: when this situation has existed in other industries, gov't intervention
: has always resulted. even when the scope is international. i've not
: been able to puzzle out the reason why the world's gov'ts have not
: stepped in with some basic interconnection requirements for IP carriers.
Let's hope they don't decide to do that.
i won't take a position on this, other than that "dense peering, and high
path splay, are good for global internet performance and reliability".
wrt the basic likelihood, though, it comes down to the consumer ("citizen").
if the following are all true, then the world's gov'ts have usually acted:
1. availability of the service is fundamental to quality of life (& economy)
2. cost, availability, or reliability depend on competition (vs monopoly)
3. local economies will benefit more from competition than from monopoly
4. predatory or monopoly practices appear to be in effect
so, the reason i am puzzled is that while some of those could be argued by
some people, they _are_not_being_argued_about_. there's a blind eye here.
none of the following industries would be allowed the kind of "self regulation"
currently practiced in the IP carriage field: air travel, commercial fishing,
leased line telco, or switched voice telco. we're treated in a hands-off
fashion that absolutely boggles the mind.
Regarding Pauls' excellent comment.
During the buildout phase 1995 - 1999 I understand very well the reasons for no regulation of interconnection.
Successful growth was happening too fast for the Fed's to second guess by regulating interconnect the process of which would slow the build out down and do economic harm.
We are now halfway through 2002. the build out is complete and most of the builders are either in chapter 11 or in danger of going there. Does anyone believe that the non regulation arguments of the build out phase still hold? If so other than for reasons of blind ideology (all regulation by definition is bad), why?
All the TIER 1s (6 were mentioned in an earlier comment) are in SERIOUS economic trouble. Their IP networks certainly qualify as CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE. EBONE in a matter of days went from 'viable" to life support. After WorldCom's scandal this week does anyone REALLY think a similar UGLY surprise cannot happen here?
As PAUL points out, this is now an industry that is critical to keeping economic activity flowing smoothly, yet Washington is taking more and more of a hands off course.
Where is it possible to gain any reliable data on which networks are lit with what equipment and offering how many actual lambdas? Or even how many fibers in a given back bone are actually lit? We know there is huge unused capacity, yet because there are no reporting requirements as to what networks are lit to what capacity, we very likely don't know whether the fiber in the ground is being used to one per cent of its potential or 10% or even 20%. Moreover we do not know the extent to which optical bandwidth is growing? Not knowing this, how can anyone make any intelligent economic or policy or investment decisions? The LECs must tell the FCC numbers of lines in use and numbers of access minutes. The IP industry must tell the FCC essentially nothing. Why shoud such policy continue?
Does the borg still exist? do big players at least still share this data with each other?
Will Congress have to pass a law before the FCC can demand data?
as Vixie said:
"we're treated in a hands-off fashion that absolutely boggles the mind."
Paul Vixie said something important when he commented that
While I do assert the validity of concerns for the economic repercussions as
a result of laissez-fair 'Internet' practices, I don't believe the sky is
falling. There is enough economic strength to maintain the use we actually
get out of necessary pipes, and continued growth will, in do time, support
the expansion predicted in the mid to late '90s. Will the shortfall take
with it some undeserving companies, peoples, and ideas, yes, but that has
been the nature of every economic boom. Legitimate claims can be made that
abusive peering policies can be detrimental to the free trade of ideas and
commerce, and may lead to monopolies that dwarf the infamy of Standard Oil,
AT&T, Debeers... but what is the cost? A government mandated (censorship and
exclusion of anti-American 3rd world countries aside) policy at this point
will more quickly downward spiral the rapid growth all us geeks have
embraced. The only thing that will cushion the blow at this point is
continued, if not growing, consumer use; and, the US government--if no
private company steps up--may have to buy out some pipes to protect the DOD
and primary Intercontinental connections. Any intervention, or escalation of
involvement, by the FCC, for accountability and peering regulation, will
have to come after the dust settles, in the form of a free trade act aimed
at equal pricing for competitors. Have faith in the individual..
I realize this is off the page, so let me leave you with /rant.
--jeff
Oh, no. If anyone has illusions that politicos can somehow fix the
situation, he ought to do serious reality check. If anything, they made
that mess in the first place by creating ILEC monopolies and allowing
those supposedly regulated monopilists to strange the emerging last mile
broadband providers. With the obvious result of getting backbones to lose
the projected traffic and revenue streams.
(Of course, they were also very lax in policing conflicts of interest and
accounting practices).
The "serious economic trouble" means that some of those tier-1 providers
will go to chapter 11, and emerge with paid-for capacity and no crippling
debts (and with sane executives, too). At least 4 will survive; the
potential value of the remaining ones to their creditors will grow as
competitors die off.
--vadim
I'm certainly no expert on US telecom politics but, on a global scale Telecoms
companies always seems to be monopolies and ISPs arent.. and its not to do with
political policies
Most (all?) countries historically had an incumbent operator which at some time
in the last 20 years was deregulated .. the trouble is whichever entity gets to
own the wires in a region has a total advantage over the competitors and always
comes out on top.
By contrast ISPs started in pockets and grew out, eventually overlapping and
setting up good levels of competition. The traffic profiles are very different
too, most phone calls stay inside the region whereas most IP traffic goes
outside the region, (country, continent..) which changes the dynamics of the
business and makes for an equal field of play.
The two worlds obviously meet where the ISP wants to use last mile
infrastructure and then you're back to the telecoms monopoly to provide that.
Regulation doesnt have to be like it is for telecoms, it would need to suit the
specific problems of the ISP industry and shouldnt need to be over imposing, it
wouldnt be a bad idea at all.... but it worries me that a handful of "tier
1" companies seem to dominate and they all share similar anti-smaller-isp
policies and any regulation would need to make sure it benefited all the
providers and not just the big ones.
Steve
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 11:09:53 +0100 (BST)
From: Stephen J. Wilcox
Most (all?) countries historically had an incumbent operator
which at some time in the last 20 years was deregulated..
the trouble is whichever entity gets to own the wires in a
region has a total advantage over the competitors and always
comes out on top.
IMHO, municipal fiber is an interesting approach.
"municipal fiber" site:.canarie.ca
on Google is a good start...
Eddy
i just want to clarify that...
Oh, no. If anyone has illusions that politicos can somehow fix the
situation, he ought to do serious reality check. ...
...while my name does appear in the Subject: header, i have no illusions
that the world's gov'ts can do a better job on peering architecture than
is being done now. when i added my comments to the parent thread, i only
meant to indicate my surprise that such isn't being tried -- NOT any
disappointment.
Can any one tell me if the last byte of a point to
point or loopback ipaddress with 32 bit mask can be 0
or 255?
For e.g.:
Is 10.1.1.0/32 a valid interace address?
% host core3.sfrn.ca
core3.sfrn.ca.rcn.net has address 208.59.222.0
Been up and running fine for the past 11 months, happy loopback
in ISIS/iBGP/EBGP converstions. The largest hurdle was getting the
knuckle-draggers to not be confused or believe it an error.
I would have to ask why you would think it would NOT be valid? If
there is a vendor implementation that has probelems with it, that
would be a bug, and I would consider it one for anyhting past 1994
vintage code.
Cheers,
Joe
Date: Mon, 1 Jul 2002 07:53:32 -0700 (PDT)
From: JothirLatha Jaganathan
Can any one tell me if the last byte of a point to
point or loopback ipaddress with 32 bit mask can be 0
or 255?
For e.g.:
Is 10.1.1.0/32 a valid interace address?
You sort of answered your own question. If the subnet length is
32, everything is network address. What makes a network ending
in several 0 bits special?
Eddy
Air Travel: Limited resources (gates), public safety issues, public
infrastructure used (ATC system).
Commercial Fishing: Limited resources, environmental issues
Conventional Telco: Pre-existing monopoly using what was essentially public
ifrastructure. Same goes for Cable TV.
How do IP networks fall into any of these categories? It's not like we are
going to overfish our BGP sessions or crash routers into things.
- Daniel Golding
Thanks to all of you for your kind reply.