Re: Cost per prefix [was: request for help w/ ATT and terminology]

[Jon Lewis <jlewis () lewis org>]

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008, William Herrin wrote:

> Hmm. Well, the secondary market is flooded with sup2's right now, with
> the card at sub-$1k prices and with a 6500+sup2 in the $5k range.
> There isn't really a comparable availability of the sup720-3bxl
> although eBay does have a few listed in the $12k range. If we take

I started to get into this in the last message and decided not to...but 
another problem with these comparisons is the 'going rate' for Sup2s
is very likely depressed considerably due to their no longer being 
suitable for full BGP table applications.  Go back a couple years, and 
they were quite a bit more $...probably closer to $10k.

Another is that networks having to upgrade now already bought whatever 
they're upgrading from (i.e. Sup2s) some time ago at prices similar to 
what the 3bxls go for now.  So they're not just having to spend more or 
the difference...they're having to nearly double their investment in full 
table routers (some parts such as the chassis and line cards will likely 
remain in service).

> I wouldn't want to stand behind those numbers, though. I'm not sure
> what the error band is, but it has to be huge. The equivalence in the
> secondary market just isn't there. Nor can we use $12k as the baseline
> price for the sup720-3bxl. There isn't wide availability at that
> price, just a few sketchy sellers from Hong Kong.

I wonder if those are being faked yet?

Is there really any point in trying to put a $ figure on each route? 
Common sense should tell us that polluting the DFZ will eventually cost 
every network wanting/needing to participate real money (thousands for 
smaller networks, hundreds of thousands or millions for larger 
networks/backbones)...so we really ought to be putting effort into 
education rather than crunching theoretical numbers to determine exactly 
how many french fries each route equates to.

I know from past experience, that ARIN can step in and 'use their 
influence' to get transit providers to not accept routes they don't think 
an ASN should be announcing (acquisition that went way south).  I don't 
know what sort of yearly cash flow surpluses the other RIRs have, but IIRC 
ARIN is doing quite well.  The stats I have from last September suggest 
the 'ARIN region' is the worst as far as longer than RIR minimum routes 
being announced.  Perhaps ARIN could task one or more people with 
examining the ARIN portion of the DFZ, and contacting the networks 
announcing unnecessary deaggregates and when necessary their transit 
providers, for the purpose of educating and when necessary, leaning on 
them to clean up their configs.  Actually, there are already people doing 
the first part of that job for free...so all ARIN would have to do is 
accept & check data that's already been researched and pluck the ARIN 
member networks from it.

I know, BGP Police is not part of ARIN's mission...but they have the $ to 
put people on the job and the influence to perhaps get people to pay 
attention.  In my limited experience trying that role, I found networks 
were totally uninterested in cleaning up and it wasn't even possible to 
get directly in touch with someone who'd understand the issue much less 
have access to do anything about it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Jon Lewis                   |  I route
 Senior Network Engineer     |  therefore you are
 Atlantic Net                |
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