Policy Statement on Address Space Allocations

Tue Jan 30 23:41:25 UTC 1996

(I'm reluctant to add to the noise, but what the hell - everyone else is
 partying :-) )

The space we are playing in is both a technical and an economic one,
and the conversation stream to date veers widely around the technical
issues and is completely off the planet economically speaking!

Andrew half hit the issue with the comment relating to ISPs
undertaking what is a variant of proxy aggregation to suppress routing
table size when he noted that this is tantamount to "free transit".

However this way he then inferred that free transit is impossible to
sustain as the fatal flaw in this model, should be broken down
further before dismissing it as completely flawed:

a) forced proxy aggregation implies transit peering across ISPs
   Technically this (transit) is of course possible to construct.

b) it will be economically infeasible IF we continue with this strange
   system of zero dollar interconnections we use as a peering model.
   i.e "free" is the problem here, not "transit".

If you manage to provide a better model for interconnection which
includes a rational economic model of interaction then, strangely
enough, you then have a powerful tool you can use to address teh
technical issue of scaling the routing domain.

i.e. 

  "free transit" is stupid, as Andrew indicates.

  "transit" is possible given a rational economic model of the
      transit interaction.

In the same way that giving away IP addresses and giving away IP
routing can only be described as a very bad case of irrational
behaviour, especially when the underlying resource is under stress as
it is at present, then I'd also note that giving away transit is
similarly a case completely irrational behaviour!

All this points to a desperate need for a more realistic economic
structure to be used within a number of key aspects of Internet
infrastructure.

Thanks,

    Geoff Huston

Andrew's comments:

> 
> > Half correct.  Everyone in the area carries full routes for the block.
> > Everyone outside the area can listen to only the /8 advertisement.
> 
> So these providers are providing the free transit to their
> non-customers?
> 
> This does not make any business sense; it will not happen.
> 	--asp at uunet.uu.net (Andrew Partan)
> 
> 