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

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.