NSP ... New Information

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

Should InterNIC grant small ISPs (this one serves a rural area between
Dallas and Oklahoma City) fully routable and portable IP space?

Larry Vaden, founder and CEO help-desk 903-813-4500

A long time ago, a group asked the same question. The answer turned
out to be that the Internic, not being an ISP, has no clue about the
routability of -any- prefix that is delegated. No delegation registry
can ensure the routability of any given prefix.

Thngs may have changed, can you describe to me what you consider
a "fully routable and portable IP space" might look like and
how such conditions might be enforced?

2

Bill,

I feel you could provide a better definition, but what others tell me is
that CIDR blocks with prefixes longer than /19 are fully routable if they
are in the 192/8--205/8 range (a regurgitation of Sprint el al's routing
policy?).

What is your definition of "fully routable"?

What is your definition of "portable"?

What is the role of "legacy" equipment, if any, in such matters?

Are the larger players concerned that the smaller players don't have
"certified" BGP configurations?

I appreciate your input and that of others as well.

Regards,

Larry Vaden, founder and CEO help-desk 903-813-4500
Internet Texoma, Inc. <http://www.texoma.net> direct 903-870-0365
bringing the real Internet to rural Texomaland fax 903-868-8551
Member ISP/C, TISPA and USIPA pager 903-867-6571

3

Thngs may have changed, can you describe to me what you consider
a "fully routable and portable IP space" might look like and
how such conditions might be enforced?

Hmmm...the InterNIC appears to have a definition for "fully routable".
Maybe we should ask them?

-=- BEGIN EXCERPT -=-

[...]

Sorry, Sprint isn't the only one with filters. You don't
justify a /19. Less than that would not be fully routable
                                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ [emphasis added]
and we won't issue it.

[...]
-=- END EXCERPT -=-

pbd

4

I think a better question to ask is whether Sprint and others who are
filtering out routes, forcing the issue of getting /19 blocks or not
getting portable space at all, are being Anti-competitive in the sense of
the Sherman Anti-trust act. By their actions the large network providers
are essentially limiting the ability of many small to mid-sized ISP
businesses from being able to compete in offering high-reliability (i.e.
multihomed) services to their customers.

This could be seen as an effort to limit the number of ISP vendors to the
big, national folks, and those who have existed long enough to have their
own resources (independent address space).

Folks have said the InterNIC, not being an ISP, is not in a position to
understand this issue, and that makes sense. The large ISPs are concerned
about the size of routing tables in their routers, and that is certainly a
reason to be concerned about having smaller independent address blocks. The
problem of large routing tables can be solved by making routers that
support more memory and/or routers that use their memory more efficiently.

Dan

The thoughts expressed here are my own ramblings and do not in any way
reflect any position, policy or opinion of my employer.

5

I think a better question to ask is whether Sprint and others who are
filtering out routes, forcing the issue of getting /19 blocks or not
getting portable space at all, are being Anti-competitive in the sense of
the Sherman Anti-trust act.

Indeed, a good question. Should you care to read the archives <gasp!>,
you'll find that the answer is no. Folk are trying to keep core routers
from falling over.

And, to answer one of the next questions expected by students of history,
no, they are not obliged to buy more or other (unreliable) hardware for
their backbones so that you (or whomever) can be in business.

The one sure thing on the net is that the newbie influx is sufficient to
keep the majority of mailing list traffic repeating itself.

randy

6

The of the routing table getting larger will never be fixed by "build the
bigger machine" theory. It doesn't matter if you have a router that has 1
Gig of memory and has the fastest processor in it.. the time it takes to
parse the memory for a route is always going to be the limiting factor.

Aggregation is a good start, that is why Sprint is filtering and people
like ANS are implementing policy routing.

The problem is that the IP space was never designed to be used like it
is now.

One of the biggest problem with people wasting address space is the fact
that a lot of people out there don't know how to subnet.

Eric

7

Folk are trying to keep core routers
from falling over.

Probably like you, I've been in the Information Technology field for about
30 years this fall, but I've never seen fear nor protectionism used as a
basis for policy in Information Technology before and it is certainly
disconcerting to see it used this early in the life cycle of the Internet.
Good press for creating a "scarcity" scenario, but bad practice IMHO.

To repeat an earlier unanswered question, what and whose legacy hardware
and software is causing the problem?

And, to answer one of the next questions expected by students of history,
no, they are not obliged to buy more or other (unreliable) hardware for
their backbones so that you (or whomever) can be in business.

I certainly agree with part of your statement, but don't feel the
incumbents should be able to prevent new firms from competing through
unfair practices. One would normally prefer to allow market forces to set
the rewards for those who won't upgrade.

The one sure thing on the net is that the newbie influx is sufficient to
keep the majority of mailing list traffic repeating itself.

Last year's answers to last year's problems are not necessarily the best
answers to this year's problems given the current high rate of change.

Larry Vaden, founder and CEO help-desk 903-813-4500
Internet Texoma, Inc. <http://www.texoma.net> direct 903-870-0365
bringing the real Internet to rural Texomaland fax 903-868-8551
Member ISP/C, TISPA and USIPA pager 903-867-6571

8

One of the newbies (Livingston) has BGP in alpha using < 8MB for a full
view and a 486 processor without stress. While this won't make a core
router, it seems to offer something to consider, even learn from.

One of my projects 25 years ago was to reduce the time to calculate the
square root on a Seymour Cray machine by a factor of 20 to avoid spending
$8 million on a second machine. The revised square root code performed in
about the same time scale as the machine's hardware divide function. The
clue came from one of the national laboratories and was published in
Nuclear Science Abstracts. It took about 6 weeks to do the code and 18
months for the solution to be politically accepted. The original vendor
does not always produce sacrosanct stuff.

We just went through the process of acquiring our first significant router;
one of our main concerns was a router which would allow school districts,
libraries and hospitals to benefit from Texas HB2128, which offers distance
insensitive T1s and DS3s and was co-authored by our telecomm lobbyist, W.
Scott McCollough in Austin.

I was somewhat dismayed at the memory limitations of current stuff compared
to what I was hearing about the memory requirements. Jonah has more memory
on his texas.net usenet news server than you can put on many core routers.

Is there anyone working on alternative implementations of software which
could possibly solve some of the problems using extant hardware?

Will IP multicast help with the usenet stuff?

Do we want to continue seeing cams at universities display the local tower
while the institution doesn't meet RFC2050 guidelines with respect to
utilization of their Class B while the rural areas can't get /19s to
support diversity and redundancy?

Does Congress need to pass "must carry" legislation similar to the "any
willing provider" medical legislation? IMHO, it would be better that some
old dogmas and implementations die and be replaced with efficient, robust
code and a rather less limiting view of the future.

Larry Vaden, founder and CEO help-desk 903-813-4500
Internet Texoma, Inc. <http://www.texoma.net> direct 903-870-0365
bringing the real Internet to rural Texomaland fax 903-868-8551
Member ISP/C, TISPA and USIPA pager 903-867-6571

9

One of the newbies (Livingston) has BGP in alpha using < 8MB for a full
view and a 486 processor without stress. While this won't make a core
router, it seems to offer something to consider, even learn from.

And what the heck has this got to do with real routing on [inter-]national
backbones? Please don't bother to answer.

One of my projects 25 years ago was to reduce the time to calculate the
square root on a Seymour Cray machine by a factor of 20 to avoid spending
$8 million on a second machine. The revised square root code performed in
about the same time scale as the machine's hardware divide function. The
clue came from one of the national laboratories and was published in
Nuclear Science Abstracts. It took about 6 weeks to do the code and 18
months for the solution to be politically accepted. The original vendor
does not always produce sacrosanct stuff.

We await your router product, but not while holding our breaths.

This is the network *operator* list, not a science fiction club.

Larry, your agenda is obvious and you are in a long line of folk playing
this sad game. We all wish otherwise, but the fact of the matter is that
it does not work. Sorry.

Can we get back to work now?

randy

10

For the record, my agenda is working to provide equal access to the
Internet on a level playing field for rural north Texas, including the
public, K12, libraries as well as hospitals. This is not science fiction,
although it might make a good nightmare for some if pushed to scale.

The "how to do without a /19" question remains unanswered. Once again, I
ask you to point to extant URLs which you refer to that offer a solution
offering diversity and redundancy other than a fully routable and portable
/19.

I thank you in advance for doing so and appreciate your time and that of
others.

Larry Vaden, founder and CEO help-desk 903-813-4500
Internet Texoma, Inc. <http://www.texoma.net> direct 903-870-0365
bringing the real Internet to rural Texomaland fax 903-868-8551
Member ISP/C, TISPA and USIPA pager 903-867-6571

11

The "how to do without a /19" question remains unanswered.

No. You just don't like the answer. Get space from upstream like every
other small provider does until they have sufficient track record to warrant
their own space.

Been there. Done that. What I did not do was bother everybody else in the
world with whining.

randy

12

The "how to do without a /19" question remains unanswered.

No. You just don't like the answer. Get space from upstream like every
other small provider does until they have sufficient track record to warrant
their own space.

Been there. Done that. What I did not do was bother everybody else in the
world with whining.

randy

Are you saying that a /19 wouldn't put less load on the _system_ than the
current situation + another block?

Our /23 and /21 are from UUNET, our primary provider. ACSI is secondary
provider.

Teach me (read: offer your constructive criticism). I'm willing to learn.

<Picture: DIGEX>

MAE-East Looking Glass Results

Query: bgp
Addr: 205.229.106.0

BGP routing table entry for 205.229.106.0/23, version 4581638
Paths: (4 available, best #4)
6467 4963, (aggregated by 4963 206.222.100.182)
   165.117.1.122 (metric 28416) from 165.117.1.35 (165.117.1.122)
     Origin IGP, metric 2000000000, localpref 100, valid, internal,

atomic-aggregate

     Community: 2548:668
     Originator : 165.117.1.122, Cluster list: 165.117.1.35,

165.117.1.17, 165.117.1.122

1800 1239 4200 6467 4963, (aggregated by 4963 206.222.100.182)
   192.41.177.240 from 192.41.177.240 (198.67.131.49)
     Origin IGP, metric 6, valid, external, atomic-aggregate
     Community: 2548:668
1800 1239 4200 6467 4963, (aggregated by 4963 206.222.100.182),

(received-only)

   192.41.177.240 from 192.41.177.240 (198.67.131.49)
     Origin IGP, metric 6, valid, external, atomic-aggregate
6467 4963, (aggregated by 4963 206.222.100.182)
   192.41.177.108 from 165.117.1.122
     Origin IGP, localpref 100, weight 100, valid, internal,

atomic-aggregate, best

     Community: 2548:668
     Originator : 165.117.1.122, Cluster list: 165.117.1.122

<Picture: DIGEX>
MAE-East Looking Glass Results

Query: bgp
Addr: 206.65.112.0

BGP routing table entry for 206.65.112.0/21, version 4581941
Paths: (2 available, best #2)
6467 4963, (aggregated by 4963 206.222.100.182)
   165.117.1.122 (metric 28416) from 165.117.1.35 (165.117.1.122)
     Origin IGP, metric 2000000000, localpref 100, valid, internal,

atomic-aggregate

     Community: 2548:668
     Originator : 165.117.1.122, Cluster list: 165.117.1.35,

165.117.1.17, 165.117.1.122

6467 4963, (aggregated by 4963 206.222.100.182)
   192.41.177.108 from 165.117.1.122
     Origin IGP, localpref 100, weight 100, valid, internal,

atomic-aggregate, best

     Community: 2548:668
     Originator : 165.117.1.122, Cluster list: 165.117.1.122

Larry Vaden, founder and CEO help-desk 903-813-4500
Internet Texoma, Inc. <http://www.texoma.net> direct 903-870-0365
bringing the real Internet to rural Texomaland fax 903-868-8551
Member ISP/C, TISPA and USIPA pager 903-867-6571

13

Yakov,

Thanks for the constructive input. I'll try to locate the full URL and
we're interested in evaluating and following your suggestion.

Will this meet the InterNIC guidelines of "no favored connection"?

Regards,

Larry Vaden, founder and CEO help-desk 903-813-4500
Internet Texoma, Inc. <http://www.texoma.net> direct 903-870-0365
bringing the real Internet to rural Texomaland fax 903-868-8551
Member ISP/C, TISPA and USIPA pager 903-867-6571