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RE: Death of the Internet - details at 11
2004-01-14 06:44:53
--On Tuesday, 13 January, 2004 16:08 -0700 Vernon Schryver
<vjs(_at_)calcite(_dot_)rhyolite(_dot_)com> wrote:
From: John C Klensin <john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com>
...
(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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