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 hit the nail on the head !

[gmhowell]

>>Incidentally, I was a couple of minutes short of FP. :)

Yeah, and I'm only a few inches short of an 18 inch long unit. Doesn't help me score.

Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and thermonuclear devices.

Re:Time to get rid of jon katz

[talesout]

True, but bashing Katz is always insightful. The true test of one's intelligence is in whether or not they agree with Katz.

Re:Time to get rid of jon katz

[gazbo]

No, but the usual crappy Katz bashing has been replaced by a more directed assault on his journalistic integrity (or lack of) Did you read that Afghanistan article? If you had you would realise just why Katz needs to be slapped.

Really, that story was made up bollocks from the start.

Oh, I'm not denying that the post should be marked off-topic, but you really should read the Catz article in question (sorry, no link) and then you'll realise why somebody gave it Insightful. And the Troll mod was totally unjustified.

I'm off to dig up the ZX Spectrum I left buried and install the SETI client while cracking MD5 hashes. Oh, sorry, I thought I lived in Afghanistan for a moment.

Moderators: This post is off-topic, not troll, flamebait, or overrated. Please moderate accordingly.