Re: [RRG] Moving forward... IPv4 now, IPv6 less urgent and perhaps more ambitious

["William Herrin" <bill@herrin.us>]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 4:33 PM, David Conrad <drc@virtualized.org> wrote:
> On Jun 10, 2008, at 1:00 PM, William Herrin wrote:
>> Which, by the way, suggests an approach to solving RRG's problem that
>> we haven't seriously explored: how can we systematically arrange for
>> the folks who originate a prefix to pay the folks who carry the
>> prefix?
>
> Long ago, there was an attempt to look into this (IETF PIARA (Pricing of
> Internet Addresses and Routing Announcements) BoF).  If I remember
> correctly, the routing part of it broke down because no one could figure out
> how to get folks to pay (see "Tragedy of the Commons").  Not sure if things
> have changed.

David,

Please excuse my temporary insanity while I step way outside the box.


Set up some sort of central route policy authority, CRPA.

As the AS originating a route, you go to the CRPA and place all other
ASes into one of three categories for EACH route you originate:

Category 1: I will not pay you to carry this prefix.
Category 2: I will pay you $CRPA standard amount per month to carry
this prefix at your published default exit only, if and only if you
arrange your internal routing so that packets to this route will
either reach your default exit (via a default route) or follow a
legitimate externally-generated shorter prefix advertisement if one
exists.
Category 3: I will pay you $Offer total to carry this route on every
BGP router you operate.

Obviously you use templates; few would want or need to explicitly set
rules for each AS.


Each AS who wants to be paid then downloads the list of offers made to
their AS periodically. They load the list into each of their routers
and tell the router to filter accepted prefixes based on  the
following:

a. Carry category 1 prefixes shorter than X.
b. Carry all/no category 2 routes.
c. Carry category 3 routes where $Offer exceeds $Z.
d. All normal prefix filtering (regardless of whether they're in CRPA)

The CRPA acts as a settlement agent as well. Each AS which carries
routes based on the CRPA   provides CRPA with two BGP feeds: one from
the designated default exit and one from the a selected "category 3"
router. CRPA uses this to determine which routes you actually carried
and bills the origin ASes accordingly. When the origins pay CRPA, CRPA
pays you.


Why would anyone start paying?

If you're a transit provider, you can pick up some extra revenue yet
disturb nothing by signing up for CRPA routes and setting your "carry
category 1 shorter than" to carry anything /24 or shorter anyway.
You'll accept longer routes only if paid.

At ARIN and the other RIRs, we go pass public policy allowing end-user
orgs who don't qualify for a block at the current size limits to
register non-contiguous blocks of up to a /25 of addresses. Now a SOHO
can actually get PI addresses if they're willing to pay for the
routing via CRPA.

With such a system in place, it's only a matter of time before folks
start filtering on RIR minimums and/or filtering distant prefixes
based on their presence or absence from CRPA. For example, as a
regional ISP in the Southeast US, I might refuse to carry APNIC
regions prefixes unless their originators pay, shunting them instead
to a transit provider I've picked as my low-cost default exit.

Carrying your routes becomes a paid service, just like any other.

Regards,
Bill Herrin



-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004

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