Subject: RE: [RRG] Renumbering...

From: "Tony Li" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:06:05 -0700

Hi Eric,

|I concur that this is a very complex issue. However, the ISP always has
|the liberty to try to pass on their costs to their customers and the
|customer has the liberty to do business with whichever ISP offers the
|best deal. Because of this, I would be very surprised if all customers
|pay the same rates for the same services -- such pricing models rarely
|make good business sense. "Volume discounts", "preferred customer
|discounts", etc. are the reason that I expect large end user's PI
|addresses to always be supported by ISPs.

Which implies that there will always be a swamp.  Further, since ISP's sales
departments are always going to be competitive, they will (continue to)
accept everyone's PI's, leading us back to the point where the routing
subsystem will fail to scale, ISP's margins fail, and prices go up across
the board.  

|I view Internet scaling to primarily be an ISP problem because it
|directly impacts the ISPs' business -- unless they choose to also make
|it also become an end user problem, which would have direct business
|repercussions with their customers (i.e., the alternative we have been
|exploring together). 

My point is that it will become an end-user problem in the long run,
regardless.

|It seems logical that if aggregating addresses actually has direct and
|qualifiable costs to ISPs, their market will react to widespread PI
|usage somehow. Perhaps the reaction would cause the larger ISPs to
|become even more dominant than they currently are? If that results in
|reducing end user choices, then that will probably drive end users to a
|more technical response such as those you indicate above. 

Do you suppose that that might involve renumbering?  Or would the obvious
pain (increasing prices) have to exceed the tactical pain of the renumbering
operation?

|Whatever happens, the ISPs will need to carefully consider 
|their pricing
|models to their largest customers. It should not be lost on them that
|slightly more than a decade ago large end users switched from having
|their own private industry association networks to using ISP services.
|Consequently, it is quite possible for large end users to again
|re-deploy private industry association networks if their business cases
|should indicate that doing so is a preferable alternative. This is
|definitely not an all or nothing situation -- important related issues
|include end user voice, video and data convergence; Telco/ISP
|convergence; Wired vs. 3GPP Cellular vs. WiFi vs. WLAN hotspots; etc.
|Telecommunications is currently undergoing many different sea changes.
|
|My key point is that these are not solely technical issues. Business
|cases will hopefully drive whatever businesses do. Relationships can be
|complex and today's models are not the only alternatives. 

I hear you, but to me it still sounds like you'll end up burning your
suppliers, and that somehow just doesn't seem like a sound strategy.

Tony

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