Hosting provider allocation advice

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

Wouter de Jong wrote:
> Hi Ted,
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Ted Mittelstaedt [mailto:tedm at ipinc.net]
>> Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2009 17:16
>> To: Wouter de Jong
>> Cc: ipv6-ops at lists.cluenet.de
>> Subject: Re: Hosting provider allocation advice
> 
> Thanks for explaning :)
> 
>> What I was meaning is don't be too hung up about making the
>> wrong decision about allocating subnets right now.  If you force
>> reliance on DNS from the absolute beginning then if you need to
>> renumber later to reallocate your subnets, it's no big deal.
> 
> (most) Firewalls, ACL's, RBL's ... like IP's instead of hostnames.
> So that could be a bummer.

That's why you get paid the big bucks.

Let me know when your mechanic starts complaining about how hard it
is to fix cars. ;-)

> Especially if a customer would manage a lot of remote networks 
> from his server in our DC.
> 

If the customer is educated enough to know how to do that, they
are educated enough to know that there's no IP permanence unless
you request your numbers from an RIR.

>> Buried in the fine print of our own shared web hosting contracts
>> is language that states the customer's server is never guaranteed
>> to keep a specific IP address.
> 
> While this makes perfectly sense from 'our' side of the view,
> a lot of our customers would leave us instantly.
> They'd have to change IP's their anyway, but that won't stop them.
> We've done it in the past, and they we're not amused.
> I'd never get approval for it from $management, 
> in these times they want to keep every client at all (reasonable) cost.
>  

Renumbering IPv4 is a lot more painful than renumbering IPv6.

Your customers who want IPv6 from you aren't going to be
among the subset of troglodyte customers you have that every ISP
has to deal with.

Keep in mind every other ISP offering IPv6 is going to be
doing this initially.  As long as you aren't renumbering the
IPv4 they have from you, the few customers of yours who want
IPv6 will be understanding.  After all if they leave, where
are they going to go to?  Another hoster who doesn't even
offer IPv6 at all?  Or another hoster that only offers IPv6
with the same stipulations your offering - that IP#s may
change?  Highly unlikely.

Think of how many IPv6 hosters out there aren't even
running native, but using tunneled numbers from Hurricane
or some such.

You have time to play around with this stuff, don't cut
yourself short.

Ted

>> Granted, few customers READ the fine print, but we make every
>> effort when setting them up to not mention IP addresses
>>
>>>>> Also, since we do IP based billing here,
>>>>> we'd never know if one has 'hijacked' some IP space.
>>>>>
>>>> "IP based billing" will be the first casualty of IPv6.
>>>>
>>>> There's a shortage of IPv4 which is why you can bill for
>>>> each IPv4 number.
>>>>
>>>> There's no shortage of IPv6.  Your competitors won't hesitate
>>>> to spread around IPv6 numbers like peanut butter.
>>> I meant traffic billing based on IP number :)
>>>
>> Doctor it hurts when I do this!
>>
>> Then don't do that!
>>
>> Seriously, you need to rethink your billing data collection.  How
>> difficult is it to go to your router that's feeding your network and
>> setup a permit access list and count packets that pass through it?
>> Construct the list with whatever granularity you want.
> 
> It can be hard, cause your device must support it :))
> 
> We've put a fiber-tap between our fibers to our 
> border routers, and run an accounting program that fills a database with
> 
> src dst traffic insert-date. So internal traffic from vlan <-> vlan is
> for free, 
> but traffic that goes to our Peerings/Transit, get's billed.
> 
> Though  with IPv6, it'll get a lot more records :)
> But I'm least worried about that.
> I'd rather implement a good policy, and solve my billing later on.
> 
> The thing that frustrates me is that I just don't know how to give our 
> our 3rd product group (the ones with shared vlan/subnet) IPv6 in a sane
> way.
> 
>> Ted
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Wouter
>