I think this idea is no better than standard redundancy (multiple lines to the same ISP). Actually, I think it is worse since it is required of you to either stay in the city or stretch a long fibre to it should you move all or some of your stuff to another. Companies will try to do the latter because they don't want to change their IP. There are three types of PI-holders today a.f.a.i.k.: * The ones that just don't want to change IP-address and never use more than 1 ISP anyway. They don't have an AS number. * Same as above, but they have multiple lines to the ISP (redundancy). * Enterprises with "real" need of multi-homing having multiple uplinks to multiple ISPs and their own AS number. Couldn't the companies that _need_ PI multi-homing for redundancy reasons, these enterprises, create an ISP and get their "multi-homing" there instead? Can't be too hard filling in a ltd. application. I wouldn't be surprised if several enterprises have done it that way already. Since the stocks are owned by the enterprise (and perhaps a few others), being afraid of so-called bankruptcy is void. At least it is easier than getting IPv6 PI today. I believe the issue with keeping your IP-address when changing ISP is another problem. First of all, it is bad network setup to have such a requirement but there is a long way to avoid this with some of todays technology. Secondly, everybody should be able to keep their IP-address if they want (DNS is obviously not good enough). Not just PI-holders. j -----Original Message----- From: address-policy-wg-admin@ripe.net [mailto:address-policy-wg-admin@ripe.net] On Behalf Of Roger Jorgensen Sent: 22. april 2006 12:34 To: Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com Cc: address-policy-wg@ripe.net Subject: Re: [address-policy-wg] Just say *NO* to PI space -- or how to make it lessdestructive On Fri, 21 Apr 2006 Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote: great idea, finaly others that also have thought baout it... however, yeah it's a great change of the way Internet are and exist, and work... but it's doable. Guess the ISP just hate the idea tho... <snip>
Now that is a very interesting suggestion. If you assume that multiple peering points in a single city have rich and cheap interconnection, you could extend this idea to one prefix per city with a population greater than 100,000. There are about 5000 such cities in the world so we are talking about 5000 prefixes. Of course, each of these cities serves a larger surrounding area with various services and such services often reach across national borders. For instance, the inhabitants of Kehl and Offenburg in Germany are likely to use services in Strasbourg, France such as the Opera du Rhin, shopping, etc.
If you consider these large cities as centres of gravity for the surrounding area, then these 5000 cities cover almost all of the populated surface of the Earth. What could we do with 5000 such routes in the global routing table?
Well, for one thing, we could offer an almost unlimited number of PI IPv6 address blocks to ever business or organization that feels the need to multihome in order to secure the separacy plus resiliency that need in their network connections. All of those PI blocks would be invisible in 4999 of the world's cities because those cities will only see the single city prefix. We then have solved the routing table scaling problem by dividing and conquering. There still could be some localised issues in some cities, but it is much simpler for a group of local ISPs to sort out a local issue than it is for everybody in the world to agree on the one true routing solution.
The best part of this solution is that it requires no protocol changes, no new code in routers, and works with all existing IPv6 technology. It can be implemented entirely by changing RIR allocation rules, and ISP business practices. This is not a "flag day" situation either. There is no need to stop issuing and using provider aggregatable addresses. These new geo-topo aggregatable addresses can coexist in the same network. Some ISPs will choose to only assign one kind of addresses, either classic PA or new geo-topo addresses. Others will use both and use the newer ones to provide new services.
The only area where business practices needs to change is inside a single city aggregate where the ISPs inside that aggregate have to agree on how to exchange traffic and how to deal with the hot-potato nature of geo-topo routing. Each city is free to come up with its own variation on this as long as they do not deaggregate the city aggregate address block outside of bilateral peering agreements. In other words, ISPs in London will see only a single route to all of the geo-topo space in Paris unless they have specific bilateral agreements with Paris ISPs.
Remember we have reserved 7/8ths of the IPv6 address space in order to be able to implement these types of new addressing schemes. The main problem to be solved in order to deploy this, other than general agreement on the scheme, is how to size each of the 5000 city aggregate blocks. Geographers and economists would likely find this easy work, but we have to make contact with them, explain the problem, and ask for their analyses.
Won't take long until the first ISPs fall. And then more and more will have to. There is no strong community, apart from those customers with lots-o-money.
Most businesses only survive and thrive because they serve their customers well. Any ISP that expects to have a strong future must understand the needs of their customer base and then organize their company resources to serve those customers. This means that ISPs who see this as a battle of the PROVIDERS (with PA addresses) against the END USERS (with subnets assigned from PA blocks) are doomed. Providers have to look at this problem from the end user point of view and then find some solution that meets the end user needs while at the same time offering the ability for the provider to continue providing valuable services.
In general, as you point out, these situations are like a steamroller and end user demand will win out in the end. However, we can avoid a period of chaos and instability if the providers take the lead and manage an orderly transition to the new network order.
--Michael Dillon
-- ------------------------------ Roger Jorgensen | roger@jorgensen.no | - IPv6 is The Key! -------------------------------------------------------