Re: Cost per prefix [was: request for help w/ ATT and terminology]

["William Herrin" <herrin-nanog () dirtside com>]

On Jan 19, 2008 11:43 PM, Patrick W. Gilmore <patrick () ianai net> wrote:
> On Jan 19, 2008, at 12:55 PM, William Herrin wrote:
> > There was some related work on ARIN PPML last year. The rough numbers
> > suggested that the attributable economic cost of one IPv4 prefix in
> > the DFZ (whether PI, PA or TE) was then in the neighborhood of $8000
> > USD per year.
>
> I haven't seen that work, but I am guessing this number is an
> aggregate (i.e. every cost to everyone on the 'Net combined), not per-
> network? See, I'm just looking at that TWO BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR
> number and thinking to myself, "um, yeah, right". :)

Patrick,

That was a worldwide total, yes. The cost per prefix per router is
obviously only measured in cents per year.

You do know that Cisco's sales are north of $20B per year, right?
Juniper, which sells few products that aren't DFZ routers, also posts
annual revenues well north of $1B.


> Feel free to explain how confused I am.  (But be warned, I am not
> going to believe it costs $2B/year to run a multi-homed network with
> two full feeds. :)

The thread started here:
http://lists.arin.net/pipermail/ppml/2007-September/008927.html
It was originally an argument of about the cost of doing PI for IPv6,
which according to Cisco product literature consumes twice the amount
of space in the FIB as routes for IPv4.

I encourage you to critique the numbers and then add them up for yourself.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William D. Herrin                  herrin () dirtside com  bill () herrin us
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