Fixed Boundary (/29) Assignments

At 15:34 07/02/2001, leo vegoda wrote:
>In my presentation to the Working Group at RIPE 38 [0] I brought up the
>issue of assignment policies for ISPs wanting to assign all customers a
>fixed size network (/29).

Please let me thank you for that presentation.. it was very good and showed 
RIPE being aware of the issue that will potentially explode in the coming 
months.

>Based on the above, we would like the Working Group to consider whether:
>  -  a standard, fixed-boundary assignment is acceptable for residential
>     broadband connections?
>Or
>  -  should the requester (the LIR) be required to ask the subscriber how
>     many IP devices will be connected and base the assignment upon this?

I believe that both should be done depending on the end customer scenario.

What is certain is that a lot of LIRs, mainly the new ones - telcos with 
(or trying to market) IP services are currently on the Broadband 
bandwaggon.. in todays marketing language this translates as xDSL and 
whether it is right to consider this as a broadband solution or not is a 
matter for another discussion.. ;-)

What needs to be considered first is the industry and what the 'big' guys 
are doing... and how this affects what the smaller companies and the 
start-ups offer. This is what I see happening right now... as an example:

Large European Telco 'Alman Telecom' sells it's DSL product very well. The 
marketing of the product spec actually mentions that the customer will be 
getting 16 IP addresses. Customers know the Alman brand, and they see what 
it offers and hence they go for it.

As a side note, RIPE need to be aware that telcos are mentioning right now 
how many IPs are given in a product, and do not mention RIPE anywhere in 
the contract or make the customer aware that there is that RIPE obligation.

Small Startup Telco 'LastChoice Telecommunications' offers the same 
product, but is new in the market. It has to compete for market share and 
has to offer something better than Alman. One way of doing this... and 
remember product managers are not always IP literate, is to offer more IP 
addresses. This strategy is also fine by the marketing director and every 
other director in the organisation - as they are not concerned about 
RIPE... to them, they have paid  RIPE and they have the IP addresses (note 
that AFAICS, a lot of the new LIRs are telcos with non-IP people or people 
who are not experienced with RIPE - and I really believe that RIPE need to 
acknowledge this).

Today, number of IP addresses given to a customer *are* used as a market 
share gaining tool.

So, IMHO, the main issue is to look at the industry itself and look at how 
the big players are acting first, and to bring them in line.

Further on from this, we need to look at how DSL is being rolled out and 
how the telcos want to sell the product. A lot of the telcos I talk to want 
to be doing a minimum of 100 xDSL sales per day! Under traditional 
techniques, this would require each telco to have a large number of 
hostmasters/people to deal with 141 forms in an efficient manner... telcos 
do not want to spend money on getting more people.. So what do they do 
instead? Either 141 forms do not get filled or 'standard' RIPE forms are 
filled in, and/or the quality of the data in a 141 form falls. In addition, 
RIPEs auditing activities become more resource hungry.

My proposal would be a change in policy, incorporating the points that Leo 
has raised, such that:

1) Standard 141 forms / standard details are allowed for xDSL assignments. 
These standard forms should allow an automatic assignment to the end 
customer of 4 IP addresses (instead of 8 as suggested by Leo. This can 
cover both residential and business customers. After all, ISPs should push 
NAT in the main ;)

2) For those customers who require that bit more, they can go through the 
standard 'what we have come to love' RIPE-141 procedure. :-)

So the best of both worlds.. standard set up customers throughout Europe - 
RIPE knows what is happening and most ISPs/Telcos can be happier where they 
can spend more time earning their money.. and for anything else, the 
standard RIPE procedures are followed.

ISPs/Telcos should be kept to this policy and they should be discouraged 
from advertising 'x number of IP addresses' with their products...

Oh, and those ISPs that push NATd xDSL with 1 static IP for the customer.. 
maybe a pat on their back. ;-)

Regards
Denesh
-- 
Denesh Bhabuta           Chairman, CEO and Principal Consultant
Cyberstrider Limited                                   www.cyberstrider.net
  Internet and E-Commerce: Strategy, Consultancy and Solutions