Re: SIP Addressing Limitations

[Robert Elz <[e-mail]>]

    Date:        Sat, 22 May 93 10:44:27 EDT
    From:        "William Allen Simpson" <[e-mail]>
    Message-ID:  <[e-mail]>

    According to public CIA reports, all 3 have communications links with
    each other, including radio, television, undersea cable, and satellite.

    Oh, you are limiting this to "internet" links?

Of course I am, internet topology is what we're talking about
isn't it?   What happens with radio, TV, or almost anything
else isn't relevant at all.   I assume you're not seriously
suggesting that we should base internet addressing on which TV
programs we get to watch?

    You expect that the current situation is permanent?

No.   I expect that I have no idea whatever what will happen
in the future, and nor does anyone else.

    Again, even if Japan and every other country on the planet split into 10
    parts which refuse to talk to each other except through a 3rd party, the
    plan provides an order of magnitude better than we currently have, and
    *never* gets worse.
    
    And since a 3rd party is likely to be geographically close,

no no no ... this is exactly what I first sent the message
to complain about - there is absolutely no liklihood of
any such thing, its no more likely than that the 3rd party
may be the furthest possible place.   But talking exclusively
through a third part is the easy case, and also the one that's
not likely to happen, the difficult one is where they talk to
each other locally, but refuse to handle international traffic
for each other - and that's the likely one.

    No, you are incorrect.  Any link that you actually *build* will cost
    considerably more from Australia to the US east coast than to the west
    coast.

No, you are incorrect - any link *I* build will cost me
exactly the same.  But note that neither I, nor any other
internet provider I imagine (including MCI etc) actually
do the physical work in building intercontinental links,
that's done by companies (generally owned by consortia of the
phone companies, and governments) that do nothing else.

It costs me (or did until recently, I haven't checked in the
past year or so) exactly the same for link to New Zealand as
it does to either US coast (note that a link to somewhere in
the middle of the continental US costs rather more).
    
    You are talking about combining several shared links into a long path.
    These links are actually switched at various points.

Certainly - but that's done by whoever I buy the link from.
As long as they don't charge me any more, why should I care.
As there are usually reasons why these links of links are made
(enough to offset the slightly increased failure rate to be
expected, and the slightly longer transit delay) if it costs
the same, I'll do it that way if the advantage is great enough.
(Before paccom appeared, an east coast link for Aust was exactly
what I was planning).

Whether the carrier who sells me the service makes less profit
if I buy the east coast link than they do if I buy the west
coast one, and why they'd want to charge the same in that case
is something I neither know nor care about.
    
    You may be referring to the fact that current US *internet* traffic
    from some Asian countries passes through somewhere on the east coast.

Again, yes, of course, the internet is all that is relevant here.

    That is merely an effect of US "policy" (single interconnect between
    providers), and has nothing to do with topology.
    That policy is already scheduled to be obsolete.

US policy has nothing whatever to do with most of this, the
links arrive at the US east coast for totally unrelated reasons.
In one case I know of it was inertia (a bitnet link turned into
an internet link was installed to the same site), in another it
was taking advantage of the generosity of the provider (they
charge nothing to house the US end of the link).   These kind
of factors will continue influence where links go more than
geography.
    
    Now, do you have a better plan?

No, and if you read my messages, you'll see that I didn't
object to it as such - just to the use of an example suggesting
that geographic proximity would have some effect on where
links would be installed.  Forget geography, addresses matter
based on (inter)net topology, that's how routes aggregate.
Having addresses assignable by countries (or regions) is
politcally attractive, and economically attractive (its much
easier to provide just the right amount of funding to support
these activities inside a politiocal entity than outside it).
Actually assigning addresses that are based on political
boundaries is much less attractive.

kre