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Is the Internet Shutting Out Independent Players?

Posted by Cliff on from the routing-table-roulette dept.

ikekrull asks: "After looking to see how I could set up my company's LAN to be multi-homed ? , I found that it would be next-to-impossible for me to do this. 'Providerless' IP addresses are no longer allocated to anybody in this part of the world (New Zealand) by APNIC ? , unless you meet requirements (financial and political) that are pretty much unmeetable by anyone but a large ISP. Does this put control of the entire internet further and further into the hands of large corporate players, and and is anyone particularly interested in changing this situation?"

"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?"

9 of 357 comments (clear)

  1. NAT? by bartle · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:NAT? by Junta · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Make it even better, use a full-fledged PC with three interfaces to serve as router (one address for each connection, and one internally). Though I don't know of any way to do it now, I would assume it could be a logical extension of NAT to NAT over two interfaces rather than one and use load balancing on outgoing traffic to figure out where to NAT the traffic through. If one went down, automatically put everything on the remaining connection. Higher throughput dynamically managed (more efficient than manual allocation) and failover, all without you needing to do a lot of manual work to keep things balanced and working right. All of this is assuming a non-routable private subnets, which is for many companies out there unacceptable...

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    2. Re:NAT? by bartle · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What you are looking for is speed, not multihoming.

      I'm looking for redundancy and I can't think of a better way to get this than using two completely different ISPs.

      However, this is not what this person wants.

      Perhaps, but the what the submitter wants is very difficult to achieve. Using dual IPs is less than ideal, but it allows outgoing traffic and incoming email to continue to flow without interruption.

      What I most like about this solution is that you're not overly dependant on a single ISP for anything. Not only are you protected in case of a temporary failure, but you can dump an ISP overnight if they make some policy changes you don't like. While I realize this idea might not appeal to a monoolithic corporation, a smaller one might want to consider this level of control and redundancy.

  2. Peer to Peer by horster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. IPv6 by MosesJones · · Score: 3, Interesting


    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
  4. Multi-Homed in a CIDR world by paulbort · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

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    -- Spring: Forces, coiled again!
  5. Re:uhm... by NoBeardPete · · Score: 4, Interesting


    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.

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    Arrr, it be the infamous pirate, No Beard Pete!
  6. Re:You've got to pay to play by mj6798 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Here in the USA, the most technologically advanced society in the world, it's difficult if not impossible to get *any* high speed service outside a major metropolitan area.

    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.

  7. Pretend problems and real solutions by thogard · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.