Hi, On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 12:45:50PM +0200, Pekka Savola wrote:
On Tue, 11 Jan 2005, Gert Doering wrote:
Actually we decided on one of the last RIPE meetings to obsolete the "charging by local IRs" document, because the majority seemed to believe that "the market will rule this" - if one ISP charges too much, people will go and find an alternative.
Sigh. And I thought IP addresses were a global resource, with a bit nobler motivations and goals to recommend or mandate that the ISPs don't screw their customers on something they get for free. Live and learn..
I don't see this as negative as you seem to do. There's the optimistic view: there are *so many* ISPs on the market that an ISP that screws its customers will just see them wander away to other ISPs - and there are enough that don't charge by-address (Charging for the initial setup has never been prohibited anyway). The pragmatic/pessimistic view is "what shall RIPE do about it anyway?" - there are enough ISPs out there that don't bother with any sort of RIPE documentation, and can get away with it because they have a /14 and don't expect ever to need more address space - there is hardly any pressure RIPE can apply here, and there isn't enough peer pressure out there to have effect. [..]
If the end users had realistic possibilities to obtain routable PI, there would not be such a concern, because the ISPs could not create a lock-in situation (or force to renumber or use NAT).. But now this seems like a problem.
Well - let's be somewhat realistic here. If you get a leased line to your ISP, it will usually cost a hefty setup fee as well, because there's effort involved in digging up the street. Will you also call that a "vendor lock-in"? Gert Doering -- NetMaster -- Total number of prefixes smaller than registry allocations: 71007 (66629) SpaceNet AG Mail: netmaster@Space.Net Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14 Tel : +49-89-32356-0 80807 Muenchen Fax : +49-89-32356-299