Is the Internet Shutting Out Independent Players?

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?"

Comments

NAT?

[bartle]

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.

Peer to Peer

[horster]

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.

Re:uhm...

[NoBeardPete]

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.

Re:You've got to pay to play

[mj6798]

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.