Addressing plan exercise for our IPv6 course

Thu Jul 29 21:40:13 UTC 2010

Owen DeLong wrote:

> If you want to build a business based on upsell and control by trying
> to convince users that they should give you extra money to provision
> a resource that costs you virtually nothing, then more power to you.
> 
> However, I think this will, in the end, be as popular as american
> restaurants that charge for ice water.

Sorry, I need to dial back on the cynicism / sarcasm a bit, it doesn't
travel so well through the tubes - that's a rant about the attitudes I
encounter, not my views!

I *utterly* agree with you that trying to micro-manage the allocation
size on a per-customer basis for high-volume residential / SOHO
connections is a complete waste of resources.

I equally believe that a number of ISPs operating in that market are
going to try, not just one or two crazy outliers, based on the attitudes
I touched on in my rant (which, again, *aren't* mine).

Coming from an IPv4 business model that goes:

Extra for a static IP
Extra for more than one IP
Extra for a contract that doesn't forbid incoming connections
Extra for non-generic reverse DNS
Extra for not blocking IPSec
Extra for...

I fully expect some ISPs to extend that into whatever parts of IPv6 they
can measure and charge for.

> Is probably going to be at a significant competitive disadvantage vs.
> a model that says "You can have whatever address space you can
> justify. We'll start you with 65,536 networks which we believe is way
> more than enough for virtually any residential user. We don't charge
> you anything for address space. We think charging people for integers
> is illogical."

I really hope you're right.  I'd love to see the Internet opened back up
again, for everyone.

Regards,
Tim.