Hi, I wasn't so much saying that APNIC's fees are high in comparison with the cost of setting up a data centre, which they certainly are not. I was more saying that as a small business, once you have forked out hundreds of thousands for the necessary equipment, you're not likely to be in a position to fork out US$5000 for an APNIC application, and when the alternative of grabbing a handful of /24s from an upstream provider is available at little or no cost, 95% of people will go with that. You wouldn't necessarily need to renumber all your customers, at least certainly not in one hit. If you can get a pair of providers to multihome to who don't mind you announcing the other provider's addresses, then you can get addresses from APNIC at a later stage, and simply add those to the existing addresses provided by your upstream provider. They could be gradually transitioned over at convenient times, rather than having to take everyone offline to change their addresses. It's true that you'd get into some trouble if you had to ditch the provider which gave you the addresses, but that's a risk which is offset by avoiding APNIC fees. As you're likely to have several providers, you could relegate the bad provider to a stand-by only relationship, allowing you to keep the addresses. There are plenty of options. Forcing customers to renumber would certainly piss people off no end, but it shouldn't be necessary. In our case, there were only three options providing competitive delivery to Christchurch, which made choosing providers easy, and means we'll have to get along with them, because there aren't millions of alternatives. In any case Brett, to peer at the exchange you need a BGP capable router, a physical connection to it, a block of addresses to route, and an ASN. Then just go and ask all the big ISPs nicely if they'll peer with you. You'd better have something that it's currently costing them money to get at, or some content that doesn't like going via Australia. :) Get in touch with Citylink, they'll be able to advise how best to get a connection to the exchange, and help you get it working properly. Cheers, Erin Salmon Managing Director Unleash Computers Ltd www.unleash.co.nz Phone: +64 3 365 1273 Mobile: +64 21 877 913 -----Original Message----- From: Andy Linton [mailto:asjl(a)citylink.co.nz] Sent: Tuesday, 3 May 2005 5:55 p.m. To: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: Re: [nznog] any help appreciated There have been some words of advice that indicate that having address space is expensive in relation to setting up a data centre. I'd have to say I disagree. Anyone setting up a data centre will be face with costs for racks, air conditioning units, power supply, rental of premises, cabling that make the APNIC fee of US$1250 (NZ$1700) for up to a /22 look like small beer. (Yes, I know there's a one off fee of US$2500 as well) Weigh that against the cost of renumbering your own and customers' infrastructure somewhere down the track - say in a year or two if you're wildly successful because you've got a better deal from another upstream provider or you're royally hacked off with your existing one and it doesn't seem nearly as bad. Remember that once you go to a customer and say 'we need you to renumber' someone else's numbers are just as easy for them to change to as to yours. _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.11.2 - Release Date: 2/05/2005 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.11.2 - Release Date: 2/05/2005