Subject: Re: BCP for multisite multihoming

From: "Carlos Garcia Braschi" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 13:17:54 +0100

2007/5/23, Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>:
> On 2007-05-23 03:28, Sascha Lenz wrote:
> ...
> > ...even with arguments, you most likely won't get the people who DO
> > filter on RIR boundaries to lower them.
> > Just not possible, they are stubborn and not open to arguments ;-)
>
> They are open to arguments accompanied by large amounts of money,
> This is a business issue, not a technical or religious issue.
> When there are financial incentives to relax the filters, it will
> happen.
>
> BTW the same is true of geographic addressing - as Iljitsch
> says, it isn't hard technically. What has been lacking for the
> last 15 years is a financial incentive.
>

I'm not sure if this has been proposed already, but what if we did
geographic addressing but assigned the addresses to
interconnect/peering points? (requiring that they be used to cover the
region the IX is in, and that among all the peering partners manage to
exchange locally the un-aggregated routing tables).

Those would act as LIR / RIR for all ISPs connected to them and would
have incentive to promote the idea... as it promotes fidelity of their
peering customers and gives them more service.

It also allows the model to be applied in a more step-by-step fashion
(there is no need to agree on that model worldwide).

Any IX listening would like the idea?

>     Brian

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2007 18:09:48 +0200

> peering customers and gives them more service.

What is the financial incentive on the various actors that will
make this happen?

     Brian

---

From: David Conrad <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2007 13:40:47 -0500

On Jul 22, 2007, at 1:37 PM, Nick Hilliard wrote:
> Can we agree to consign the idea of geographic addressing to the  
> scrap heap
> where it belongs, please?

Apparently not.

Rgds,
-drc

---

From: "Carlos Garcia Braschi" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:23:39 +0100

I don't know, I still think the idea could work... In IPv6 we could
afford to do that only for multihoming customers... and it would be
somehow better than current multihoming practice.

But yes, the financial incentive is small, although multihoming
customers are usually some of the better customers. And customers get
to keep their addresses as long as they keep being "near" the IX.

2007/7/21, Roger Jorgensen <[email-masked]>:
> On Fri, 20 Jul 2007, Carlos Garcia Braschi wrote:
> <snip>
> if anyone look into geo-addressing it would maybe not be the best to
> locate it around IXes. It is the setup we know best right now but what
> about thinking about further down the road? let the "tax-authorizies" or
> something similar in the countries/region do the work or something?
>

The basic point of the idea is that the address assignment is
associated to the point where the routing and de-aggregated routes are
exchanged, and multihoming transit peerings are made. Other
authorities in the region that do not do routing exchanges can't do
the work as efficiently.

> what I mean, it would be just simple to just let the IX do it (if they
> want to), but maybe it would be better to consider it in a bigger scope
> and some years down the line? Maybe IX would be the first out of many step
> towards geo-addressing...
>

Maybe. I think it would be a compromise between global hierarchical
geographical addressing and Internet decentralization (that today is
also based a lot in the IXs).

2007/7/21, John Payne <[email-masked]>:
> On Jul 21, 2007, at 10:30 AM, Roger Jorgensen <[email-masked]>
> wrote:
>
>
> Geo addressing sounds interesting on the surface, but every proposal
> seems to require a new economic model. I find it difficult to believe
> that will happen anytime soon.
>
I don't know, why wouldn't it work with the current peering model?

> The other problem with using IXs that immediately comes to mind is
> that you are essentially multihoming to a single piece of
> infrastructure. Not really resilient in my mind :)
>
I think that this only causes problems if all your multihoming
providers get disconnected from the IX...

At the level of traffic that they handle now, if a whole IX is brought
down, there will be a major disruption on your traffic anyway because
the international transit of your providers will not be able to cope
with all the new traffic.

And in many cases, most of the IXs do in fact have quite resilient
infrastructures (with even geographically redundant locations).

> What is the financial incentive on the various actors that will

IX have more work to do and they can charge a little bit more. They
get a more optimized local routing, so they get more traffic.

The other actors still have the same incentive as the other
geographical addressing: more feasible multi-homing, which is not
much, but it's something...

2007/7/22, Nick Hilliard <[email-masked]>:
> On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 01:17:54PM +0100, Carlos Garcia Braschi wrote:
> Can we agree to consign the idea of geographic addressing to the scrap heap
> where it belongs, please?  It's not going to work, ever - and we need to
> stop pretending that it has any future.  It will work the day that the
> Internet (big "I") is operated as a strict tree structure, which is to say,
> never.
>

I think in that by anchoring the addresses to the IXs the internet
does not need to be operated as a tree structure, only in the same way
as today.

> Let's be clear here.  Why should a company operate its business using
> address space which is encumbered with shackles to other connectivity
> providers (IXPs, transit providers, etc)?  It makes no sense, because it
> deprives the company of the ability to make choices about their ability to
> route traffic on the Internet.  No sane business is going to put themselves

The reduction on choice has the advantage of more scalability of the
whole network and is more flexible than a purely geographical address
assignment. And allows customers better multihoming. Again, it could
be done only for multihoming addresses...

> in this position because this way lies monopolies, high prices and all the
> problems caused by lack of competition that we've historically seen.
>

There is already a monopoly on IPv4 and IPv6 addresses at the
wholesale level, with rather low prices.

> I have a better idea.  Instead of using IXPs who quite often have rules
> about not engaging in this sort of non IXP-related stuff, let's bring back
> the idea of the incumbent telco, and give them a monopoly on regional /
> national address space management.  And transit / connectivity too, because
> that's the only way to make geographic addressing really work.  And
> everything else.
>

Well, the main difference and advantage of IXPs is that they do not
provide transit, so do not have commercial interest in having a
transit traffic monopoly. And having them give the geographical
addresses does not prevent the addresses in private peerings, because
they do not have a monopoly on local peering.

But, if you are in an IX and are not convinced... can I have a second
opinion? :-)

> Is it now clearer why this is such a bad idea?
>
> Nick Hilliard
> --
> Network Ability Ltd. | Technical Operations    | Tel: +353 1 6169698
> 3 Westland Square    | INEX - Internet Neutral | Fax: +353 1 6041981
> Dublin 2, Ireland    | Exchange Association    | Email: [email-masked]
>

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 21:33:41 -0500

On 21-jul-2007, at 10:27, John Payne wrote:

> Geo addressing sounds interesting on the surface, but every  
> proposal seems to require a new economic model. I find it difficult  
> to believe that will happen anytime soon.

As the saying goes, there are many ways to skin a cat. If you hand  
over the packets with destinations in a certain region to an entity  
that handles that region, such as an internet exchange, then you're  
indeed using a different economical model than we use today.

But you can also do all the geo stuff in your own network. For  
instance, if you have a world wide network, you could split the world  
into 10 pieces and handle routing for each of those regions only  
within the region. The other regions then use an aggregate to get the  
packets to the right region. You would of course have to peer with  
other networks within these regions or break aggregation. But then,  
if you have a world wide network you're almost certainly peering in  
more than 10 places as it is anyway.

> infrastructure. Not really resilient in my mind :)

Exchanges are often layer 2 networks, which aren't very resilient.  
But money and engineering talent can fix these problems.

---

From: Roger Jorgensen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:58:12 +0200 (CEST)

On Tue, 24 Jul 2007, John Payne wrote:
> On Jul 23, 2007, at 10:33 PM, Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]> 
> wrote:
>
>>> Geo addressing sounds interesting on the surface, but every proposal seems 
>>> to require a new economic model. I find it difficult to believe that will 
>>> happen anytime soon.
>> 
>> As the saying goes, there are many ways to skin a cat. If you hand over the 
>> packets with destinations in a certain region to an entity that handles 
>> that region, such as an internet exchange, then you're indeed using a 
>> different economical model than we use today.
>> 
>> But you can also do all the geo stuff in your own network. For instance, if 
>> you have a world wide network, you could split the world into 10 pieces and 
>> handle routing for each of those regions only within the region. The other 
>> regions then use an aggregate to get the packets to the right region. You 
>> would of course have to peer with other networks within these regions or 
>> break aggregation. But then, if you have a world wide network you're almost 
>> certainly peering in more than 10 places as it is anyway.
>
> Yes... But I'm probably also very selective who I peer with at those 10 
> locations. Under the geo model, I have to pretty much peer with everyone, 
> everywhere.

think you missed that part that the netblock in use in that region can 
optional be aggretated to one prefix which you get from a "transit" 
provider for that region somehow...

there are no must, just use your imagination and stop getting stuck in the 
regular way of thinking of internet.

-- 

------------------------------
Roger Jorgensen              | - ROJO9-RIPE  - RJ85P-NORID
[email-masked]           | - IPv6 is The Key!
-------------------------------------------------------

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 09:10:27 -0500

On 22-jul-2007, at 13:37, Nick Hilliard wrote:

> stop pretending that it has any future.

Obviously geographic addressing will work just fine: if all else  
fails, just ignore the geographic component and use the addresses the  
same way as any other type. The question is whether the geographic  
component is going to buy us anything. The classic argument is that  
topology isn't aligned with geography so it doesn't. However, there  
are only so many sea cables and the world is a big place. Being able  
to ignore more specific routes from the other side of the globe seems  
like something that could come in handy to me.

> It will work the day that the

Sure, a tree with a single root would be great. But 7000 trees for  
7000 regions with 1 million inhabitants would still be a huge win.  
Within the region you can do flat routing.

---

From: "Carlos Garcia Braschi" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 18:37:45 +0100

2007/7/24, John Payne <[email-masked]>:
>
>
>
>
> On Jul 23, 2007, at 10:33 PM, Iljitsch van Beijnum
> <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> > instance, if you have a world wide network, you could split the
> > world into 10 pieces and handle routing for each of those regions
> > only within the region. The other regions then use an aggregate to
> > get the packets to the right region. You would of course have to
> > peer with other networks within these regions or break aggregation.
> > But then, if you have a world wide network you're almost certainly
> > peering in more than 10 places as it is anyway.
>
> Yes... But I'm probably also very selective who I peer with at those
> 10 locations. Under the geo model, I have to pretty much peer with
> everyone, everywhere.
>

Not everywhere. You only need to peer in an exchange if you have local
customers in that country, and you would peer anyway in that country
to provide them with local access.

And if you limit this model for multihoming customers, you only need
to peer with other operators that do have multihoming customers... and
you can try to trust the selectivity of your multihoming customers.

Or this can be started in those IXs that do have "peer with everyone"
policies... that does not usually mean that you peer gratis. The IX
only gives out multihoming addresses to participants that have secured
peering agreements with all the others. Bear in mind that smaller
players would have problems anyway to get fair peering deals

> Who's money?
IX costs are rather low anyway compared with international transit, so
it pays to have them resilient.