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

Wed Jan 23 11:12:45 UTC 2008

On Wed, 23 Jan 2008, Andy Davidson wrote:

> I think that charging for deaggregation of PA is hard to imagine.  I 
> think charging for PI as a model may have been worthy of consideration 
> several years ago, but since we're only months away from entire product 
> lines of deployed edge kit nolonger accepting a full table, the battle 
> is over (and operators lost).

As far as I can see, the only way to solve de-aggregation and PI is to 
create some kind of cryptographic signing of aggregate routes sent out to 
DFZ.

RIPE/ARIN and other equal instances need to sign the combination of AS 
and prefix, and this is then used (somehow) to authenticate the prefix 
when received. This would also have the added benefit of stopping people 
from sending more specifics with other ISPs IP space (or even their own, 
as only the actual aggregate prefix would be signed, not more specifics 
that people use for "TE").

So this "certificate" or alike needs to be time limited and coupled to 
payment if we're going to charge for PI/PA yearly.

Yes, this increases complexity in the DFZ enormously, and I don't know if 
the benefit outweighs the complexity and added risks for failures.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se