Re: Policy Statement on Address Space Allocations

["William Allen Simpson" <Bill.Simpson () um cc umich edu>]

I trimmed the CC list even further.  And you are forwarned that this is
a flame, with combined technical and political content:

> From: Peter Galbavy <peter () demon net>
> Just to spend a few minutes thinking about it, what do the phone
> companies do ? They are the nearest thing with a large installed base
> that the Internet even begins to map onto. There are however some
> fundemental differences - primarily the fragmentation of Europe (which
> is not the case in the US).
It should not surprise you that we've heard this before, and rejected it
before.


> We have a 2Mb line from London to Amsterdam which costs us very much
> the same as a T1 from London to Washington.  As I understand it, this
> "milk them for all they are worth" pricing of the telcos applies to
> cross-border land lines in Europe also.
So, lay your own lines if it is cost effective.  Heck, spread spectrum
radio comes to mind....  if not microwave towers on the oil rigs in the
north sea....


> All this impacts very severely on the commercial decisions taken as to
> the routeing of traffic. I would much rather buy more lines to the US
> and let the traffics flow back to Europe then to just buy lines to
> Europe.
Is this why the US-UK links are soooooo overcrowded?  Destroying
connectivity for the rest of us?


> We allocate *each* dialup customer *1* IP address from a
> block and dynamically route them based on where they log in to the
> service (including RSN Amsterdam). The RIPE NCC has >effectively< refused
> us space because they believe that we should change the product we
> sell and use dynamic IP for dialups.
Hell yes!  Damn right!  Three cheers for RIPE!!!

Anyone who still allocates more than 1 address per actual dial-up link
should be taken out and shot!

We spent rather a lot of volunteer-years getting this to work (PPP).


> We provide a product which
> our customers understand gives them *more* for their money. We do something
> different, and the customers like it. Tough fact of business life that.
Are you sure you told your customers about the alternatives?  Like
dynamic addressing?  Like having connectivity to the entire Internet?

This isn't new, this is old hat static addresses!  How is it different?

What gives _more_ here?  I don't see anything worthwhile!


> The RIPE NCC believes it can dicate the business model we use, which
> has been established for > 3.5 years. This is unlikely to happen.
There is this misconception on your part that you have a _right_ to
succeed in business, at the expense of the rest of us.


> Please read the policies again. You policy uses words like "strongly
> discouraged" for static IP allocation, not "disallowed".  You have
> attempted to strongly discourage us, we have not been so discouraged,
> and now give up and give us the address space we are *entitled* to.
You have another misconception that there is an _entitlement_ to
Internet access, at the expense of the rest of us.


> > What we do *not* do is consider *individual* interests of some over
> > the ones of others.  If we would do that we would eliminate our
> > "raison d'etre".
>
> Why not. We are not a communist society are we ?

I dunno about _your_ society, but the Internet Community requires
cooperation.  Call it communistic or socialistic as you like.  The net
won't work without it.

Your "priveleges" end when you affect someone else.  And you are
affecting me, buddy, and I don't like it one bit!

Perhaps you should go build your own internet, like MicroSoft....

Again, I applaud RIPE!!!

Bill.Simpson () um cc umich edu
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