Cost per prefix [was: request for help w/ ATT and terminology]

andrew2 at one.net andrew2 at one.net
Tue Jan 22 17:28:11 UTC 2008


William Herrin wrote:
> Right now we rely on ARIN and the RIRs to artificially suppress the
> growth of the prefix count and with it the availability of PI space.
> This is a Really Bad Thing on so many levels, but absent a viable
> market-based solution to the problem, authority-based rationing is
> really the only thing we can do.
> 
> If we can determine the cost to announce a prefix then we could
> develop a market-based solution to the problem... One where instead of
> suppressing the prefix count and dealing with it as business overhead,
> we GET PAID for announcing and propagating prefixes.


Hi, I'm Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/AT&T/AOL/Sprint/etc. and I plan to annnounce
only /24's and I refuse to pay you to propagate those routes.  Are you
really going to drop those routes?   Bottom line here is you're going to
have trouble getting the big content providers to buy in, and you're going
to have an equally tough time convincing the major carriers that they should
essentially raise their rates for particular clients.  So who exactly is
going to pay and how are you going to convince them they should?  If
provider X tells me they're going to charge me $X per prefix I want them to
propagate, I'll just go with provider Y.  You're going to need 100% buy-in.

Your solution here is merely a band-aid designed to disguise the actual
problem.  Growing prefix count is largely a symptom of missing BGP
functionality.  Fix or replace BGP in such a way that we can better control
the flow of incoming traffic without needing hacks like announcing smaller
subnets and prepending and the problem goes away without introducing extra
fees and beauracracy like you're suggesting.

Andrew Cruse




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