work. But it would have to be conservative (liberal?) and easily quantified to make it defensible.
--Richard
I have asked the question many time. "What is a provider?". Once the CIDR allocation started the "Providers" came out of the woodworks. No one so far has given an answer to the question that the majority can agree with. I will not be at the regional tech meeting in CA but Mark will. I don't know a group better suited to answer the question that established providers. Do us a favor and come up with a proposed answer to "What is a provider". I will work with NSF and Postel to make it policy. This would make our life easier.
The "regional-techs" group is not a suitable group to make policy about who can and can't be a network service provider. For quite a while in its life, it was a group that had no intention of letting non-NSF sponsored networks have any access to their meetings. As a result there is very close to no participation by any of the emerging public access Internet providers, the very group that is most likely to want to get address blocks of their own to hand out to their customers. I think we have to be very careful here. When we make policy that adversely affects someone's business interests we're just begging for a suit. Especially with the *perceived* "shortage" or IPv4 addresses. It seems to me that it would be very difficult to exclude anybody from the category of "provider" (for the purpose of giving him or her addresses) who has even the flimsiest claim to being one. I think it's high time to start imposing (nominal) fees for the privelege of having network address assignments maintained. If this is done in any reasonable way, with full enough cooperation of everyone involved and prices that are not out of line with what people expect, it will work very well. Prices could be set to balance the expected aggregate routing load and the shortage of IPv4 addresses, and in ways that would promote sensible number allocation. Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, Msen Inc. emv@Msen.com Msen Inc., 320 Miller, Ann Arbor MI 48103 +1 313 998 4562 (fax: 998 4563)
I have asked the question many time. "What is a provider?". Once the CIDR allocation started the "Providers" came out of the woodworks. No one so far has given an answer to the question that the majority can agree with. I will not be at the regional tech meeting in CA but Mark will. I don't know a group better suited to answer the question that established providers. Do us a favor and come up with a proposed answer to "What is a provider". I will work with NSF and Postel to make it policy. This would make our life easier.
The "regional-techs" group is not a suitable group to make policy about who can and can't be a network service provider. For quite a while in its life, it was a group that had no intention of letting non-NSF sponsored networks have any access to their meetings. As a result there is very close to no participation by any of the emerging public access Internet providers, the very group that is most likely to want to get address blocks of their own to hand out to their customers.
I was not asking regional-techs to make policy. I was asking for help defining "what is a provier ?". Things are changing very fast .... i do not want to wake up six months from now to find that the allocations done incorrectly or should have been done more effienctly. I only ask for help in making the determination of where to or if to draw the line. Messages from Richard, John, and Bill were very helpful. A gread deal of concern has been express about this question. The definition may not really matter and after asking this question for the last year i don't know if there is a definition. ********* This is happening more and more ( 1 to 2 new per day )****** I just setup a network to be a IP service provider. I am connected to provider A and they are connected to provider B the interconnection to other network only occur at provider B. I want MY block of 256 or 1024. ********************************************************************* Scott
I think we have to be very careful here. When we make policy that adversely affects someone's business interests we're just begging for a suit. Especially with the *perceived* "shortage" or IPv4 addresses. It seems to me that it would be very difficult to exclude anybody from the category of "provider" (for the purpose of giving him or her addresses) who has even the flimsiest claim to being one.
I think it's high time to start imposing (nominal) fees for the privelege of having network address assignments maintained. If this is done in any reasonable way, with full enough cooperation of everyone involved and prices that are not out of line with what people expect, it will work very well.
Prices could be set to balance the expected aggregate routing load and the shortage of IPv4 addresses, and in ways that would promote sensible number allocation.
Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, Msen Inc. emv@Msen.com Msen Inc., 320 Miller, Ann Arbor MI 48103 +1 313 998 4562 (fax: 998 4563)
participants (3)
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emv＠garnet.msen.com -
Richard Colella -
scottw＠internic.net