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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?"

8 of 357 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    And First Post!

  2. Time to get rid of jon katz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    This site is losing all credibility quickly.

    Stories about people in Afganistan who dig up commodores and then download / watch divx movies have killed off every last shred of believability this haven for anti-ms zealots ever had.

    It is time to get rid of katz

    ==

    This comment is licensed under the BSD license. Feel free to distribute:
    <br>
    This site is losing all credibility quickly.
    <br>
    Stories about people in Afganistan who dig up commodores and then download / watch divx movies have killed off every last shred of believability this haven for anti-ms zealots ever had.
    <br>
    It is time to get rid of <a href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=98/11/16/ 184223&mode=thread">katz</a><br>

    1. Re:Time to get rid of jon katz by recursiv · · Score: 0, Troll

      Insightful? This story has absolutely nothing to do with Jon Katz.

      --
      I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
  3. Re:You can buy multi-homed connections. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    lousy move - advertising you work for AT&T - prepare for flame wars from the trolls

  4. uhm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Troll

    The person that wrote this has 0 clue of what's involed with routing. He needs to go read books before submitting stuff like this.

    "just add a gig or two of ram to a cisco router"
    hahahaha

    Also, IPv4 is running out of IP's. Plain and simple. Therefore, these IP's need to be given to people that have a clue what to do with them and not piss them away. I work for a major webhosting company and we have to fight for our ips everytime we need more. It's getting harder and harder for us. Luckily we own our entire Class B now, but I know soon a time will come when we dont... heh

    Research before whining to /.

  5. Re:be careful, moderators... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Fuck you buddy, I hit the cap last week.

    I am practicing to be a troll on kuro5hin when it comes back up. If you have any advice to lend, I'd appreciate it.

    ~wally

  6. Re:I'm not here, this isn't happening by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    so who is a new one, and what do they do differently? is it safe to ASSume that the adequacy guys are all bad?

  7. Re:I'm not here, this isn't happening by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Are you fucking stupid? I created this account just to troll and that's all it's ever been used for. Personally I think you're envious of my success. Well cheer up, I only got this way through practice, and you can do the same.

    ~wally