Sprint kept the filters on for years afterwards. It may have taken
the clueless salespeople a few years, but they eventually did figure out
how to recite the magic words "buy your circuit from sprint and you
won't have problems with filters" was a way to win a sale.
"Thank you even more clueless competitors."
And who could forget the popular "Don't buy a circuit from small ISP, because
they won't be able to get past the Internet filters." I went through
a half-dozen Sprint sales people in different parts of the country,
and by 1996 or so they all had the spiel down pat.
Wouldn't it have been easier for small ISP to just aggregate?
I mean, /19s got through after all!
The ONLY reason this became a competitive advantage for Sprint
was because it's COMPETITORS didn't have the brains to impose
a similar filter.
Honestly, nobody anticipated they'd be so stupid, but good luck
is good luck....
>> And who could forget the popular "Don't buy a circuit from small ISP, because
>> they won't be able to get past the Internet filters." I went through
>> a half-dozen Sprint sales people in different parts of the country,
>> and by 1996 or so they all had the spiel down pat.
>
>Wouldn't it have been easier for small ISP to just aggregate?
>I mean, /19s got through after all!
No, it would not have helped. Assume the prospective customer has a link to UUNET and a /24, but wants a second link for [insert reason]. He now goes to SmallISP.com and asks for info on getting a second T1. Then the Sprint sales guy calls him and mentions that IF AND ONLY IF he buys a line from Sprint, will Sprint hear his /24.
Of course, even if his line to UUNET is down, UUNET is still announcing the larger CIDR, which is heard by Sprint, and UUNET re-route any traffic destined for that /24 to SmallISP.com. But that is lost on this prospective customer (if it was ever explained at all - which it definitely would not be from the Sprint sales guy). All he hears is that one of the largest networks in the world will not accept his announcement.
NOTE: I am not saying this is good or bad, simply saying that what you suggest would not be useful in this situation.
>The ONLY reason this became a competitive advantage for Sprint
>was because it's COMPETITORS didn't have the brains to impose
>a similar filter.
>
>Honestly, nobody anticipated they'd be so stupid, but good luck
>is good luck....
Or perhaps they realized this would hurt those prospective customers. Or perhaps any of a 100 other reasons.
"I realize that this is hard for you to wrap your brain around," but please believe there may actually be other people on the planet who have the brains to understand what they are doing and perhaps make a different decision than you made for a good reason.
As I mentioned, I applied the same filters on both inbound route
announcements which had a Sprint AS in the path, and outbound
route announcements.
Because I used consistent route announcements, inbound and outbound,
I never had a customer complaint.
The only people who complained were Sprint customers. They always
had the same story, but the filter's don't apply to us. We use
Sprint. Upon further investigation, they always found they didn't
need to announce those more specific routes. With a little extra
work, they figured out how to announce their registry allocated
block.
If Sprint had used a consistent route announcement policy, their
customers could have reduced their use of the global routing table
must sooner. And after all, wasn't that the reason why this would
"save the Internet?" Instead the policy seemed to be "save the
Internet, unless you pay Sprint extra then its all you can eat
night at the village commons."