As a thought experiment, think of how the IPv4 addressing situation (bogon advertisements, allocations, explosion of routing table sizes, etc) would be different if the IP community treated IP addresses as a commodity. The value of an IP address is primarily in its uniqueness. Advertising an address to another network says "send me packets if the destination address matches my advertisement." But a set of addresses (an aggregate) also has value. The larger the set of addresses, the greater the value. For example, a /15 should end up being more valuable than a pair of /16s, because routing to addresses in the /15 is cheaper than routing to addresses in both of the /16s. Let's stipulate some economic conditions and see where it leads: - The price of Internet service should be based on more than bandwidth: the customer should also pay a surcharge for the number of prefixes advertised. This would be handled recursively: Tier 3 providers would have to pay for the number of prefixes they advertise to Tier 2 providers. Tier 1 provider peering settlement agreements would include provisions for the number of prefixes carried. - Internet address registries should simply do registration. Just as real estate ownership is registered, so should IP address space. A recurring fee per registration is the traditional way to maintain such registries, whether they be automobiles or parcels of land. Failure to maintain registration would eventually lead to the address block being auctioned. - Internet address blocks should be considered property, subject to existing property rights and practices. Owners of address blocks should be able to sell them or put them up as collateral on a loan. Markets for address blocks should be established and encouraged. How might these conditions help solve the problems of address space exhaustion and the size of the default-free zone routing tables? Some observers have speculated that the IPv4 address space exhaustion crisis has been manufactured to encourage migration to IPv6. This is close to being an "unknowable" or "non-falsifiable" theory, which is to say it's like religious belief or wondering who shot JFK. But clearly today it's impossible to put a monetary value on migration to IPv6 from IPv4. If my existing IPv4 address space had tangible value, I could make a business decision whether to deploy IPv6 and sell my IPv4 address blocks on the open market. In fact, the sale of IPv4 address blocks could help _finance_ my transition to IPv6. I believe I've heard Randy Bush suggest publicly (my paraphrase) that organizations that multi-home create costs for everyone running their networks without a default to an upstream. This is because the benefits accrue to the multi-homed organization, but the costs accrue to the default-free network operators. (Randy, feel free to correct me if I've misunderstood your statement!) A well-understood way to allocate/recover costs is to assign a price to those activities that create those costs. The more directly the price is tied to the costs, the more likely it is that people will behave in such a way that the costs will be covered. For a while, various ISPs refused to route address blocks smaller than the allocations from the registries. This was a good first approximation, but it had several problems: Addresses from the "traditional B space" were less valuable than address blocks from the "traditional C space", because the size of the smallest routable aggregate was different in those two spaces. This had the perverse effect of making smaller aggregates (those out of C space) more attractive than larger aggregates (those out of B space). The size of an organization's address space was directly tied to the ability of the organization to multi-home that address space. The idea seemed to be that larger organizations are more likely to desire multi-homing. There may be an overall correlation to support that idea, but correlation doesn't imply causation. Portable address space is valuable to organizations for reasons other than multi-homing for reliability. The freedom to move between service providers without the pain of renumbering has significant value. It is reasonable for organizations to have to pay some sort of premium for that freedom, since the cost of that freedom is borne by all default-free network operators. Again, if that premium is high enough, in some cases it can provide a compelling financial business case to go to the trouble of renumbering. OK Bill, this is great, but how would we get there from here? Looking at history, there are several ways to attach property rights to things that have formerly been held in common. Whatever process is used, it should be carefully considered to try and avoid unintended consequences. Flag days are probably out; a phased transition plan should be involved. There is a correlation between the amount of IPv4 address space an organization (institution, government, corporation, etc) has allocated and the amount of time they've been active in the Internet community. How strong is that correlation? Hard to say, but it's there. I see that as partial justification for allowing existing IPv4 address space holders to keep their address space through the transition--even if it means they end up with a "windfall" asset. Not every society in the world subscribes to the same concept of property rights and free markets as in the West. That probably argues for some allocation of IPv4 address space on a national basis, so that the local society's mechanism of resource allocations can be leveraged. Some address space should also be allocated in the public interest. But each situation is different and may have different answers. For example: should address space be given for free to primary education institutions? If so, should they be able to sell their allocations and use ISP-supplied aggregatable addresses, with the sale proceeds funding some term of bandwidth service from that ISP? (I would argue in the affirmative, trusting the school boards to do what makes sense in their local situation.) To conclude: I doubt this is going to happen anytime soon, if at all. But I think it makes sense to at least discuss the alternatives--if for no other reason than to understand why we're doing things the way we are. === Bill Nickless http://www.mcs.anl.gov/people/nickless +1 630 252 7390 PGP:0E 0F 16 80 C5 B1 69 52 E1 44 1A A5 0E 1B 74 F7 nickless@mcs.anl.gov
Bill Nickless wrote:
As a thought experiment, think of how the IPv4 addressing situation (bogon advertisements, allocations, explosion of routing table sizes, etc) would be different if the IP community treated IP addresses as a commodity.
Actually, your entire argument starts off very poorly. You are stating that IP addresses should be treated as a commodity, yet what you are really trying to state is that routing advertisements should be treated as a commodity. These are two different concepts. If we pay for IP addresses, there's still nothing to keep us from advertising longer prefixes. If we pay for advertisements, large providers will just work it into their peering agreements and then collect money from their customers for their adverts.You'd also have to figure out who pays who? Do I get paid for every route sent to me? I usually have 120,000+ routes sitting in my router. Please send me my money. If you aren't refering to advertisements, then bogon advertisements, hijackings, and route table explosions will still be an issue. Without mandating necessity, I'd also point out that there would no longer be IPv4 address space available except at outrageous prices for smaller networks that wish to multi-home and have their own netblocks. -Jack
In message <3EB03565.1040202@brightok.net>, Jack Bates writes:
Bill Nickless wrote:
As a thought experiment, think of how the IPv4 addressing situation (bogon advertisements, allocations, explosion of routing table sizes, etc) would be different if the IP community treated IP addresses as a commodity.
Actually, your entire argument starts off very poorly. You are stating that IP addresses should be treated as a commodity, yet what you are really trying to state is that routing advertisements should be treated as a commodity. These are two different concepts. If we pay for IP addresses, there's still nothing to keep us from advertising longer prefixes. If we pay for advertisements, large providers will just work it into their peering agreements and then collect money from their customers for their adverts.You'd also have to figure out who pays who? Do I get paid for every route sent to me? I usually have 120,000+ routes sitting in my router. Please send me my money.
If you aren't refering to advertisements, then bogon advertisements, hijackings, and route table explosions will still be an issue. Without mandating necessity, I'd also point out that there would no longer be IPv4 address space available except at outrageous prices for smaller networks that wish to multi-home and have their own netblocks.
-Jack
See http://www.research.att.com/~smb/papers/piara/index.html for a paper on the subject. (We held a BoF at the IETF many years ago; there was sufficient pushback that we didn't pursue the question.) --Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me) http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)
At 04:45 PM 4/30/2003 -0400, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
See http://www.research.att.com/~smb/papers/piara/index.html for a paper on the subject. (We held a BoF at the IETF many years ago; there was sufficient pushback that we didn't pursue the question.)
I just *knew* such an obvious idea couldn't have been mine alone. :-) When did you present your paper? The last reference I see is 1996. What sort of pushback did you receive? Perhaps the experience of the past few years might suggest revisiting the question? === Bill Nickless http://www.mcs.anl.gov/people/nickless +1 630 252 7390 PGP:0E 0F 16 80 C5 B1 69 52 E1 44 1A A5 0E 1B 74 F7 nickless@mcs.anl.gov
In message <5.1.1.6.2.20030430155224.039bbde8@pop.mcs.anl.gov>, Bill Nickless w rites:
At 04:45 PM 4/30/2003 -0400, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
See http://www.research.att.com/~smb/papers/piara/index.html for a paper on the subject. (We held a BoF at the IETF many years ago; there was sufficient pushback that we didn't pursue the question.)
I just *knew* such an obvious idea couldn't have been mine alone. :-)
When did you present your paper? The last reference I see is 1996.
I believe that that's right. It was at the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference.
What sort of pushback did you receive? Perhaps the experience of the past few years might suggest revisiting the question?
Apart from the evil notion of money polluting the Internet -- this was 1996, as I said -- I think I'll refer you to the archive that David Conrad mentioned. It's been a long time, and I don't remember all the details. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me) http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)
At 03:43 PM 4/30/2003 -0500, Jack Bates wrote:
Actually, your entire argument starts off very poorly.
In retrospect, I agree--it was ambiguous. I was trying to suggest two things simultaneously, because I think both are necessary. - Treat IPv4 netblocks as a commodity - Recover costs on a per-advertisement basis (in addition to bandwidth charges)
You are stating that IP addresses should be treated as a commodity, yet what you are really trying to state is that routing advertisements should be treated as a commodity. These are two different concepts.
No, IP address blocks should be treated as a commodity. Carrying a routing advertisement should be a paid-for service, or part of a peering settlement.
If we pay for advertisements, large providers will just work it into their peering agreements and then collect money from their customers for their adverts.You'd also have to figure out who pays who? Do I get paid for every route sent to me? I usually have 120,000+ routes sitting in my router. Please send me my money.
Exactly right. That's precisely the incentive we desire, because it would encourage people to use provider-based addressing when possible. It would also allow people to be multi-homed, but if they want it they will have to pay something for it. The downstreams would pass along the costs of carrying the advertisement to the customer, where it belongs.
Without mandating necessity, I'd also point out that there would no longer be IPv4 address space available except at outrageous prices for smaller networks that wish to multi-home and have their own netblocks.
Outrageous pricing assumes scarcity. Are IPv4 addresses really that scarce? And would they be scarce if people could buy and sell them on the open market? === Bill Nickless http://www.mcs.anl.gov/people/nickless +1 630 252 7390 PGP:0E 0F 16 80 C5 B1 69 52 E1 44 1A A5 0E 1B 74 F7 nickless@mcs.anl.gov
At 03:43 PM 4/30/2003 -0500, Jack Bates wrote:
Without mandating necessity, I'd also point out that there would no longer be IPv4 address space available except at outrageous prices for smaller networks that wish to multi-home and have their own netblocks.
At 02:10 PM 4/30/2003 -0700, bmanning@karoshi.com wrote:
Oh... sorry, are folks really seriously wanting to treat integers as a marketable commodity?
I'm confused--are IPv4 netblocks so valuable that we can't expect the market to set a reasonable price, or are IPv4 netblocks (sets of integers) so worthless that they're not worth the trouble of trading at all? === Bill Nickless http://www.mcs.anl.gov/people/nickless +1 630 252 7390 PGP:0E 0F 16 80 C5 B1 69 52 E1 44 1A A5 0E 1B 74 F7 nickless@mcs.anl.gov
Bill Nickless wrote:
I'm confused--are IPv4 netblocks so valuable that we can't expect the market to set a reasonable price, or are IPv4 netblocks (sets of integers) so worthless that they're not worth the trouble of trading at all?
The issue is that it's just plain smart for large providers to buy all the space up if they can. Businesses are into making money. When they can, they will monopolize a market. Most commodities cannot be saturated. You don't buy all the oranges in the world and then maintain ownership until the end of the world. The next year, everyone will produce more oranges. Even money is replenished, and how much is in circulation is governed by the corresponding government. IPv4 address space, while adequate to currently meet our needs, is limited. The reason it is adequate is because we do require justification. Take away justification and put on a $ value, and the big money makers will buy it all, lease it out to people at variable rates, and watch the money roll in. Never underestimate greed. It's the foundation of business. -Jack
On Wed, 30 Apr 2003, Jack Bates wrote:
IPv4 address space, while adequate to currently meet our needs, is limited. The reason it is adequate is because we do require justification. Take away justification and put on a $ value, and the big money makers will buy it all, lease it out to people at variable rates, and watch the money roll in. Never underestimate greed. It's the foundation of business.
Well considering a good proportion of the ipv4 space has already been given away to large companies, institutions and government bodies without any sort of oversight. Lets assume that one of the companies currently holding a Class A decides to go into the ip business. I can't see it being too hard for them to setup a small website, whois server etc where you can pay online and get a network at around $100/year per /24. This is cheaper for smaller organisations than signing up to ARIN and the lack of paperwork (and potential quick service) will probably attract others. Companies will always have the alternative of going via ARIN,RIPE,APNIC so the commercial register will have an incentive not to jack up prices too high. The networks advertised will be a legitimate as old /16s and /8s allocated years ago to organizations 1% of the size that would justify them. Even better if people are actually paying hard cash for the netblocks then they are more likely to only get what they want and efficiently use them. It would seem to be a better use that the Class A is actually getting used by people rather than being largely (99%) unused by the company concerned. It's not like IANA is going to ask for Ford, HP or Xerox to actually justify their allocation any time soon. Of course I'm sure some people here will refuse to accept the announcements and mutter about routing table size. One the other hand the same people seem to be happy with the current inefficient legacy allocations. -- Simon Lyall. | Newsmaster | Work: simon.lyall@ihug.co.nz Senior Network/System Admin | Postmaster | Home: simon@darkmere.gen.nz Ihug Ltd, Auckland, NZ | Asst Doorman | Web: http://www.darkmere.gen.nz
So, your theory is that providers will corner the market for IP space, then price fix? And people will go along with this why? Because they are idiots? If providers start buying up space, the space becomes more expensive, and it gets harder for the providers to buy. Considering the liquidity situation of most carriers, the nightmare scenerio of trying to make a business case to engage in monopolistic practices and price fixing is bizaare. No management team would agree to it, because of the legal exposure, large cash outlay required, and uncertain return on investment. "Ok, Mr. CEO, give me $100M to corner the market on something that no one has ever made money on before. Oh yeah, we'll be sitting on that cash for a while, as we engage in activities likely to result in your future incarceration. Sign here, please" Currently, IP space is artificially limited because people are sitting on large amounts of it. Why? Why shouldn't they? However, if a current /8 holder finds that they have $5M worth of IP addresses, they would be incented to exchange some of those for cash. Renumbering out of legacy space becomes something that you can make a business case for. Addresses go on the market more, and the price drops. We currently have a very bad situation - hoarding, artificial scarcity, and a central control authority. Historically, these have proven to be bad ways to manage a resource. See the economics (or history) book of your choice for the background - other than Das Kapital. A (gasp) capitalistic approach, with current safeguards against monopolistic behavior and price fixing, would result in cheaper, more available IP space. We all win. yay. - Daniel Golding On Wed, 30 Apr 2003, Jack Bates wrote:
Bill Nickless wrote:
I'm confused--are IPv4 netblocks so valuable that we can't expect the market to set a reasonable price, or are IPv4 netblocks (sets of integers) so worthless that they're not worth the trouble of trading at all?
The issue is that it's just plain smart for large providers to buy all the space up if they can. Businesses are into making money. When they can, they will monopolize a market.
Most commodities cannot be saturated. You don't buy all the oranges in the world and then maintain ownership until the end of the world. The next year, everyone will produce more oranges. Even money is replenished, and how much is in circulation is governed by the corresponding government.
IPv4 address space, while adequate to currently meet our needs, is limited. The reason it is adequate is because we do require justification. Take away justification and put on a $ value, and the big money makers will buy it all, lease it out to people at variable rates, and watch the money roll in. Never underestimate greed. It's the foundation of business.
-Jack
So, your theory is that providers will corner the market for IP space, then price fix? And people will go along with this why? Because they are idiots?
the market theory presumes a lock on space. it also presumes that someone (ICANN, IANA, RIR, DoC) is able to claim exclusive use on these things. the only way to enforce this is to treat the numbers as property. and enforcing property across international boundaries is complex at best. how much more of your money would you like to give your legal staff, defending your use of IP addresses?
If providers start buying up space, the space becomes more expensive, and it gets harder for the providers to buy. Considering the liquidity situation of most carriers, the nightmare scenerio of trying to make a business case to engage in monopolistic practices and price fixing is bizaare. No management team would agree to it, because of the legal exposure, large cash outlay required, and uncertain return on investment. "Ok, Mr. CEO, give me $100M to corner the market on something that no one has ever made money on before. Oh yeah, we'll be sitting on that cash for a while, as we engage in activities likely to result in your future incarceration. Sign here, please"
Currently, IP space is artificially limited because people are sitting on large amounts of it. Why? Why shouldn't they?
However, if a current /8 holder finds that they have $5M worth of IP addresses, they would be incented to exchange some of those for cash. Renumbering out of legacy space becomes something that you can make a business case for. Addresses go on the market more, and the price drops.
We currently have a very bad situation - hoarding, artificial scarcity, and a central control authority. Historically, these have proven to be bad ways to manage a resource. See the economics (or history) book of your choice for the background - other than Das Kapital.
A (gasp) capitalistic approach, with current safeguards against monopolistic behavior and price fixing, would result in cheaper, more available IP space. We all win. yay.
- Daniel Golding
On Wed, 30 Apr 2003, Jack Bates wrote:
Bill Nickless wrote:
I'm confused--are IPv4 netblocks so valuable that we can't expect the market to set a reasonable price, or are IPv4 netblocks (sets of integers) so worthless that they're not worth the trouble of trading at all?
The issue is that it's just plain smart for large providers to buy all the space up if they can. Businesses are into making money. When they can, they will monopolize a market.
Most commodities cannot be saturated. You don't buy all the oranges in the world and then maintain ownership until the end of the world. The next year, everyone will produce more oranges. Even money is replenished, and how much is in circulation is governed by the corresponding government.
IPv4 address space, while adequate to currently meet our needs, is limited. The reason it is adequate is because we do require justification. Take away justification and put on a $ value, and the big money makers will buy it all, lease it out to people at variable rates, and watch the money roll in. Never underestimate greed. It's the foundation of business.
-Jack
On Thu, 01 May 2003 12:37:22 CDT, Daniel Golding said:
bizaare. No management team would agree to it, because of the legal exposure, large cash outlay required, and uncertain return on investment. "Ok, Mr. CEO, give me $100M to corner the market on something that no one has ever made money on before. Oh yeah, we'll be sitting on that cash for a while, as we engage in activities likely to result in your future incarceration. Sign here, please"
Oh? You mean all the *other* management teams actually learned from Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia, and so on?
On Thu, 01 May 2003 13:50:09 EDT, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu said:
On Thu, 01 May 2003 12:37:22 CDT, Daniel Golding said:
bizaare. No management team would agree to it, because of the legal exposure, large cash outlay required, and uncertain return on investment. "Ok, Mr. CEO, give me $100M to corner the market on something that no one has ever made money on before. Oh yeah, we'll be sitting on that cash for a while, as we engage in activities likely to result in your future incarceration. Sign here, please"
Oh? You mean all the *other* management teams actually learned from Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia, and so on?
OK. I'm fed up. What in the cited text triggered *THIS* one? Is somebody at 'affidia.com' (source of this one) of the opinion that "management" is a separate race that is being discriminated against? **************** eManager Notification ***************** The following mail was blocked since it contains sensitive content. Source mailbox: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu Destination mailbox(es): Daniel Golding;Jack Bates; nanog@merit.edu Rule/Policy: Racial Discrimination Action: Quarantine to C:\Program Files\Trend\SMCF\Quarantine\2003-05-01\10\54\DFImessagebody3eb15f502be9.tmp Sender, Your e-mail message has not been delivered to it's destination. It does npt comply with our acceptable use policy. ******************* End of message *********************
Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
On Thu, 01 May 2003 13:50:09 EDT, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu said:
On Thu, 01 May 2003 12:37:22 CDT, Daniel Golding said:
bizaare. No management team would agree to it, because of the legal exposure, large cash outlay required, and uncertain return on investment. "Ok, Mr. CEO, give me $100M to corner the market on something that no one has ever made money on before. Oh yeah, we'll be sitting on that cash for a while, as we engage in activities likely to result in your future incarceration. Sign here, please"
Oh? You mean all the *other* management teams actually learned from Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia, and so on?
OK. I'm fed up. What in the cited text triggered *THIS* one? Is somebody at 'affidia.com' (source of this one) of the opinion that "management" is a separate race that is being discriminated against?
**************** eManager Notification *****************
The following mail was blocked since it contains sensitive content.
Source mailbox: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu Destination mailbox(es): Daniel Golding;Jack Bates; nanog@merit.edu Rule/Policy: Racial Discrimination Action: Quarantine to C:\Program Files\Trend\SMCF\Quarantine\2003-05-01\10\54\DFImessagebody3eb15f502be9.tmp
Sender, Your e-mail message has not been delivered to it's destination. It does npt comply with our acceptable use policy.
******************* End of message *********************
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Part 1.2Type: application/pgp-signature
I don't know, but according to the spambot, your name is 'Sender', and your message 'does npt comply !' Sysadmin fatfinger or smoking something, you be the judge. :) -- Andrea Abrahamsen Software Engineer, Intelligent Network Services Cisco Systems
At 03:43 PM 4/30/2003 -0500, Jack Bates wrote:
Without mandating necessity, I'd also point out that there would no longer be IPv4 address space available except at outrageous prices for smaller networks that wish to multi-home and have their own netblocks.
At 02:10 PM 4/30/2003 -0700, bmanning@karoshi.com wrote:
Oh... sorry, are folks really seriously wanting to treat integers as a marketable commodity?
I'm confused--are IPv4 netblocks so valuable that we can't expect the market to set a reasonable price, or are IPv4 netblocks (sets of integers) so worthless that they're not worth the trouble of trading at all?
Bill Nickless http://www.mcs.anl.gov/people/nickless +1 630 252 7390
Oh, I expect that I beleive that some folks are so confused by the smoke/mirrors of ISP politics that they are willing to pay good money to have their name associated with a prefix. and not just any prefix mind you, one that starts with 192 or is /16 or longer. ISPs treat those things as golden and will transit bits around from such things w/ impunity. Of course if these prefixes become a commodity, then I get to impune intellectual property on my prefix. e.g. 8 (tm) and everyone who uses 8 must pay me a royalty. Equally, if these things become a commodity, some studly wallet will buy them all and then where will you be? Rapidly moving to IPv6 I expect. :) As mentioned earlier in this thread, the value is not the prefix or its length, its the ability to get and maintain a prefix in the routing systems of the sites you wish to communicate with. the slot is valuable, not what you place in it. e.g. the numbers, in and of themselves, are worthless. however, if I can get ANL to transit my packets by using 130.202.0.0/16 numbers as the source addresses for packets I generate, that may have value. even more value may be obtained if I can convince rafts of more dewey-eyed neophytes to pass my bits around with that prefix as the origin of my sourced packets. in the end, its not the prefix, its the routing table slot.
Bill Nickless wrote:
- Treat IPv4 netblocks as a commodity - Recover costs on a per-advertisement basis (in addition to bandwidth charges)
No, IP address blocks should be treated as a commodity. Carrying a routing advertisement should be a paid-for service, or part of a peering settlement.
Routing advertisement ratios have always been capable of being in peering agreements. Perhaps they exist in some. Who knows? Money doesn't have to exchange hands to setup policies for your network.
Exactly right. That's precisely the incentive we desire, because it would encourage people to use provider-based addressing when possible.
Ummm. Let's see. Have you checked blacklists lately? While many are pertaining to spam, the fact is that they are not "spam blacklists" but "IP blacklists". Many of the largest networks have contaminated space, and it's a crap shoot renumbering into them. There's also another issue. Renumbering to new provider space means that you have to maintain connectivity for both providers until the renumber is complete. With large networks, this is cost prohibitive. Get a customer on your IPs and they are loathe to ever leave you. Your proposal only makes ripping off^W^Wkeeping the customer much easier.
It would also allow people to be multi-homed, but if they want it they will have to pay something for it. The downstreams would pass along the costs of carrying the advertisement to the customer, where it belongs.
Okay. Here's my issue and where I don't get it. I have my own space. I interlink with multiple networks with and without export. I have to handle the routes of all the networks, received from all peers. So do I send out 120,000 invoices each month, or when I multi-home to I mandate that my providers have to pay me for all of these advertisements that *I* need to make routing decisions while I'm only contributing a measly 1-8 aggregates? Or is it because I'm the small guy, that I don't count. I can be billed, but I don't get to receive money.
Outrageous pricing assumes scarcity. Are IPv4 addresses really that scarce? And would they be scarce if people could buy and sell them on the open market?
How are you going to handle the billing? Do you pay residually for the networks or just pay a single fee? If you pay residually, do legacy networks also get charged? If you pay a single fee, ATT, C&W, Qwest, Microsoft, and a thousand other large networks will snatch up every last one in bulk and then resell at whatever prices they wanted. Remember, you can't manufacture more IPv4 addresses. In fact, we haven't even instituted reclaiming processes for networks that can't show utilization. We only slow down the consumption of what is left by requiring such documentation. So you look at the financials. You either make it so expensive that companies can't stockpile the addresses, or Microsoft buys a /4 here and a /1 there while AT&T is buying a /4 here and a /1 there. If you set it too high, people who have valid need of the addresses may not be able to afford them. -Jack
On Wednesday, April 30, 2003, at 07:44 AM, Bill Nickless wrote:
As a thought experiment, think of how the IPv4 addressing situation (bogon advertisements, allocations, explosion of routing table sizes, etc) would be different if the IP community treated IP addresses as a commodity.
PIARA, The Sequel. Take N+1. Action! Anybody got any rubber balls Peter Lothberg can monopolize this time? :-) Sorry to be flip. In case you haven't already, see: http://www.apnic.net/mailing-lists/piara/index.shtml Rgds, -drc
On Wednesday, April 30, 2003, at 07:44 AM, Bill Nickless wrote:
As a thought experiment, think of how the IPv4 addressing situation (bogon advertisements, allocations, explosion of routing table sizes, etc) would be different if the IP community treated IP addresses as a commodity.
PIARA, The Sequel. Take N+1. Action! Anybody got any rubber balls Peter Lothberg can monopolize this time? :-)
I still have mine, plus the five or six I took away from the others in the room. ... psst, buddy, want to buy an "8"
Sorry to be flip. In case you haven't already, see: http://www.apnic.net/mailing-lists/piara/index.shtml
Oh... sorry, are folks really seriously wanting to treat integers as a marketable commodity?
Rgds, -drc
On Wed, 30 Apr 2003 14:10:03 PDT, bmanning@karoshi.com said:
Oh... sorry, are folks really seriously wanting to treat integers as a marketable commodity?
Well.. they're already considered leasable/rentable. <ducks> ;) (Yes, I know - what you're REALLY paying the registry for is to keep records of who has what. On the other hand, the concept of a certificate conveying the right-to-use an integer or range of same isn't THAT more disjoint from reality than the concept of a stock market where you trade shares in a company, in the hope that you can sell it for a profit later.
On Wed, Apr 30, 2003 at 02:24:33PM -0700, David Schwartz quacked:
Oh... sorry, are folks really seriously wanting to treat integers as a marketable commodity?
Any work that can be produced in digital form has a corresponding integer. Every Disney movie does.
1-800-COLLECT is probably the most pertinent example. www.business.com is a close second. The license plate "UNIX" The source code to Windows -Dave
Treating IP space as a commodity is no more strange than trading financial options or other derivatives, or, for that matter, intellectual property. Bits, numbers, and agreements all hold value outside of the context of purely physical property. Sadly, this sort of idea tends to stomp on the socialistic sort of idealism that is particularly prevalent amongst some in the IETF and NANOG communities, who feel it would leave out the "little guys". I suspect that any real world float of IP address space would result in a pretty low price per ip address, if the market was sufficiently liquid. It might be cheaper for a little guy to get a few $K together for IPs, then to build a network capable of "justifying" a /20 from an RIR. Maybe ARIN should reinvent itself as a mercantile exchange? - Dan On Wed, 30 Apr 2003 bmanning@karoshi.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 30, 2003, at 07:44 AM, Bill Nickless wrote:
As a thought experiment, think of how the IPv4 addressing situation (bogon advertisements, allocations, explosion of routing table sizes, etc) would be different if the IP community treated IP addresses as a commodity.
PIARA, The Sequel. Take N+1. Action! Anybody got any rubber balls Peter Lothberg can monopolize this time? :-)
I still have mine, plus the five or six I took away from the others in the room. ... psst, buddy, want to buy an "8"
Sorry to be flip. In case you haven't already, see: http://www.apnic.net/mailing-lists/piara/index.shtml
Oh... sorry, are folks really seriously wanting to treat integers as a marketable commodity?
Rgds, -drc
Oh... sorry, are folks really seriously wanting to treat integers as a marketable commodity?
Treating IP space as a commodity is no more strange than trading financial options or other derivatives, or, for that matter, intellectual property. Bits, numbers, and agreements all hold value outside of the context of purely physical property.
In this context, which is more real: 1) That highly dense, "gold"-colored bar of metal 2) The little green pieces of paper in my wallet 3) The ones-and-zero's that make up the balance in my checking account IMHO, these are ordered correctly from a physical standpoint but ordered backwards in terms of marketablility... If you have $100's worth of gold, a one hundred-dollar bill, and $100 in your checking/debit account - which is the easiest to transact with? Eric :)
In this context, which is more real:
1) That highly dense, "gold"-colored bar of metal 2) The little green pieces of paper in my wallet 3) The ones-and-zero's that make up the balance in my checking account
Ok, well, maybe not the ones-and-zero's in __MY__ checking acount (which are really all zero's) but you get the point... Eric :)
Daniel, So, lets say we go ahead a float IP address space and anyone can buy whatever prefix they think need and have the cash for. What happens to the routing tables? The reason the BOF back in '96 was entitled "Pricing of Internet Addresses and Routing Announcements' was that the folks who seriously considered the idea realized that in the IPv4 CIDR world we live in, selling address space without somehow tying those sales into some sort of market for routing prefixes was a recipe for "fun", or at least lots of prefix length filters and subsequently more unhappiness. If someone can figure out how to get the ISPs of the world to participate in a routing prefix market, then it might be worth revisiting this idea. Note that there is nothing stopping establishing a routing prefix market now, so it could be done prior to changing address allocation policies. Rgds, -drc On Thursday, May 1, 2003, at 10:27 AM, Daniel Golding wrote:
Treating IP space as a commodity is no more strange than trading financial options or other derivatives, or, for that matter, intellectual property. Bits, numbers, and agreements all hold value outside of the context of purely physical property.
Sadly, this sort of idea tends to stomp on the socialistic sort of idealism that is particularly prevalent amongst some in the IETF and NANOG communities, who feel it would leave out the "little guys". I suspect that any real world float of IP address space would result in a pretty low price per ip address, if the market was sufficiently liquid. It might be cheaper for a little guy to get a few $K together for IPs, then to build a network capable of "justifying" a /20 from an RIR.
Maybe ARIN should reinvent itself as a mercantile exchange?
- Dan
On Wed, 30 Apr 2003 bmanning@karoshi.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 30, 2003, at 07:44 AM, Bill Nickless wrote:
As a thought experiment, think of how the IPv4 addressing situation (bogon advertisements, allocations, explosion of routing table sizes, etc) would be different if the IP community treated IP addresses as a commodity.
PIARA, The Sequel. Take N+1. Action! Anybody got any rubber balls Peter Lothberg can monopolize this time? :-)
I still have mine, plus the five or six I took away from the others in the room. ... psst, buddy, want to buy an "8"
Sorry to be flip. In case you haven't already, see: http://www.apnic.net/mailing-lists/piara/index.shtml
Oh... sorry, are folks really seriously wanting to treat integers as a marketable commodity?
Rgds, -drc
These two things have to happen at the same time: 1. ISPs start charging for the service of advertising each prefix upstream and/or to peers. 2. Customers can purchase netblocks on an open market. With both #1 and #2, customers can decide (based on financial incentives) whether to (a) pay for the service of advertising lots of small netblocks, (b) buy "big-enough" netblocks and renumber into them to save on per-advertisement service fees, or (c) use provider-based addressing and bear the risk/costs of renumbering when changing providers. Without #1 above, there's no financial incentive for customers to renumber into better aggregated netblocks. As I understand Randy's argument, this is a flaw in the Internet economic model, because the costs are borne by the service providers but the benefits accrue to other networks' customers. Without #2 above, it's much harder to put a dollar value on the cost of (b): the price is difficult to determine in advance due to the utilization review uncertainties. Using my institution (AS 683) as an example, we advertise about seven /16s and a pre-CIDR block of swamp /24s. As much as I would like to aggregate everything into a larger netblock, there are some obstacles that I can't overcome by "community pressure" or "doing the right thing." I wish I could put dollar figures on the asset valuation of the various netblocks, the capital cost of larger netblocks, and the recurring cost to my institution of making 14 advertisements. Today I can't do that. At 01:25 PM 5/1/2003 -0700, David Conrad wrote:
Daniel,
So, lets say we go ahead a float IP address space and anyone can buy whatever prefix they think need and have the cash for.
What happens to the routing tables?
The reason the BOF back in '96 was entitled "Pricing of Internet Addresses and Routing Announcements' was that the folks who seriously considered the idea realized that in the IPv4 CIDR world we live in, selling address space without somehow tying those sales into some sort of market for routing prefixes was a recipe for "fun", or at least lots of prefix length filters and subsequently more unhappiness.
If someone can figure out how to get the ISPs of the world to participate in a routing prefix market, then it might be worth revisiting this idea. Note that there is nothing stopping establishing a routing prefix market now, so it could be done prior to changing address allocation policies.
Rgds, -drc
=== Bill Nickless http://www.mcs.anl.gov/people/nickless +1 630 252 7390 PGP:0E 0F 16 80 C5 B1 69 52 E1 44 1A A5 0E 1B 74 F7 nickless@mcs.anl.gov
Sorry, just remind me.. what exactly is the point of any of this anyway? Surely the Internet exists to serve webpages and deliver emails and other than those techies on this list no one cares how big your prefixes are or how many you have, providing you serve their office needs.. ? Steve On Thu, 1 May 2003, Bill Nickless wrote:
These two things have to happen at the same time:
1. ISPs start charging for the service of advertising each prefix upstream and/or to peers.
2. Customers can purchase netblocks on an open market.
With both #1 and #2, customers can decide (based on financial incentives) whether to
(a) pay for the service of advertising lots of small netblocks,
(b) buy "big-enough" netblocks and renumber into them to save on per-advertisement service fees, or
(c) use provider-based addressing and bear the risk/costs of renumbering when changing providers.
Without #1 above, there's no financial incentive for customers to renumber into better aggregated netblocks. As I understand Randy's argument, this is a flaw in the Internet economic model, because the costs are borne by the service providers but the benefits accrue to other networks' customers.
Without #2 above, it's much harder to put a dollar value on the cost of (b): the price is difficult to determine in advance due to the utilization review uncertainties.
Using my institution (AS 683) as an example, we advertise about seven /16s and a pre-CIDR block of swamp /24s. As much as I would like to aggregate everything into a larger netblock, there are some obstacles that I can't overcome by "community pressure" or "doing the right thing."
I wish I could put dollar figures on the asset valuation of the various netblocks, the capital cost of larger netblocks, and the recurring cost to my institution of making 14 advertisements. Today I can't do that.
At 01:25 PM 5/1/2003 -0700, David Conrad wrote:
Daniel,
So, lets say we go ahead a float IP address space and anyone can buy whatever prefix they think need and have the cash for.
What happens to the routing tables?
The reason the BOF back in '96 was entitled "Pricing of Internet Addresses and Routing Announcements' was that the folks who seriously considered the idea realized that in the IPv4 CIDR world we live in, selling address space without somehow tying those sales into some sort of market for routing prefixes was a recipe for "fun", or at least lots of prefix length filters and subsequently more unhappiness.
If someone can figure out how to get the ISPs of the world to participate in a routing prefix market, then it might be worth revisiting this idea. Note that there is nothing stopping establishing a routing prefix market now, so it could be done prior to changing address allocation policies.
Rgds, -drc
=== Bill Nickless http://www.mcs.anl.gov/people/nickless +1 630 252 7390 PGP:0E 0F 16 80 C5 B1 69 52 E1 44 1A A5 0E 1B 74 F7 nickless@mcs.anl.gov
I guess the better question is, what changed between 1996 and 2003? - Processor speeds have increased dramatically - Memory is dirt cheap in a way almost unthinkable in 1996. So, a little additional routing table bloat hurts no one. Yes, yes, this is heresy. Of course, that doesn't mean that a market based system causes ANY additional routing table growth... - Carriers have no incentive to change their filters - The current length filters work quite nicely. /20s are always routable, /24s are usually routable, depending on the weather, etc. YMMV, of course. - ARIN, or whomever is the brokerage/dealmaker/clearinghouse for these deals can simply refuse to transfer anything smaller than a /20, unless its in legacy swamp space - The sellers would, for their own protection, refuse to stipulate that ANY block they sell is globally routable, if they have any sense. - Of course, current, more or less unutilized class As and such might get sold off in /20 chunks and advertised, but theres nothing wrong with this. If, by a routing prefix market, you mean that folks with lots of prefixes get to pay folks to carry their data, then its a DOA idea. Current Settlement Free Peering arrangements work fine - no one is looking to upset the apple cart. - Daniel Golding On Thu, 1 May 2003, David Conrad wrote:
Daniel,
So, lets say we go ahead a float IP address space and anyone can buy whatever prefix they think need and have the cash for.
What happens to the routing tables?
The reason the BOF back in '96 was entitled "Pricing of Internet Addresses and Routing Announcements' was that the folks who seriously considered the idea realized that in the IPv4 CIDR world we live in, selling address space without somehow tying those sales into some sort of market for routing prefixes was a recipe for "fun", or at least lots of prefix length filters and subsequently more unhappiness.
If someone can figure out how to get the ISPs of the world to participate in a routing prefix market, then it might be worth revisiting this idea. Note that there is nothing stopping establishing a routing prefix market now, so it could be done prior to changing address allocation policies.
Rgds, -drc
On Thursday, May 1, 2003, at 10:27 AM, Daniel Golding wrote:
Treating IP space as a commodity is no more strange than trading financial options or other derivatives, or, for that matter, intellectual property. Bits, numbers, and agreements all hold value outside of the context of purely physical property.
Sadly, this sort of idea tends to stomp on the socialistic sort of idealism that is particularly prevalent amongst some in the IETF and NANOG communities, who feel it would leave out the "little guys". I suspect that any real world float of IP address space would result in a pretty low price per ip address, if the market was sufficiently liquid. It might be cheaper for a little guy to get a few $K together for IPs, then to build a network capable of "justifying" a /20 from an RIR.
Maybe ARIN should reinvent itself as a mercantile exchange?
- Dan
On Wed, 30 Apr 2003 bmanning@karoshi.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 30, 2003, at 07:44 AM, Bill Nickless wrote:
As a thought experiment, think of how the IPv4 addressing situation (bogon advertisements, allocations, explosion of routing table sizes, etc) would be different if the IP community treated IP addresses as a commodity.
PIARA, The Sequel. Take N+1. Action! Anybody got any rubber balls Peter Lothberg can monopolize this time? :-)
I still have mine, plus the five or six I took away from the others in the room. ... psst, buddy, want to buy an "8"
Sorry to be flip. In case you haven't already, see: http://www.apnic.net/mailing-lists/piara/index.shtml
Oh... sorry, are folks really seriously wanting to treat integers as a marketable commodity?
Rgds, -drc
On Friday, May 2, 2003, at 15:40 Europe/London, Daniel Golding wrote:
- Processor speeds have increased dramatically - Memory is dirt cheap in a way almost unthinkable in 1996. [but see smd's p.s.]
Incredible scale in one fewer dimension is *good*. Divide and conquer, within router systems, has been enormously successful. Moreover, putting relatively less work onto the general computing part of a modern large router has given us one less thing to worry about compared to the general computing industry. Given the amount of work it takes to build IP-forwarding hardware and nowadays specialized RAMs, this is a good thing. The amount of memory in large router systems has increased substantially, but not as substantially as the pps switching power of the same platforms. Rough numbers, not taking into account buffering, code bloat, architectural issues, bank holiday laziness, the hangover from faak.subnet.dk, and so on - 1996: 8-slot x ~50 Mbps, ~256 MBytes RAM per system ... 2003: 16-slot x 40-Gbps, ~16 GBytes RAM per system Fewer doublings. Bandwidth scaling, system: 500 Mbps vs. 500 Gbps -> 3 orders of magnitude, base ten (10 in base 2) Memory scaling, system: 320 MBytes vs 16 GBytes -> 2 orders (base 10) (6 in base 2) System memory has scaled less than typical city-to-city core bandwidth builds: 1996: ~OC3 x 1 2003: ~OC192 x 8 (aka OC3 x 512 - 9 orders of magnitude, base two) Yes, this *does* require interesting POP geometry, but so did ~155 without POS. Memory has also needed to become much faster, of course, to handle the arrival, storage, manipulation, and departure of the all bits through various parts of a system (often with an internal speedup over the max slot/interface bandwidths). In-system memory these days is used more by specialized pps hardware, not by general-purpose CPUs. Most development work has therefore gone into these chips to allow for more operations-per-packet (mmm, pipelining) and more packets per second, while the expectation is that cooler, stabler general purpose CPUs and ordinary RAMs will suffice for constructing the data structures these forwarding engines operate upon. More importantly than keeping the "routing brain" underpowered compared to run-of-the-mill PeeCees, constraining the amount of state in the network gives us some system slack in making time-space tradeoffs within a routing system (and parts thereof). As an industry, we can cope with memory speed increases levelling off, OR with specialized chip production slowing down. Increasing the amount of state in the network destroys a very important belts-and-braces approach to growth.
So, a little additional routing table bloat hurts no one. Yes, yes, this is heresy.
If all systems scaled in proportion to the "routing brain" ONLY, with the "routing brain" needing to be essentially just a PeeCee or Mac, you would be right. Unfortunately, this is not the case in the core, and the core is an expensive contribution to your monthly bills. However, it's nowhere near as large a contribution as what you likely are paying your "recovering monopolist" local access provider. Core costs get constrained because, as an industry, they must. If you stop the LAP being more than 50% of the price of connecting to the Internet, then yep, we can afford to be much more lax with respect to the routing table, even if it results in much more expensive core routing devices.
- Carriers have no incentive to change their filters
Except the bloody noses one gets in the press from time to time.
- The current length filters work quite nicely.
Thanks. I think so too, still.
If, by a routing prefix market, you mean that folks with lots of prefixes get to pay folks to carry their data, then its a DOA idea. Current Settlement Free Peering arrangements work fine - no one is looking to upset the apple cart.
Except at least ITU-T study group 3 (google on SG3 D.50 and *be concerned*). I personally would like a time-machine to go back and implement a web form that would allow one to use a credit card to blow holes in the prefix-length filter for a reasonable monthly fee, as opposed to effectively $INFINITY, and open-source the software. Note for motivated coders: it's not too late for this... As drc wrote:
If someone can figure out how to get the ISPs of the world to participate in a routing prefix market, then it might be worth revisiting this idea. Note that there is nothing stopping establishing a routing prefix market now, so it could be done prior to changing address allocation policies
There are certainly other approaches than this, but I believe this would have solved most of the problems in CIDRs childhood, and eliminated quite a few we are starting to see as it approaches puberty. Sean. P.S.: I guess I have a different view of "unthinkable price reductions". Do you pine for 1990's $6/hour 9600bps dialup IP too? In mid 1997 the price per Mbps per month ("non-overbooked") in Europe was about USD 17000. Pricing is now in many cases around USD 170. (I don't take into account inflation and exchange rate...) Trans-Atlantic *traffic* has gone from about a Gbps to perhaps a hundred. The Internet industry's ability to deal with the market with only a few mostly parent-company-inflicted organizational collapses is pretty astonishing. This, however, does not mean we should make it HARDER over the next few years. The "boring lull" some tech-focused people have complained about is a cyclical thing (T1 -> nxT1; T3 -> nxT3; OC3-nxOC12; OC48-nxOC192 periods for example), and is probably approaching its end. Remember the fun of SSPs, CIDR collapse, POS, gated vs "everyone else's" BGP, FIB switching, BFR/GSR, JunOS, packet over WDM? Step changes take a bit of advance planning and development; shifting the target in the wrong direction just before one is publically unleashed is, well, something I'd rather you not do.
At 05:18 PM 5/5/2003 +0100, Sean M.Doran wrote:
More importantly than keeping the "routing brain" underpowered compared to run-of-the-mill PeeCees, constraining the amount of state in the network gives us some system slack in making time-space tradeoffs within a routing system (and parts thereof). As an industry, we can cope with memory speed increases levelling off, OR with specialized chip production slowing down. Increasing the amount of state in the network destroys a very important belts-and-braces approach to growth.
Very good point--the issue is one of the amount of core state, whether that state is created through unicast BGP prefix advertisements or multicast MSDP Source Active advertisements. In each of these cases, I believe service providers should charge the customer for state that is (or could be) created in the core. Today, service provider costs are generally driven by a combination of circuit costs (read: recovering monopolist telcos) equipment costs (packets-per-second) equipment costs (amount of state the equipment can handle) real-estate costs (roughly proportionate to number of customers, and includes things like power and cooling) people costs (proportionate to quantity of customers and equipment) Pricing to the customers, however, is generally driven by the customer's requirements for bandwidth, not the customer's ability or desire to create state within the core. This leads to the following pernicious distortions (two of which come off the top of my head; there may be more): - Service provider sales/marketing has a perverse anti-incentive to promote multicast. If multicast is promoted, then the immediate result is a *reduction* in their commissions, because multicast service reduces the customer's demand for billable bandwidth utilization. - Customers end up charged for provider-specific IP addresses. The costs to the service provider for managing and allocating IP addresses need to be covered, of course. But if the *customer* covers those costs, then the customer has an incentive to acquire portable address space--which is then independently routed, increasing the amount of state in the core. As a customer of the voice telephone industry, I have the option of accepting a provider-assigned telephone number when I establish service. Or, I can pay a little more and retain my previously-assigned telephone number. The choice I make depends on how much the telephone number change will cost me overall, taking into account the cost of preserving the prior address versus the costs of communicating my new telephone number to actual and potential callers. In the IP world, the cost of advertising the new IP address to actual and potential communicators is relatively low due to DNS. But the cost of being able to *accept* those communications may be much higher, since I have to change state in all the devices (servers, routers, etc) that expect to receive messages using the old addresses. === Bill Nickless http://www.mcs.anl.gov/people/nickless +1 630 252 7390 PGP:0E 0F 16 80 C5 B1 69 52 E1 44 1A A5 0E 1B 74 F7 nickless@mcs.anl.gov
At 05:18 PM 5/5/2003 +0100, Sean M.Doran wrote:
More importantly than keeping the "routing brain" underpowered compared to run-of-the-mill PeeCees, constraining the amount of state in the network gives us some system slack in making time-space tradeoffs within a routing system (and parts thereof). As an industry, we can cope with memory speed increases levelling off, OR with specialized chip production slowing down. Increasing the amount of state in the network destroys a very important belts-and-braces approach to growth.
Very good point--the issue is one of the amount of core state, whether that state is created through unicast BGP prefix advertisements or multicast MSDP Source Active advertisements.
In each of these cases, I believe service providers should charge the customer for state that is (or could be) created in the core.
What about those who are affected by state generated by someone else's customers? Providers are already compensated by their customers. The issue is when Joe Bob ISP's customer deaggregates their /16 into /24s for their own traffic engineering purposes which the rest of the internet has to bear without cost recovery. The problem is how these 3rd parties bill Joe Bob's customer for their deaggregates, and how to identify approved (paid for) deags vs. unapproved deags. The high-level model is fairly easy: 1) largest aggregates are free 2) more-specifics from within the same originating ASN are charged at rate X which is adjusted proportionally to prefix length (as length gets longer, the rate goes up). 3) more-specifics from within different originating ASN are charged at rate Y (Y<X since meaningful content is more likely to exist), and again, adjusted proportionately to prefix length. It is only when you get to the specifics that things start to break down. 1) The prior identification of permitted/rogue routes 2) The means through which these rates get set 3) The means through which an ASN can contact 3rd parties in order to provide payment. 4) The means through which an ASN can verify that the 3rd party has accepted their route, or is even eligible for payment (someone not running BGP isn't having any resources consumed). Since this sort of settlement basis is (in my opinion) doomed to fail, the only other approach is what we have now, filtering everyone everywhere. What can and should be done is that the line in the sand is determined, agreed to, and adopted by everyone. This would, at least, provide consistency to filtering such that everyone knows what to expect, rather than finding out that what they are doing means they lack reachability to some parts of the network. The place for determining that line, however, is not here, as we are notoriously bitterly divided on the issue. However, a locked door BOF wherein no one can leave until consensus is arrived at, might work. :)
At 02:30 PM 5/5/2003 -0400, bdragon@gweep.net wrote:
What about those who are affected by state generated by someone else's customers? Providers are already compensated by their customers.
To a first approximation, peers have business relationships. How money flows (if any), how much bandwidth is available between the peers, how far the peers will pass traffic for each other---those are all parts of the business relationship between the parties. I believe that a fourth factor--the amount of state that each are willing to accept and carry for the other--should be added to the equation.
The issue is when Joe Bob ISP's customer deaggregates their /16 into /24s for their own traffic engineering purposes which the rest of the internet has to bear without cost recovery.
Cost recovery would be nice. The ability to make a profit would be even better. The goal should be to financially reward the parties that can handle complex state in their networks. We also want to financially reward parties that do route aggregation. Providers should have a financial incentive to hand out provider-managed space to their customers. The obvious incentive is for the provider to advertise a small number (one?) of short prefixes, with the customers getting longer sub-allocations. That's how providers might recover the costs of managing their provider-managed spaces.
The problem is how these 3rd parties bill Joe Bob's customer for their deaggregates, and how to identify approved (paid for) deags vs. unapproved deags.
As you say--organizations de-aggregate to engineer where traffic flows. Why are they motivated to do this? Because the costs of circuits are a known quantity, and the cost of de-aggregation roughly zero. So a fiscally rational organization will de-aggregate whenever and whereever possible. If, on the other hand, each prefix advertisement had a cost associated with it, then an organization would be able to make a de-aggregation decision based on its local requirements. The organization might even decide not to de-aggregate at all, if the prefix advertisement costs were high enough to justify additional circuit costs. Consider the possibility of charging a peer one rate for transit state, and a lesser rate for no-advertise state. That's what we do today already to control bandwidth costs.
The high-level model is fairly easy: 1) largest aggregates are free 2) more-specifics from within the same originating ASN are charged at rate X which is adjusted proportionally to prefix length (as length gets longer, the rate goes up). 3) more-specifics from within different originating ASN are charged at rate Y (Y<X since meaningful content is more likely to exist), and again, adjusted proportionately to prefix length.
Why should advertisements of varying lengths cost more (or less) than any other? It's the routing table entry that costs, not the length.
It is only when you get to the specifics that things start to break down. 1) The prior identification of permitted/rogue routes 2) The means through which these rates get set 3) The means through which an ASN can contact 3rd parties in order to provide payment. 4) The means through which an ASN can verify that the 3rd party has accepted their route, or is even eligible for payment (someone not running BGP isn't having any resources consumed).
Since this sort of settlement basis is (in my opinion) doomed to fail, the only other approach is what we have now, filtering everyone everywhere. What can and should be done is that the line in the sand is determined, agreed to, and adopted by everyone.
Let me be clear--I don't believe that settlement should happen anywhere other than within existing peering relationships. Recall that I'm also proposing that netblocks be treated as property, able to be bought and sold. Part of the transaction cost would involve paying a registry to register ownership, just as real estate or trademarks are registered today. Clearly identified ownership of netblocks goes a long way to meeting your Issue #1. Issues 2-4 (in my opinion) shouldn't be set industry-wide, because circumstances vary widely on a temporal and spatial basis. I believe it's better to structure the financial incentives than to impose such rules. === Bill Nickless http://www.mcs.anl.gov/people/nickless +1 630 252 7390 PGP:0E 0F 16 80 C5 B1 69 52 E1 44 1A A5 0E 1B 74 F7 nickless@mcs.anl.gov
At 02:30 PM 5/5/2003 -0400, bdragon@gweep.net wrote:
What about those who are affected by state generated by someone else's customers? Providers are already compensated by their customers.
To a first approximation, peers have business relationships. How money flows (if any), how much bandwidth is available between the peers, how far the peers will pass traffic for each other---those are all parts of the business relationship between the parties.
Assuming peers are equal, their number of announcements are likely to approximate each other with a zero-sum. However, the customers of these peers are still contributing to my resource usage, as well as my customer's usage. Should I pay my customer for someone else's deaggregation? Certainly my customer is being affected by someone else's customer's wanton deaggregation. The only way this could possibly work is direct billing to those consuming the resources by everyone who's resources are being consumed across the entire network.
I believe that a fourth factor--the amount of state that each are willing to accept and carry for the other--should be added to the equation.
The issue is when Joe Bob ISP's customer deaggregates their /16 into /24s for their own traffic engineering purposes which the rest of the internet has to bear without cost recovery.
Cost recovery would be nice. The ability to make a profit would be even better. The goal should be to financially reward the parties that can handle complex state in their networks.
I'ld rather stay away from discussions of profit, and focus on simple cost recovery from those who presently pollute for their own needs.
We also want to financially reward parties that do route aggregation. Providers should have a financial incentive to hand out provider-managed space to their customers. The obvious incentive is for the provider to advertise a small number (one?) of short prefixes, with the customers getting longer sub-allocations. That's how providers might recover the costs of managing their provider-managed spaces.
I don't see financial rewards being possible or useful. At worst, in a rewards based system, we have what we presently have. In a disincentive based system, at worst, I'm compensated for my resources (and so are you, our customers, our peers, etc.)
The problem is how these 3rd parties bill Joe Bob's customer for their deaggregates, and how to identify approved (paid for) deags vs. unapproved deags.
As you say--organizations de-aggregate to engineer where traffic flows. Why are they motivated to do this? Because the costs of circuits are a known quantity, and the cost of de-aggregation roughly zero. So a fiscally rational organization will de-aggregate whenever and whereever possible.
If, on the other hand, each prefix advertisement had a cost associated with it, then an organization would be able to make a de-aggregation decision based on its local requirements. The organization might even decide not to de-aggregate at all, if the prefix advertisement costs were high enough to justify additional circuit costs.
Consider the possibility of charging a peer one rate for transit state, and a lesser rate for no-advertise state. That's what we do today already to control bandwidth costs.
Following the peer/transit model, as I've explained above, is insufficient, since the state is shared on all providers, and their customers equally.
The high-level model is fairly easy: 1) largest aggregates are free 2) more-specifics from within the same originating ASN are charged at rate X which is adjusted proportionally to prefix length (as length gets longer, the rate goes up). 3) more-specifics from within different originating ASN are charged at rate Y (Y<X since meaningful content is more likely to exist), and again, adjusted proportionately to prefix length.
Why should advertisements of varying lengths cost more (or less) than any other? It's the routing table entry that costs, not the length.
a prefix of a shorter length (all other factors aside) has greater value in a reachability framework. Someone would need to pay a lot of money to get their /32s to be accepted by everyone, when said /32s are already covered by someone else's /19.
It is only when you get to the specifics that things start to break down. 1) The prior identification of permitted/rogue routes 2) The means through which these rates get set 3) The means through which an ASN can contact 3rd parties in order to provide payment. 4) The means through which an ASN can verify that the 3rd party has accepted their route, or is even eligible for payment (someone not running BGP isn't having any resources consumed).
Since this sort of settlement basis is (in my opinion) doomed to fail, the only other approach is what we have now, filtering everyone everywhere. What can and should be done is that the line in the sand is determined, agreed to, and adopted by everyone.
Let me be clear--I don't believe that settlement should happen anywhere other than within existing peering relationships.
and on this we disagree.
Recall that I'm also proposing that netblocks be treated as property, able to be bought and sold. Part of the transaction cost would involve paying a registry to register ownership, just as real estate or trademarks are registered today.
Also here as well. I'll know the internet has signed its own death warrant if this should ever occur.
Clearly identified ownership of netblocks goes a long way to meeting your Issue #1. Issues 2-4 (in my opinion) shouldn't be set industry-wide, because circumstances vary widely on a temporal and spatial basis. I believe it's better to structure the financial incentives than to impose such rules.
Assuming peers are equal, their number of announcements are likely to approximate each other with a zero-sum. However, the customers of these peers are still contributing to my resource usage, as well as my customer's usage. Should I pay my customer for someone else's deaggregation? Certainly my customer is being affected by someone else's customer's wanton deaggregation.
The only way this could possibly work is direct billing to those consuming the resources by everyone who's resources are being consumed across the entire network.
When I buy a hamburger from Burger King, I just pay for the hamburger. Burger King needs to get beef and pays for the beef using the money they got from me for the hamburger. No problem. If something changes, I eat more hamburgers or beef costs more, they simply adjust the prices they charge and pay. There is no need for me to ever contact the beef producer directly. Similarly with routing, if joeISP's paid each of his upstreams 5 cents for excess routes and had 4 of them, Ihed simply charge his customers 20 cents a route. Why would my customers have to pay my upstreams? If joeISP's providers need to pay janeISP 10 cents a route to hear joeISP's routes, then joeISP's providers will bill him. It's far more efficient for the money to travel where the contracts already are. This is why I pay one price at Burger King and they pay whoever they have to to get the beef, employees, rent a store, and so on. It makes no sense for me to contract for those things individually. If you don't want to hear someone else's routes unless they pay you, nothing currently forces you to hear them. You can consider the incremental value of those routes against the incremental cost and hear them or filter them, as many people do now. If you want to bill them, their upstreams, or your provider for those routes, nothing stops you from doing so. I believe that if people follow the existing rules, in the vast majority of distant cases, the benefits of hearing the route already exceed the cost of hearing the route. This is why the Internet currently works. So why should somebody pay to give you something that's worth something to you? The people breaking the rules are a problem. But the mechanism to enforce the rules isn't routing settlements. DS
Assuming peers are equal, their number of announcements are likely to approximate each other with a zero-sum. However, the customers of these peers are still contributing to my resource usage, as well as my customer's usage. Should I pay my customer for someone else's deaggregation? Certainly my customer is being affected by someone else's customer's wanton deaggregation.
The only way this could possibly work is direct billing to those consuming the resources by everyone who's resources are being consumed across the entire network.
When I buy a hamburger from Burger King, I just pay for the hamburger. Burger King needs to get beef and pays for the beef using the money they got from me for the hamburger. No problem.
This is a poor analogy, since there is nothing McDonald's customers do which affects Burger King's customers in the same way as JoeISP's customer's deaggregation affects JaneISP's customers. Route advertisements do not fit any existing model, since an advertisement affects all members of the system equally, no matter how far away they are from the advertisement.
Route advertisements do not fit any existing model, since an advertisement affects all members of the system equally, no matter how far away they are from the advertisement.
Er. Not at all. Please review routing 101. Pop quiz. define prefix filtering and proxy aggregation --bill
Route advertisements do not fit any existing model, since an advertisement affects all members of the system equally, no matter how far away they are from the advertisement.
Er. Not at all. Please review routing 101. Pop quiz. define prefix filtering and proxy aggregation
--bill
Reread my email dated 4/17/2003 with subject of "selective auto-aggregation" I think you'll find I've already given some thought on proxy aggregation as better than prefix-filtering for maintaining connectivity while limitting the effects of someone else's deaggregation. One person mentioned that atomic aggregates would lead to problems, which would if it were the case, strike down the solution I had come up with. This leaves us with prefix-filtering, which at present leads to blackholes, due to the frequent lack of advertising of largest aggregates. A third solution, under discussion in this thread, would be removing filters and compensating networks by those who feel they need/want to deaggregate. The problems of which I've already detailed. Do you have any solutions you wish to offer?
Route advertisements do not fit any existing model, since an advertisement affects all members of the system equally, no matter how far away they are from the advertisement.
Er. Not at all. Please review routing 101. Pop quiz. define prefix filtering and proxy aggregation
--bill
Reread my email dated 4/17/2003 with subject of "selective auto-aggregation" I think you'll find I've already given some thought on proxy aggregation as better than prefix-filtering for maintaining connectivity while limitting the effects of someone else's deaggregation.
Sprint did that in 1994-95. Or at least threatened to do it when one ISP that now had been bought by a promsing local ISP decided not to aggregate. The Sprint's move was enough to force that ISP to aggregate. Alex
Route advertisements do not fit any existing model, since an advertisement affects all members of the system equally, no matter how far away they are from the advertisement.
Er. Not at all. Please review routing 101. Pop quiz. define prefix filtering and proxy aggregation
--bill
Reread my email dated 4/17/2003 with subject of "selective auto-aggregation" I think you'll find I've already given some thought on proxy aggregation as better than prefix-filtering for maintaining connectivity while limitting the effects of someone else's deaggregation.
Sprint did that in 1994-95. Or at least threatened to do it when one ISP that now had been bought by a promsing local ISP decided not to aggregate. The Sprint's move was enough to force that ISP to aggregate.
Alex
The statement; "an advertisement affects all members of the system equally" is false. As you point out, sprint (at the time) was able to announce 192.0.0.0/3, which clearly changed how they saw more specific annoucements. I guess my point is, peering is a bilateral agreement between two parties to exchange packets. part of that agreement is or should include provisions for determining what prefixes are sourced by each party and what are the expectations for re-announcing those prefixes to other parties. Those agreements/negotiations are -BILATERAL- and only affect the consenting parties. Anything else is either sloppiness or laziness. --bill
The statement; "an advertisement affects all members of the system equally" is false. As you point out, sprint (at the time) was able to announce 192.0.0.0/3, which clearly changed how they saw more specific annoucements.
I guess my point is, peering is a bilateral agreement between two parties to exchange packets. part of that agreement is or should include provisions for determining what prefixes are sourced by each party and what are the expectations for re-announcing those prefixes to other parties.
Those agreements/negotiations are -BILATERAL- and only affect the consenting parties. Anything else is either sloppiness or laziness.
--bill
Ok, so it appears there will never be a solution. 1) Filtering leads to blackholes 2) There was pushback on automatic aggregation, as well as a present lack of feature for configurable automatic aggregation 3) Direct compensation by those who deaggregate to those who accept their routes has problems, not the least of which is lack of support from those who don't feel that nth-order parties are being affected by having the routes in their bgp table. 4) Compensation along existing relationships only goes upwards, with peers being zero-sum amongst themselves (and other end-users get nothing, since no money flows back down the chain). This, of course, only serves to encourage deaggregation, since providers can add another revenue stream where they might have previously discouraged people from deaggregating. Maybe there will be some effort to solve the problem at another time. Until then, I'm done with this thread.
Assuming peers are equal, their number of announcements are likely to approximate each other with a zero-sum. However, the customers of these peers are still contributing to my resource usage, as well as my customer's usage. Should I pay my customer for someone else's deaggregation? Certainly my customer is being affected by someone else's customer's wanton deaggregation.
The only way this could possibly work is direct billing to those consuming the resources by everyone who's resources are being consumed across the entire network.
When I buy a hamburger from Burger King, I just pay for the hamburger. Burger King needs to get beef and pays for the beef using the money they got from me for the hamburger. No problem.
This is a poor analogy, since there is nothing McDonald's customers do which affects Burger King's customers in the same way as JoeISP's customer's deaggregation affects JaneISP's customers.
Actually, that's not true. Burger King and McDonald's compete for beef suppliers. By buying burgers at McDonald's, I increase McDonald's buying power, making it harder for Burger King to buy beef. They also compete in labor markets and other ways. Nobody can compel you to listen to a routing advertisement that you don't feel it's in your best interests to hear. You can, if you wish, demand a payment from them for hearing your announcements. In any event, your counter-analogy is bad because Burger King and McDonald's don't have a contractual relationship with each other, even indirectly, that could account for these costs. Rest assured, if they had one, it would.
Route advertisements do not fit any existing model, since an advertisement affects all members of the system equally, no matter how far away they are from the advertisement.
The whole system is consensual and supported by contract. Each contract takes into account the entire universe on each side of the contract. Nobody can compel anyone to do anything they don't wish to do. If I impose costs on you, I can only do it through the system of contracts and agreements. So each agreement can and should take into account the affect my costs have on each piece of the system. If your uplink paid by announcement, they'd charge you by announcement. If you paid by announcement, you'd charge your customers by announcement. If you didn't feel an announcement was worth the cost, you wouldn't hear it. There is no commons. Everything is owned and used pursuant to contractual agreement. DS
The only way this could possibly work is direct billing to those consuming the resources by everyone who's resources are being consumed across the entire network.
When I buy a hamburger from Burger King, I just pay for the hamburger. Burger King needs to get beef and pays for the beef using the money they got from me for the hamburger. No problem.
This is a poor analogy, since there is nothing McDonald's customers do which affects Burger King's customers in the same way as JoeISP's customer's deaggregation affects JaneISP's customers.
This is not entirely correct. McDonald's customers may choose to stand in front of Burger Kings blocking traffic to it. Alex
This ignores commercial reality. Its fine to ruminate on how we may want things to be, but in the real world. no one will ever charge for route announcements, any more than people charge "installation fees". They will be immediately waived. Some folks do charge for IP space, but this leads to significant problems, as it makes it very hard to issue space based on justifiable need - "I'm will to pay for an extra /20, so why can't I have it". The reason, of course, is that when the provider goes back to ARIN for more space, the fact that someone was willing to pay isn't considered proper justification... Also, there are problems with folks who pay for address space believing that they somehow own it. You have given an excellent reason, why, as an industry, we are not interested in promoting multicast. Of course, the other reasons are its nasty degree of complexity when troubleshooting and occassionally buggy implementations. That, and customers never ask for it. Demand drives implementation. Demand drives billing methodology. Not always happy news for the techie, but there it is. - Daniel Golding On Mon, 5 May 2003, Bill Nickless wrote:
At 05:18 PM 5/5/2003 +0100, Sean M.Doran wrote:
More importantly than keeping the "routing brain" underpowered compared to run-of-the-mill PeeCees, constraining the amount of state in the network gives us some system slack in making time-space tradeoffs within a routing system (and parts thereof). As an industry, we can cope with memory speed increases levelling off, OR with specialized chip production slowing down. Increasing the amount of state in the network destroys a very important belts-and-braces approach to growth.
Very good point--the issue is one of the amount of core state, whether that state is created through unicast BGP prefix advertisements or multicast MSDP Source Active advertisements.
In each of these cases, I believe service providers should charge the customer for state that is (or could be) created in the core.
Today, service provider costs are generally driven by a combination of
circuit costs (read: recovering monopolist telcos) equipment costs (packets-per-second) equipment costs (amount of state the equipment can handle) real-estate costs (roughly proportionate to number of customers, and includes things like power and cooling) people costs (proportionate to quantity of customers and equipment)
Pricing to the customers, however, is generally driven by the customer's requirements for bandwidth, not the customer's ability or desire to create state within the core. This leads to the following pernicious distortions (two of which come off the top of my head; there may be more):
- Service provider sales/marketing has a perverse anti-incentive to promote multicast. If multicast is promoted, then the immediate result is a *reduction* in their commissions, because multicast service reduces the customer's demand for billable bandwidth utilization.
- Customers end up charged for provider-specific IP addresses. The costs to the service provider for managing and allocating IP addresses need to be covered, of course. But if the *customer* covers those costs, then the customer has an incentive to acquire portable address space--which is then independently routed, increasing the amount of state in the core.
As a customer of the voice telephone industry, I have the option of accepting a provider-assigned telephone number when I establish service. Or, I can pay a little more and retain my previously-assigned telephone number. The choice I make depends on how much the telephone number change will cost me overall, taking into account the cost of preserving the prior address versus the costs of communicating my new telephone number to actual and potential callers.
In the IP world, the cost of advertising the new IP address to actual and potential communicators is relatively low due to DNS. But the cost of being able to *accept* those communications may be much higher, since I have to change state in all the devices (servers, routers, etc) that expect to receive messages using the old addresses.
=== Bill Nickless http://www.mcs.anl.gov/people/nickless +1 630 252 7390 PGP:0E 0F 16 80 C5 B1 69 52 E1 44 1A A5 0E 1B 74 F7 nickless@mcs.anl.gov
participants (17)
-
alex＠yuriev.com -
Andrea Abrahamsen -
bdragon＠gweep.net -
Bill Nickless -
bmanning＠karoshi.com -
Daniel Golding -
David Conrad -
David G. Andersen -
David Schwartz -
Eric Gauthier -
Jack Bates -
Scott Bradner -
Sean M.Doran -
Simon Lyall -
Stephen J. Wilcox -
Steven M. Bellovin -
Valdis.Kletnieks＠vt.edu