Draining the Swamp, A Straw Proposal

Sean Shapira sds at jazzie.com
Tue Jan 30 23:40:59 UTC 1996


Justin Newton wrote:
> On 29 Jan 96 at 20:56, Sean Shapira wrote:
> >   - Depend only on voluntary participation by Internet providers.  
>
> Of late there seems to be a much higher [quotient] of 
> people running providers who are either slothful, not technically 
> competent enough to do their job, or both.  

The criterion was probably poorly expressed:  "Internet providers"
was intended primarily to indicated those operating large backbone
(default-less) networks.

> [small access providers] are the people we have to 
> reclaim some space from.  

I question this "have to" claim.  Who has the need?  Apparently
backbone providers with over-full router tables.  Could they 
decrease the size of their router tables without harming (and 
thus possibly losing) their customers?  I believe they could.

> It may be politically bad, but if we are going 
> to do some space reclamation, lets do it whole bore.

Compliance is usually much easier to acheive when it is in 
the financial best interests of those who are asked comply.  

Can anyone make the case that it will be in the financial best
interests of backbone providers to tell their customers the 
service they have purchased in the past (global routing for 
swamp addresses) is no longer available?

-- 
Sean Shapira         sds at jazzie.com         +1 206 443 2028



More information about the NANOG mailing list