Subject: [RRG] Re: ALT oeprational model

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:50:33 +0200

Tony,
> Well, unless there is some significant change, the ALT approach seemed to
> suggest that there would be a single mapping provider advertising a specific
> aggregate into the ALT topology.  Thus, I would assume that the aggregation
> would occur at the mapping provider.
>    

There are many possible approaches to explore.  For instance, one could 
cluster providers, for instance, in a *non-geographic* fashion and 
aggregate *above* them, much the same way that OpenSRS worked in the 
early days of the domain registrars.  This would be a huge selling point 
for an alliance.

We really don't know what sort of performance we need out of an ALT 
provider or of the ALT as a whole.  This to me is *also* an area of 
further research.  I think we can say with certainty that the volume of 
BGP messages will be lower than that of what there is today, but even 
here there is room for research.  For instance, when should peering be 
made and when should a route simply be announced from the provider 
without any direct contact from the subscriber?  What are the 
performance impacts and to whom?

>
> |Also, keep
> |in mind that the primary function of a mapping provider is to
> |provide a
> |stable EID prefix, so this sort of change should be extremely rare!!
>
>
> I suspect that the primary function of the mapping provider will be to be
> profitable.  ;-)

True enough!

>    As long as it remains a for-profit service, it would seem
> that it would create this issue and the size of the vendor lock created
> would be directly proportional to the pain of renumbering the site.  This
> suggests that the mapping provider could then raise rates so that they
> charged just slightly less than the cost of renumbering and could then milk
> the user base.
>    

As an Enterprise I would be *very* concerned about such a possibility, 
and would want to somehow future proof myself against it.  This is why 
something like the simple case I gave above will need to be explored and 
evolved.

Eliot

---

From: "Tony Li" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2008 01:08:15 -0700

We really don't know what sort of performance we need out of an ALT provider
or of the ALT as a whole.  This to me is also an area of further research.
I think we can say with certainty that the volume of BGP messages will be
lower than that of what there is today, but even here there is room for
research.  For instance, when should peering be made and when should a route
simply be announced from the provider without any direct contact from the
subscriber?  What are the performance impacts and to whom? 

I was under the impression from the presentations that I've seen that folks
had converged.   If it's still open, then I look forward to further updates.

Tony