RE: Death of the Internet - details at 11

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--On Tuesday, 13 January, 2004 16:08 -0700 Vernon Schryver <vjs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx>

...
(1) As others have pointed out, the knowledge/skill level of
a  typical ISP seems to be on a rapid downslope with no end
in  sight. ...

...
	* The difference between those "business rates" and
	whatever you are paying are mostly determined by a "what
	they can get away with" mentality -- we know what the
	marginal operational costs are.   If those prices stay
	high, it is either because there is no alternate
	provider, or because there is (illegal) price-fixing
	going on, or because no one sees a business opportunity
	by operating a business service at a lower margin.

The second segment seems to ignore the implications of the first segment. The marginal cost difference between "business" and "residental" is zilch only if you have the same people running things and interacting with customers. Front line tech-support droids that are dumber than the Windows boxes of residential customer cost a lot less than humans. If your front line support people know have a clue about the LSRR IP option, then either your rates are higher than $30/month or you have customers like us who do most of our own support (and cost our employers or ourselves a lot more than $30/month for that support).

A little hyperbole aside, this is, of course, correct. My observation was based on the observation --however anecdotal-- that many or most vendors of "business" DSL or cable modem services, at least in the US, provide almost exactly the same level of service/ support as they do for their "residential" customers. The only things one gets are more than one address (and relatively static ones if the ISP's normal practice is dynamic) and unblocking of a number of functions/activities. That level of support does not include "a clue about the LSRR IP option"; it often barely includes understanding that, if one can log into a CPE router and ping the local network but not the ISP's first-hop router, it might suggest a problem with the link or that remote router. The level of support you are hypothesizing --either from the vendor or so that internal experts can get to non-droids quickly-- seems to come, with some ISPs, with yet another increment in price to a "business premium" or "managed" service; with others, one has to give up DSL or Cable and go to, e.g., fractional T1s.


While, despite some other comments, I still consider this nonsense -- the marginal prices for the "business service" are all out of proportion to marginal costs and my biases are such that I don't like the idea of incurring even small extra costs to cripple one service to force people to another, more expensive one-- they certainly constitute sound business practices for the ISPs, at least for as long as they can get away with it.

There are some surviving ISPs that were started and still run
that way least in geographical areas I know about.  Their
prices seem to be higher than the organizations in that race
to maximum stupidity.

It is not a coincidence that they have very few internal spam
problems. They are never blacklisted, not even by the second
tier spam blacklists, even when they rent straight modem
dial-up ports.  (Third tier DNS blacklists are kooky 32-bit
random number generators.)

None of this, including the higher prices, are surprising. Racing to maximum stupidity and, e.g., eliminating all but the pretense of technical support, does lower costs and may improve volume.


I know people who have done that sort of thing with DSL and
802.11. However, I fear that idea is generally killed for now
by the fact that IP bandwidth pricing is set by those outfits
racing for ultimate stupidity.  They see IP bandwidth as a
loss-leader.

yes. But then several of them turn around and incur extra costs (however small) to filter outgoing and incoming protocols sufficiently to force users into "pure client" mode, prevent their mail servers from being used as outbound relays unless the addresses are theirs or one buys an extra-cost "service", and so on. Those things are not the mark of stupidity, they are the mark of a deliberate and considered business practice, however ugly we might find it.


	                   Or maybe we would rather whine than
	do something, perhaps because what we have been fed is "good
	enough".

Until people like the individual complaining here that his cable-modem is listed as a dynamic address are willing to pay for the costs of real IP service, including the costs of doing more against your spamming customers than asking blacklists to list your own addresses, there's not much hope.

I think we agree... and that was part of my point.


We could accept the fact that people who are not willing pay
more than $10-30/month are not interested in the Internet and
stop listen to their whining.  Detroit laughs as people who
expect to get Mercedes for Chevrolet prices.  Why can't we
laugh at people who expect to get real IP service for
$10-30/month, or least stop taking their demands literally?

If cable-modem IP is good enough for you, then you're not
interested in multihoming or even running your own VoIP
system.  You might be happy to have your phones connected to
the email and web browser demark/appliance maintained by your
telco/cableco, but you're not really interested in the
Internet.  You lack the interest to be allowed to run your own
servers for anything.

Exactly. Sadly, but...


john



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