Request for Comments on a topological address block for N. Calif.

Sun Sep 24 19:54:18 UTC 1995

| If, say,
| mountainview.net (which is fictional (I hope 8-)) branched out to Miami,
| and bought another Alternet ISP T-1 connection out there, they would
| then be getting free transit between them.  Presumably if both were
| Alternet connections, you'd figure it out.  If they bought Sprint access
| in Miami, then they might fool both of you.

Forgive me for being obtuse, but I don't see that this is a
problem.  After all, if they bought two AlterNet connections,
isn't being able to send traffic across AlterNet what
they're *paying* for?

And if they bought a connection to each of AlterNet and
Sprint, it strikes me that one fee is going to A to get
traffic into S and to accept traffic from S and deliver
it to the Alternet site, while the other fee is going to S
to get traffic into A and to accept traffic from A and
deliver it to the Sprint site.

The current situation has just changed a bit.  Some provider
has identified routing slots as a precious, valuable
commodity, and that while reachability outside that
provider's network has value, that value-per-routing-slot is
considerably greater when the population density of that
routing slot is greater.  (One might measure population
density as one of actual or estimated actual
hosts-per-prefix, interesting things per prefix, or
potential hosts-per-prefix.  Who knows?)

Hypothetically speaking, in a situation like the one above,
if a site wants to break aggregation -- be it geographical
aggregation or be it provider-based aggregation -- then that
site might expect to have to negotiate some kind of
settlement with one or even many large and small providers
in order to let that non-aggregated, less-densely-populated
route consume a routing slot in their routers.

In this situation again, if the new site were to 
take addresses from its provider, or from its geographical
area, then there will be no additional consumption of a
routing prefix beyond the scope of the AAB.  If the AAB
is the provider, or a subset of the provider's network,
then that provider is being paid for the connection anyway,
and presumably the routing slots for the prefixes that only
that provider sees are rolled into the fee.

| You could easily avoid this by adding a statement to your service contracts
| for addresses allocated from these geographical block(s), which states that
| there must be full disclosure to all involved upstream providers if the
| company adds sites outside that area.  If they fail to do so they would
| then be defrauding you.

I see.  So you want providers to tell their customers that
their customers have to report how well they're doing
growth-wise to their providers?   

Dear Karl Denninger, you are obliged by contract to tell me 
the locations of all your customers and anything downstream
from them that are outside the Chicago area.

Do you really think this will fly?  (And no, that's not an
entirely rhetorical question).

	Sean.