Re: request for help w/ ATT and terminology

[Andy Davidson <andy () nosignal org>]

On 17 Jan 2008, at 12:45, Jeff McAdams wrote:

> Tony Li wrote:
> > On Jan 16, 2008, at 1:37 PM, Mike Donahue wrote:
> > > Anyway, it's all getting (for us) pretty complicated.   We're a  
> > > fairly small firm and just want an Ethernet handoff with our IP  
> > > block on it. Sprint didn't blink at the request, but AT&T...   
> > > We're getting a good rate from AT&T for the IP services because  
> > > it's at their colo. Switching back to Sprint would definitely be  
> > > more costly.
> > Please renumber into an AT&T prefix.
> Yeah, because that's what's best for everyone else in the world  
> *except* him. I understand the desire to keep from exploding the  
> routing tables, but
> come on.  You big ISP folks need to remember that you exist to  
> provide service to customers.

Jeff,

Respectfully, do you see anyone from the big ISPs posting to NANOG  
complaining about the impact of the routing table size in their  
DFZ ?  The big ISPs (e.g. many of them at the top of the 'Aggregation  
Summary' of the CIDR report) can probably afford the routing table to  
be twice the size (perhaps, if they're really big, their igp is  
already carrying twice as many routes ... ?)

It's the multihomed enterprises, hosting companies, and smaller  
regional isps who today take advantage of having the full routing  
table to use, but soon might not be able to afford to, when companies  
like the OP don't renumber into their new ISP's space when they  
decide to change provider.

There's some debate in RIPE land right now that discusses, "what  
actually is the automatic, free, right to PI" ?   Every other network  
in the world pays the cost when someone single homes but wants their / 
24 prefix on everyone else's router.  If one had to pay a registry  
for PI, then small networks would have to think about the negative  
externalities of their decision to deploy using PI.


Best wishes,
Andy