Mailing List Archive

On Thu, 15 Feb 1996, Alan B. Clegg wrote:

> On Thu, 15 Feb 1996, Michael Dillon wrote:
>
> > The Internet market is miniscule. It is growing fast. It will continue to
> > grow fast. No one company can hope to grow fast enough to dominate in any
> > particular city. That's why you don't have to work with your local
> > competition, you just have to work with your other local ISP's in
> > building your local Internet infrastructure and growing your local
> > Internet market..
>
> I know that and you know that, but the people that are forming the small
> startup ISPs that are NOT ON THIS LIST (and don't even know about this
> list) don't know that, and don't care.

Lucky for you then! You can be the one in your area to start up a
regional provider to service small ISP's and get away from the headaches
of having to service dialup customers yourself. The ISP's will end up
getting allocated addresses from your larger block and thus they will end
up co-operating even though they don't know it. You can multihome your
own network to 3 of the big NSP's, provide POP's in two different areas
of the city so that small ISP's can connect to both your POP's and avoid
the "backhoe" syndrome, and you can make a good living too.

> As I have stated in other mail, I'm just playing devil's advocate and
> looking at the position of smaller ISPs that see the 'big boys' taking
> away all the users.

Now that you are starting an aggregating business, it is in your personal
financial interest to explain to these smaller ISP's how the market is
growing and there will be plenty of users for them. Help them grow their
businesses because it helps you grow yours. Teach them how to market
based upon service and not upon penis size (oops, I meant # of T1's).

> I would be happy to get every new ISP in a region to work together to make
> a better world for us all, but too many of them are worried more about the
> $$$ bottom line than the 'good of the net', and the way they build their
> $$$ bottom line is to get the most clients while the ISP across the street
> goes belly up.

The only problem with this scenario is that no matter what the
moneygrubbing ISP does, it will *NOT* make the guy across the street go
belly up. I have come across many situations where ISP's have gone
belly-up over the past two years and it was always due to mismanagement
and/or inability to provide a quality service. In Seattle, Atlanta,
Toronto and my hoemtown in Vernon, BC, Canada it was always the same story.

> I guess you could push the idea that once you manage to kill the fellow
> across the street's business, you get all that address space to yourself,
> but I still don't think that REAL cooperation in the small ISP marketplace
> is a reality.

Well, it *IS* a reality in many cities already.


Michael Dillon Voice: +1-604-546-8022
Memra Software Inc. Fax: +1-604-546-3049
http://www.memra.com E-mail: michael@memra.com

On Thu, 15 Feb 1996, Alan B. Clegg wrote:

> On Thu, 15 Feb 1996, Michael Dillon wrote:
>
> > The Internet market is miniscule. It is growing fast. It will continue to
> > grow fast. No one company can hope to grow fast enough to dominate in any
> > particular city. That's why you don't have to work with your local
> > competition, you just have to work with your other local ISP's in
> > building your local Internet infrastructure and growing your local
> > Internet market..
>
> I know that and you know that, but the people that are forming the small
> startup ISPs that are NOT ON THIS LIST (and don't even know about this
> list) don't know that, and don't care.
>
> As I have stated in other mail, I'm just playing devil's advocate and
> looking at the position of smaller ISPs that see the 'big boys' taking
> away all the users.

I can positively confirm that the big ones do not take away 'all users':
most companies are really fed up to be 5 to 12 hops away from meetpoints,
limping over legacy equipment and routing protocols like is-is, and being
part of a network that does not offer unlimited Internet access due to
their provider's routing policies.

There are tries by some 'big ones' to bend the fate to their favour by
not peering, or by using the liberal nature of Internet development to
put in little nudges that they believe works into their favor.

I am sometimes ranting against that, but in reality: the doomed ones stay
doomed, since they cannot replace all their equipment. They can reflect
traffic to other's ports to no avail, whatever.

A startup has the chance to build a nice network from scratch, which up
to date equipment, and with up to date equipment replacement and
migration schedules in a managed growth environment.

In reality: I guess we are just fine.

The market: that's right too: there is room for everyone. We recently
upgraded POPs for dial , the created void was filled immediately. On the
Internet are worldwide about what, 50 million users (not hosts, users).
There are alone in the U.S. over 200 million people, Europe is about 400
million. Most are younger (see demographic typical age pyramids), eager
to explore the new technology. There's room for everyone.

What will win in the end is quality and reliability of service. The costs
charged are differing incrementally: everyone has the same per port costs
when using adequate equipment in dial and dedicated access operations.

I would say the big differentiator are the people that do the networks.
This is not about router config, this is about the view and the overall
design. Anybody can learn router configuration, go to cisco training and
whatever. Most don't do good networks, it's that simple.

Also, the qualification of startups is most of the time nil zip nada
zero. Seeing that there is potential for enormous profitability, most
believe in putting up modems in basements all over the place is enough.

AS I see it: cooperation and mutual respect brought the Internet to where
it is now. Only we must now watch more than ever that some destructive or
too shortsighted minds don't destroy the freedom we all have.

.... that's why I am ranting from time to time heavily, when I see stuff
sneaking in that could cause trouble.


.... preaching to the choir ....

Mike

>
> I would be happy to get every new ISP in a region to work together to make
> a better world for us all, but too many of them are worried more about the
> $$$ bottom line than the 'good of the net', and the way they build their
> $$$ bottom line is to get the most clients while the ISP across the street
> goes belly up.
>
> I guess you could push the idea that once you manage to kill the fellow
> across the street's business, you get all that address space to yourself,
> but I still don't think that REAL cooperation in the small ISP marketplace
> is a reality.
>
> Just my opinions on human & business nature.
> (they may change if you give me a good reason)
>
> I really _DO_ want the net to work, as it is my lifeblood, I just don't
> see this as realistic in the current scheme of things.
>
> -abc
> \ Alan B. Clegg
> Just because I can \ Internet Staff
> does not mean I will. \ gateway.com, inc.
> \ <http://www.gateway.com/>
>
>

----------------------------------------------------------
IDT
Michael F. Nittmann ---------
Senior Network Architect \ /
(201) 928 4456 -------
(201) 928 1888 FAX \ /
mn@tremere.ios.com ---
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