[YA] Fwd: Class B Purchase

Wed Oct 7 06:31:01 UTC 1998

At 03:41 PM 10/6/98 -0700, David R. Conrad wrote:
>Michael,
>
>>My advice in this instance would be to sue Sprint for antitrust violations
>>because if you win then you get triple damages awarded and Sprint
>>definitely has the bank account to pay out on the award. Forget the
>>registries. They are just trying to do the best they can in the awkward
>>situation that was created by Sprint. 
>
>Wow.  You're _really_ confused.
>
>The situation wasn't created by Sprint, it was created by the lack of self
>control on the part of the other ISPs.  Remember when the filters were
>first instituted.  Remember the growth of the routing tables.  Remember the
>maximum routing load the routers back then could handle.
>
>The registries _relied_ on Sprint's filters to give some teeth to "it's a
>real good idea to go to your upstream".  Sprint (read: Sean Doran) was the
>ONLY isp to have the cajones to risk outrage to try to limit the
>proliferation of long prefixes.   If it wasn't for Sprint's filters, there

AGIS used to have a page that stated the same routing filter policy as
Sprint's.   -Hank

>would have been only registry whining as back pressure limiting the
>allocation of provider independent prefixes.  Geuss what:  whining wasn't
>particularly effective.  RIPE-NCC and APNIC instituted fees for cost
>recovery, and these had the side effect to limit organizations approaching
>those registries for resources.  InterNIC (at the time) was not able to
>follow suit.  Given the IAB's RFC 1814, there was _very_ little that
>discouraged every Tom, Dick, and Mary consisting of two modems in a dorm
>room that called themselves an "ISP" (or not) from demanding address space
>from InterNIC.  With the unilateral imposition of filters by Sprint there
>was concrete evidence that prefixes longer than /19 were perhaps not a good
>idea, thereby encouraging folk to go to their upstreams thus limiting the
>proliferation of long prefixes.
>
>Yeah, let's sue.  
>
>Frankly, with comments like this, I feel Sprint is approaching terminal
>stupidity for keeping the filters in place.  I'm sure they have a lovely
>business case for keeping the filters active (or they wouldn't have lasted
>this long), but at some point, natural selection has to be allowed to
>function.  I also think the registries should actually be registries and
>not try to be the Internet's mommy.  Internet service providers (or those
>who think they are Internet service providers) ought to clean up their own
>messes for a change instead of relying on Sprint and the registries to do
>it for them.  After all, everyone has a god-given inalienable right to
>portable addresses, no?
>
>Disgustedly,
>-drc
>
>