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Is the Internet Shutting Out Independent Players?
"ISPs aren't advertizing routes for competing ISPs, and since IP blocks are heavily filtered upstream, this won't do much good anyway. The reasons for this are clear (Routing table growth was getting way out of hand), hence the introduction of CIDR ? , and the allocation of IPs to ISPs, with a resulting lockout on availability of routable IP space to individuals or smaller groups.
With the availabilty of IPv6, and the cost of RAM, I find it somewhat hard to believe that either IP address blocks are scarce, or that the size of routing tables are unmanageable any more. This might have been true with an 8MB Cisco 10 years ago, but surely it would be a negligible cost to put 1-2GB of RAM on even a reasonably budget router at todays prices.
Obviously, IPV6 isn't really here yet, but i would like to think that when (if) it arrives, we will see a more open routing system.
Is anybody working on returning some kind of equal standing to 'the little guys' when it comes to internet routing infrastructure, and how a more 'open' system could work in practice on tomorrow's (or today's) internet?"
An idea that I had been toying with was to buy 2 internet connections, say DSL and cable modem, then use NAT to use them both simultaniously. In a simple scenario, seems like it could be accomplished by picking up 2 of those cheap home gateways and setting up a non routeable network. Internally the machines would be set to use one of the gateways by default, if that connection went down you could switch to the other one. Externally multiple DNS records could be used to distribute the traffic among multiple ips, all of which point back at the non routable network.
Even though I concieved this idea for a low end home network, the basic idea should be applicable to a business that really wants a redundant connection. Just buy multiple connections from multiple sources, keep your machines in a non routeable network, then use some fancy equipment (a Cisco PIX for example) to make everything work. Bit of a kludge, but I think it's a viable solution.
yes, but I believe the solution rests with a layer on top of the internet - namely something like peer to peer systems of today where nodes can shift more easily, appear and disapear without hurting the overall network.
the real problem is with NAT (network address translation). How to two peers behind such a NAT firewall anounce their presence to each other and then communicate without the assistance of a 3rd peer with a proper IP address and place on the internet. if anyone knows the answer to this quiestion, I'd love to hear it!
really, how do you announce a service behind a firewall? that seems to be the question of the day.
WTF is it ? Solves all of these problems, increases security, increases reliability adds predictability to networking.
Its been trialed and used on long haul cables and backbones. Most decent OSes support it. IPv4 would still work over IPv6.
Isn't it time to flick the switch ?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Actually, funny enough, the Cisco c3660 does... Just gotta make sure they're parity :-)
:)
Quick, easy, dirt cheap way to add 256mb to those boxen
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I am a the network admin for a small school. We have a Cisco 2500 series router with a T1 interface and ISDN BRI. Using a "floating static" route, our 2500 series router dials out on the ISDN circuit if our T1 fails. This isn't really multi-homed since we are dialing into the same ISP and recieving the same IP block we usually get. It does, however, provide us with an emergency (slow) connection if our T1 goes down. The PIX 506 firewall provides NAT/PAT services. This setup works quite well.
-ted
Here's how we solved the multi-home problem despite CIDR. We wanted to make a web service (Citrix ALE) available over our T-1, or over our DSL (from a different provider) if the T-1 fails. The solution was to get a cheap Web hosting service that will use our (already registered) domain name to host a couple of static pages that point to our servers by IP address. One set of pages points to the address we got from the T-1 provider, the other points to the DSL address.
When Big Brother thinks the main connection is down, we ftp over the backup connection to the off-site web host, make the other set of pages the default, and our users now come in on the other circuit. We change the Alternate Address on the Citrix servers, and we're back in business.
-- Spring: Forces, coiled again!
Here's my solution:
- Get a box or a rack in a good datacenter with mutlihomed connections. (AT&T has datacenter all over the world)
- Get all the ips you need. It's way easier getting ips for your colo uses. They take care of routing through several network.
- Get 2 or more consumer grade connection to the internet
- Make ppp or vpn connections to the coloed boxes
- Route packets from coloed boxes to your local network
- Voila you got multi-homed local network for your business.
Now this waste some bandwith, but it sometimes can be cheaper this way. It's funny how a cable modem link, a adsl and a microwave link can be 10 time cheaper than a t1 and provide more bandwith and more reliability.
I just wanted to voice my support for MacOS X when it comes to multihoming. It automatically detects the fastest connection available from the different ones set up in the Network System Pref. This is great when an Airport (802.11b) network becomes available, or one of your providers goes down at any time. It will even trigger a dialup connection if the broadband goes down, or switch broadband providers if you're lucky enough to have several. This truly works very well, and for laptop owners, it's a crucial capability.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
IPv6 could allow easy access to multihoming. (Actually, IPv6 could actually solve a problem but doesn't do that either).
There are organizations (ARIN in North America) that handle IP alloations. Their policies have been created with one stated goal: keep the number of routes down so that routers don't blow up. With IPv6, they seem to be following the same policies.
How do you keep the number of routes low? You make it really hard to get IP addresses. That's what they do and they do it fairly well. Personally, I'm not convinced that keeping the number of routes down actually helps anyone. The routers that carry full routing tables are all large and expensive and if they don't have the capacity for much larger routing tables already then it's because the router manufacturers knew that the number of routes was being kept low.
IPv6 could change all this. With 128 bits of address, one could allow real multi-homing without making huge routing tables. This could be accomplished by splitting of multiple sections of the IP address as Service Provider IDs (SPID). An actuall address would the contain multiple SPIDs and an end user address. To have a full routing table, you would need routes to all the service providers and to all of your own customers. Just an idea.
Routers will not be upgraded to IPv6 until people are forced to. We want more IP addresses and the US government wants a secure (private) internet. To me the answer is for the US government to switch over to IPv6 because it is more secure. It would force the upgrades, and perhaps the US government would save some money and drop the idea of building their own private network for all their computers. This would get the process of the switchover started.
No need, most of the features provided by ISP multihoming can be provided by a linux box with balance http://sourceforge.net/projects/balance/
Here's an example of the kind of ridiculousness that results from some institutions having lots of IP addresses. I'm a student at MIT, which has all of net 18. I've been the network administrator for my fraternity for a couple years, which uses all of 18.216.xxx.xxx. That's right, we've got some 64k IP addresses, of which maybe 60 are assigned, and 40 actually point to a running computer. That means %99.9 are being wasted.
Arrr, it be the infamous pirate, No Beard Pete!
It's really not that hard to find info. Get Halabi's Internet Routing Architectures book to start with the fundamentals. Then find LISTSERVs for your local IPSs. They're out there, you just have to look. Here are some generic vendor-specific Provider lists: http://puck.nether.net/lists/
To start with, I'd connect with UUNET, as they're everywhere worldwide, easy to work with, and very professional. Once you've been through the process one time, you can work your way through less helpful ISPs.
I'm not sure whether the first part of your sentence is an attempt at irony or reflects an actual belief. In the US, you can get the most high-tech gadgets if you are willing to pay for it and put in the effort. But US society on average is pretty low-tech and relies on pretty outmoded technology, in just about every area of life. In part that's because Americans can get away with it (if energy is cheap and homes are large, for example, you can live with inefficient and bulky appliances), in part it's because the government is reluctant to set high-tech standards.
The US free-market approach doesn't work for communications networks: the average and short-term market forces determine what you can get at any price. If your cable provider only wants to sell you MSN-tied-in asymmetric marketing-driven pseudo-Internet-access because that's what 95% of the US population is satisfied with, then that's the only thing you are going to get at any reasonable price.
Several people have explained why the route tables are so big but they could be reduced if groups like APNIC started allocating shared space. They also allocate IP addresses for Australia and here we only have a few big ISPs. So the next time telstra wants more address space, APNIC should allocate them a block that is allocated to both them and another ISP such as Optus or Connect. This would keep the routing tables smaler and allow large ISP's to provide dual homeing to their customers but its not in their best ineterest to do so and its not going to happen unless the APNIC forces them to.