IPv4 smaller than /24 leasing?

Fri Jan 5 00:20:26 UTC 2018

And this is exactly what other companies are doing.  The traditional way of doing a startup ISP is:

1.You get provider assigned IP space
2.You grow big enough to get your own IP space, historically from ARIN.  Nowadays you have to buy it on the open market.
3.You re-adddress your network for the IP space you have.
4.Chewing up the /24 when you may not too in order to meet justification.

So now, we have a startups and growing ISPs.  I have multiple clients who are in the exact same scenario I am going to describe.

They are a startup and can’t justify a /24 so they hope to find two backbone providers to play ball.  They hope one will assign them a full /24 so they can participate in BGP. That provider is probably charging them $1 per IP per month.  Okay fine, pay it.  As said in a previous e-mail, if they can’t afford it they shouldn’t be in business right?  They go through the ARIN process to get an ASN and can now participate in BGP.  Great, they bring up BGP and work towards having the cash flow to buy a /24 on the open market.  Again, if they can’t afford to play they shouldn’t be in business right?  Cash flow pays for the ability to buy a /24 in 8-14 months.  $4,000 plus the $2500 they spent on leasing fees.  Again, if they can’t afford it don’t play huh?

So now, they have a /24 they really don’t need.  In order to meet ARIN justification they hand out IPs to people who really aren’t in their business model just to meet justification.  Before you know it they are using 80% of a /24 when they really only need half or less of it.  The /24 is too small to scale of giving everyone publics, so their network design is centered around 1: many NAT, CGN, and other such things.

How is this a good use of resources when they have to justify 80% of a /24 in which they only need half of? I have 5 ISPs I work with that have 300-500 customer and are using a /26 or smaller of IP space.  They can’t have true redundancy they are able to manage because they can’t do BGP themselves.  So they are tied to one ISP because thats where they get their space from.  Or, going back to the original part of this thread, they lease from someone across a tunnel.  Even then, they are still tied to someone.

Justin Wilson
j2sw at mtin.net

www.mtin.net
www.midwest-ix.com

> On Jan 4, 2018, at 7:01 PM, Dovid Bender <dovid at telecurve.com> wrote:
> 
> I can tell you that when we started (and there were IP's still available)
> we first leased from another company to get our feet when and run tests
> before we requested our own resources.
> 
> On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 6:21 PM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 6:06 PM, Mike Hammett <nanog at ics-il.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> There are hundreds of ISPs with under 500 customers. More start up every
>>> week. No need to marginalize them.
>>> 
>> 
>> Hi Mike,
>> 
>> No disrespect, but anyone who can't afford to spend $5000 on resources
>> critical to their activity is not in the Internet business or any other
>> kind of business and should probably stop lying to themselves about that.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Bill Herrin
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
>> Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>
>> 
> 