[Fwd: [pacnog] IPv4 exhaustion discussionsin Asia Pacific region]
Which is a problem if we are reliant on the telco's to move to IPv6. Why would any sane [NZ] telco spend serious money changing to a technology which further relegates them to a common bit pusher? There is an argument here that IPv4 exhaustion provides a technical rational for telcos to provide walled garden, proxy-style services.
I fully support this style of thinking. Infact, if I was an ISP I would be seriously considering NATing my entire customer base - except for those who were willing to pay $x/mo for a real IP. At the end of the day, with a few exceptions, most protocols work quite well from behind a nat. And it gives me another revenue stream, which if I am an ISP would be quite useful considering I am probably losing money on the DSL I am currently providing. Cheers, Patrick -- patpatnz(a)gmail.com
Infact, if I was an ISP I would be seriously considering NATing my entire customer base - except for those who were willing to pay $x/mo for a real IP. At the end of the day, with a few exceptions, most protocols work quite well from behind a nat.
I hope your helpdesk is well staffed. The only customers you're likely to get are the ones previously noted as the type who 'wont care'. That being those without much in the way of a desire to use anything that NAT breaks. Your helpdesk will need to cater for the fact that the average level of IT-Cloo of your customers is likely to be lower; and the overhead of having to explain why xyz application doesn't work properly without more money being thrown at their internet account...
And it gives me another revenue stream, which if I am an ISP would be quite useful considering I am probably losing money on the DSL I am currently providing.
It wouldn't suprise me if customers took the opportunity to consider another ISP; I know many that do so when looking to make significant plan changes... To implement this sort of thing seems like a gamble that is, at this stage at the game, no better than revenue-neutral. Maybe when IP address space is a more scare commodity, it'll look like a better option....? Mark.
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007, Mark Foster wrote:
To implement this sort of thing seems like a gamble that is, at this stage at the game, no better than revenue-neutral.
Exactly. This whole thread is why ISPs actually employee those cool people in the nice building to create products and talk to customers. According to APNIC's fees page it costs $20,000 a year to have up to a /10 of IP space. Any ISP big enough to need that much space will spend 50 times that just putting in the NAT boxes and updating the accounts page. Seriously people. Do you really pitch "Cripple the product, lose 20% of the customers and save a grand a year of APNIC fees" ideas to your manager? , and if so does he repeat them to anyone else? Oh, and on a completely different subject, Could Orcon please turn of open zone transfers on their name servers? I've getting sick of people telling me about it. -- Simon J. Lyall | Very Busy | Web: http://www.darkmere.gen.nz/ "To stay awake all night adds a day to your life" - Stilgar | eMT.
Simon Lyall wrote:
Seriously people. Do you really pitch "Cripple the product, lose 20% of the customers and save a grand a year of APNIC fees" ideas to your manager? , and if so does he repeat them to anyone else?
I don't think the intention of this is to save on APNIC fees.
On 18/02/2007, at 10:20 PM, Simon Lyall wrote:
Seriously people. Do you really pitch "Cripple the product, lose 20% of the customers and save a grand a year of APNIC fees" ideas to your manager? , and if so does he repeat them to anyone else?
No, not at all. Instead, you pitch "Lets stop being a bit pusher, and become a service provider". Where the services are "Web browsing", "Email", etc. Most of these are essentially applications that you provide, so don't need end-to-end IP connectivity. If you start providing services as your primary product instead of bits, you get a hell of a lot more brand recognition and loyalty. So, figure out some services you can provide, and get to it. IP is just a protocol used as part of the puzzle to deliver a service. It can be switched out for IPX or AppleTalk for all I care. Here's some examples of services to get you started: - Porn - TV shows - Music downloads - Email - General web browsing (with content, virus, etc. filtering optional) - News services (read, spoken, and watched) - Movies - Online library (ie, books online, ala Safari, etc.) - Phone calling - Chat/IM - Gaming etc. Your customer gets all these services now, but they have to jump on the net and go find them. Instead, offer them to your customers as you are an organisation who they trust already, and you have real world helpdesks and things. Then charge them more for it. Right, I'm a bit off topic now, but that's how I'd pitch it anyway. -- Nathan Ward -- Nathan Ward
On 18/02/07, Mark Foster
I hope your helpdesk is well staffed. The only customers you're likely to get are the ones previously noted as the type who 'wont care'. That being those without much in the way of a desire to use anything that NAT breaks.
As opposed to training all your helpdesk staff to be able to troubleshoot v6 problems? Considering the average helpdesker seems to not even be able to troubleshoot v4 problems, what are the chances of successfully training them up on v6? And you may end up saving money on supporting users with worm and/or spyware issues.
It wouldn't suprise me if customers took the opportunity to consider another ISP; I know many that do so when looking to make significant plan changes...
I doubt that many of them would - 95% of users just want to check their email, browse the web a little, chat on msn/icq/skype all of which work fine behind nat, as does WoW, CoH and 2nd Life (so I am told anyway.) You could dual-stack your network right to the subscriber with v4 natted and v6 public addresses, but -of course- this would be a large capex investment. -- patpatnz(a)gmail.com
Now I'm a few hours behind this thread, so hopefully I won't get timelined :). On 18/02/2007, at 4:57 PM, Mark Foster wrote:
Infact, if I was an ISP I would be seriously considering NATing my entire customer base - except for those who were willing to pay $x/mo for a real IP. At the end of the day, with a few exceptions, most protocols work quite well from behind a nat.
Your helpdesk will need to cater for the fact that the average level of IT-Cloo of your customers is likely to be lower; and the overhead of having to explain why xyz application doesn't work properly without more money being thrown at their internet account...
And to bring this back to IPv6 deployment - what about the poor helpdesk staffers then? Whatever the outcome - IPv6, NAT, ???, there's going to be new costs incurred.
And it gives me another revenue stream, which if I am an ISP would be quite useful considering I am probably losing money on the DSL I am currently providing.
It wouldn't suprise me if customers took the opportunity to consider another ISP; I know many that do so when looking to make significant plan changes...
At the moment the large majority of NZ internet users are not like us though. They just by things of trademe, POP their mail and a few others. The average user profile needs to be taken into consideration when weighing up addressing options, and the time at which to deploy them.
To implement this sort of thing seems like a gamble that is, at this stage at the game, no better than revenue-neutral.
All the options look like a gamble to me at the moment :).
Maybe when IP address space is a more scare commodity, it'll look like a better option....?
It's certainly going to bring things to a head. Cheers, Jonny.
participants (6)
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Alastair Johnson -
Jonny Martin -
Mark Foster -
Nathan Ward -
Patrick Jordan-Smith -
Simon Lyall