Some very valid points Paul, thanks for that. I'm probably being a little guilty of focusing on the verticals that I mostly work in with regard to the competitive element so yes I agree a moot point at this stage - I have no interest in the residential market, and with the way we deliver services (which I won't go into), we can compete with the big players, and in fact we do offer services that are currently unavailable on the mass market.
Yes, IPv4 acquisition does indeed need to be factored in, but if there are none left or they become so scarce the price skyrockets then the startups and small ISPs will struggle to survive and grow. I am doing everything I can with the new network I am building to ensure we can do as much IPv6 only services as possible to mitigate the paragraph above as I believe that will happen. Paul On Tue, 26 May 2020 at 15:44, Paul Thornton <[email protected]> wrote: > On 26/05/2020 14:39, Paul Bone wrote: > > > > > ISP A, for example, started up 2-3 years ago and received their /22 > > from RIPE but now, through growth they need more to service new > > customers. They now have to pay a lot of money (in relative terms) to > > obtain more IPv4 addresses. To pay for these IP addresses, ISP A needs > > to either increase service prices or charge a significant amount for > > each IPv4 address. > > > > ISP B is just starting out and has to pay RIPE fees and get on a > > waiting list for a /24. All the while being unable to provide IPv4 > > services. > > > > Whereas large ISPs C, D and E, with their stock pile of IPv4 addresses > > don't really care as it does not affect them, and can continue to > > charge the same for the service and competition is then affected. > > (Assumption made here) > > The reality for ISPs A and B is that acquisition of IPv4 addresses needs > to be in their business plan as a cost from day one. There is no way > around this, and arguments about fairness, whilst understandable, are > not going to change that. C, D and E are not, in any way shape or form, > going to start redistributing unused addresses to A and B. > > The argument about competition is also somewhat moot - the big providers > can offer a cheaper service by virtue of scale to a degree, and also by > bundling everything together in a convenient £29.99 a month package and > using attractive offers. A small broadband provider is likely not able > to make that fly - so they have to have other value to attract > customers, and not solely compete on price. Yes, that's a big ask if > you're trying to target the mass Internet access market but if you have > other USPs going for you then the relative small increase in cost is > tolerable. If we assume that you don't want CGN (a wholly sane position > to take in terms of initial cost and support woe), lets, for the sake of > making the maths easy, assume that an IPv4 address costs £24 today. If > you cost that at £1 a month per connection, you've amortized that over 2 > years which is the default contract length for most consumer access > products these days. You've lowered your margin on the whole deal by > £24, but you still have the IP address in month 25 and it is now paid > for. Now of course, you can't buy them piecemeal like this but worst > case, buying a /24 at a time, you're looking at just over £6k. In the > running costs of even a smaller ISP, £6k isn't going to break the bank > (or if it is, one could argue that the business has other worries). > > I've been involved in two ISP startups in the past year - one access and > one predominantly hosting - where IPv4 acquisition costs have just been > factored in as a cost of doing business on the Internet - much like > rackspace, routers, connectivity and everything else. In comparitive > terms, the cost of IPv4 addresses have been one of the larger things to > consider but not something that stopped either being viable. It would > indeed be nice to rewind a decade when we could just say "Hey RIPE, > we've filled up this /19, can we have another one" but that ship has > sailed, docked at several other ports, and is now well on its way > elsewhere. > > Your ISP B is doomed to failure if it is sitting waiting for a returned > v4 address allocation from RIPE, unable to offer service: And that's > essentially a business planning/investment failure not an IPv4 scarcity > failure. > > Think about it this way. Some of the most valuable spots of prime > London real-estate were, back in the late 1940s, derilict bomb sites. > The people who purchased those for pennies and held onto them have seen > their investment value soar. If I'm just entering the property business > in 2020 should I be complaining that I need to charge my tenants a > higher rent than my neighbours because they bought their freehold when > it was a fraction of the cost and own it outright, whereas mine was > expensive and is mortgaged up to the hilt? It fails your fairness test, > but it is just how it is. > > IPv6 is, to some extent, still currently a technical solution for an > economics / business problem - as others have said, the only point at > which v6 will be used in anger is when it is cheaper for large > organisations to do that over sticking with v4. As Per said, the > majority of customers really don't give two hoots what underlying > protocol they are using to reach Facebook - to them it is "the wifi" and > the actual mechanisms are irrelevant. Likewise, any large enterprise > customer is proabably very happy using RFC1918 space internally, > understands enough about routing to make that work between sites, and > don't have a need for IPv6. They are not techies on ukno[tf] - they > will have real work to do, and an employer who won't see the value in > converting the entire corporate network to IPv6 because that's the > latest Intenet addressing protocol. Now some places, if faced with some > major reworking, are indeed adding v6 into their new architecture and > that makes a lot of sense; but these still seem to be the minority. > Most enterprise IT/networking people I know get confused when they open > cmd.exe on their corporate Windows PC and type 'ping bigserver' and see > it using V6 addresses (for sufficiently simple network layouts). > Wearing my consultancy hat, across all of the non-ISP customers I deal > with, only one place stands out as being keen to deploy IPv6 and having > it live on their network. > > I don't think there is an easy solution to any of this - ISPs need to > make sure that we offer a good dual-stack solutions to customers so that > when they do want to dabble with v6, or send it live in production, it > works well and they percieve it as a robust and mature protocol. Yes, I > know it is - but if J Random customer enables it to test and it doesn't > work properly, then that customer will turn it off and forget about it > for the next 5 years. > > Paul. > > > > > > > -- Paul Bone Network Consultant PMB Technology
