Hi Jari, I hadn't considered the cost of equipment. I figure the ITRs are paid for, in general, by the ISPs where they are located - tunneling packets originating from the ISP's customers' hosts.
For an end-user who gains some of the new kind of address space provided by the ITR-ETR (AKA map&encap) system, the ETR(s) their traffic flows through would be owned and operated by the ISP(s) which they connect to the net with. ETRs are going to be pretty simple compared to ITRs - they don't need an FIB, a database or a feed of mapping data (or access to a query server, if they are caching ITRs). So the end-user doesn't need to purchase or run ITRs or ETRs in order to use the new kind of address space. Their network may well include ITRs - to ensure the tunneling work on outgoing packets is done locally and doesn't depend on anything upstream, which is shared by others. But that would be the case irrespective of whether the end-user's network uses the new kind of address space. It may well be that the new "micronet" type of address space doesn't cause many of the recent (say 5 years) new end-user networks with PI space to relinquish that space and use micronet space instead. In addition to these, hundred thousand or so "large" end-users there is surely a huge number (millions) of "smaller" end-users who want, arguably need, and are keen to pay for multihoming (and in many cases portability of addresses in the long-term between ISPs) - but who don't have the resources or sufficient "justification" to get PI space today. These end-users are unhappy and not able to use the Net as reliably as they need. Without the ITR-ETR scheme, these millions of smaller end-users generally have to do without multihoming, because they can't afford the entry costs, in terms of equipment (maybe), expertise (probably) and effort required to get PI space and to responsibly participate in the global BGP system. The current rate of growth in the number of advertised prefixes would continue - which is not what we want. With a good ITR-ETR scheme, some of the current "larger" type of end-users - those currently with PI space and those who would otherwise get it - would switch over to the new scheme. The major impact of the ITR-ETR scheme would be on the millions of "smaller" end-users, who would jump into micronet spaces and (with suitable economic incentives = costs) fine-tune the amount of address space they use and the number of micronets and mapping changes they make, so that the space is used efficiently and without excessive burden on the ITR system. The other thing is that, over time, as the number of PI prefixes and the changes to their advertisements becomes more and more of a pain, I think there is likely to be some kind of pressure to limit the number of end-user networks who use this. Now, the only way of doing this is to tell the end-user they can't multihome. But with a good ITR-ETR / map&encap scheme, they will have a perfectly good alternative. So I think there will be this additional form of pushback not long after the ITR-ETR scheme is up and running. As Tony wrote: > If we have an architecture in which being multi-homed is no > longer a sufficient justification for PI allocation, then we > can further raise this bar. > > Effectively, we should be able to drastically limit or even > eliminate PI allocations. Yes, I'm talking about making > fundamental changes to the allocation policies that we have today. > > We have to be taking the decision out of the hands of the > organization and giving them a workable alternative. If not, then > everyone ... Not "everyone" in terms of all the "small" end-users, but certainly enough end-users of various generally moderate to large sizes. > will simply continue to use PI addressing and the non-scalability > of the 'net is assured. Yes - the future of the Net depends on there being a good ITR-ETR / map&encap scheme ASAP. I think the timetable for the RRG is realistic - not too fast, but we to devise something which can be deployed around 2011 and widely adopted by 2013. I think that there won't be much trouble with ISPs providing ETRs. They shouldn't cost much - they will probably be implemented as software updates to existing routers. A software only system for standard Intel etc. PC-like servers would probably work well in some settings, assuming it could be robust enough. I think ITRs are going to be quite tricky. There could be software updates for existing routers, and some low to moderate volume software only systems which run on standard servers - and sit next to a currently installed router, advertising the prefix on IGP or BGP. Then there is the global query or push network - which is where the various ITR-ETR schemes differ the most. This will be challenging too. As long as there is a reasonably wide distribution of ITRs, enough to handle the traffic without too much stretch of the path lengths, then I think ETRs will be installed at many ISPs and the new micronet style of address space will be rapidly adopted. Initially most of it would go to the pent-up demand of the many "small" end-users who currently can't play the "RIR PI BGP justify /24 or more" game. Those who manage the MABs will presumably rent out the space as UABs (User Address Blocks) to end-users, charging according to the number of addresses in each UAB, the number of micronets the end-user configures this space into and the rate of mapping updates. I figure such MAB operators will probably be able to make money while financing their own global network of ITRs or participating in a shared, global system. Alternatively, they would pay one or more other ITR operating organisations to run ITRs all over the Net, catching packets from networks with no ITRs, so their address space was useful and therefore highly rentable. - Robin -- to unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word 'unsubscribe' in a single line as the message text body. archive: <http://psg.com/lists/rrg/> & ftp://psg.com/pub/lists/rrg
