Thoughts on charging for route announcements

Tue Feb 20 07:26:33 UTC 1996

  NANOG,

  I enjoyed Yakov's presentation on charging for network route
  announcements.  However, I seem to have a rather significant
  problem with it.

  According to Yakov, increasing the cost of network routing
  announcements will decrease the overall number of routes, and
  increase aggregation.  Introducing dollar-fixed cost to network
  announcements would provide a fair and equitable system in which
  desire would not run rampant, but be tied to a fixed sum, ie
  money.

  In a standard capitalistic model, when supply is fixed, cost will
  create an inverse relationship with demand.  However, the 'supply'
  of network routes is not fixed.

  One could make a good point that it is fixed by saying 'Oh yes,
  for so many dollars routers can only handle X number of routes in
  their table optimally'.  If we were to buy this (which I actually
  do) then we would ask 'Who is it that determines what percentage
  each provider/nsp gets of those X routes?'

  If there were an autonomous 'Internet Company' that 'owned' the
  abilities of the Internet, and could claim ownership of 'routing'
  then they could determine that routing was worth 1 Frobozz. This
  would determine that a 'valid' router could handle X number of routes,
  therefore each route cost 1/X Frobozz.  

  However, we've not such a standard, nor a body to enforce it.
  Akin to Lothberg's argument, we've not a supply, governed by an
  entity, or set of entities.

  While the routing tables of the internet connections points are
  analagous to gold in many ways, in supply and control, they are
  not.

  How would this be enforced in today's system?

  -alan