Broken Internet?

Tue Mar 13 23:20:17 UTC 2001

On Tue, Mar 13, 2001 at 12:52:41PM -0800, Roeland Meyer wrote:
> 1. Prefix filtering at /20.

This varies.  

I've enjoyed pretty good -- though not total, for obvious reasons (hi
Randy! :) -- success announcing /24's and /23's out of provider-issued
IP space.  Just make sure your upstreams are:

     - sufficiently redundant themselves.

     - announcing a shorter-length prefix that your space falls under,
       so that you can achieve some level of reachability, should
       people filter what you're announcing.

     - not insolvent.

> 2. Most small busineses limited to /24, by policy/procedure.

Small businesses, like any business, should be allocated as much space
as they can justify as per current registry guidelines.  This might be
a lot more or less than a /24, depending upon many factors.

> 3. Multi-homing requirements for [...] many SOHO's

Do these need to involve BGP?

There are various solutions that don't.  While less than optimal,
they're fully acceptable for the ghetto office/home office crowd.
Obtaining pipes to multiple providers, sticking mail/DNS servers on
each 'net, and NAT'ing out whatever pipe is operational, falls under
this category.  And outsourced backup MX and DNS needn't cost you a
dime.

> 5. Total lack of responsibile behavior among DSL access providers.

Every industry has its bad apples.  The DSL biz is certainly no
exception, as has been proven many times.  Characterizing all DSL
access providers as harsh and irresponsible isn't really fair.

> It is next to impossible for a small business to have reliable internet
> connectivity without moving into a large co-lo. 

You sure?

> Even if they can afford the multiple T1's, they can't get portable
> IP addresses that will be advertised reliably. 

So, wait for ARIN to offer micro allocations.  Or find a /24 or two
out of swamp space to recycle.  Or find some other way around this.

> most businesses, down for more than 14 days, will never survive.

Right.  And chances are businesses with carefully planned
infrastructure will never be down this long, unless some major
catastrophe occurs, in which case 'net connectivity will likely be the
least of their concerns.

> More importantly, such an outage flat-lines the revenue picture for that
> entire fiscal quarter, for the unlucky victim.

Survival of the fittest, I guess.

> Any business needs:
> 1. to be able to change upstream providers without having to renumber.

Implications of routing table growth aside, I'm not sure I understand
why you consider this to be essential.

> 2. to be able to change access providers without having to suffer
> multi-month down-times.

Yes, conventional means of last-mile telco loop delivery can be slow
at times.  So can other steps of the provisioning process.  There are
some viable alternatives today, and more on the horizon.  Plan
accordingly.

> It looks like our technical solutions are raising unreasonable
> barriers to entry for small businesses.

Unpleasant?  Perhaps.  Unreasonable?  No.

-adam