[[lug] DSL, static IPs and the hunt for red october.]

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Fri, Aug 25, 2000 at 07:58:52PM +0000, Stephen G. Smith wrote:
>In the world of routing, if your ISP (your upstream) did not continue to 
>exist and you had to change providers...How will you convince your

Usually, you wouldn't.  Unless you have a portable IP or ASN, you can't.
Usually, you'd simply change your DNS settings -- it's MUCH easier than
trying to move IPs, even if the IPs that your DNS servers were on are
now history.

>their upstream..For Instance, when GE bought out many common
>backbone providers, every customer(ISP) had to change their entire
>routing structure to fit the new address space allocated by GE.

Usually, if an ISP gets bought out, the ISP that buys them also buys the
rights to use their old IPs.  They may eventually migrate certain services
or equipment into their normal network (usually associated with moving the
equipment or dialtone physicly to their location).

Just because ISPn buys you doesn't mean that you have to stop using
your IPs.  I've worked with a number of ISPs that have been aquired by
others and have never seen a wholesale IP address change.  While
in theory it's possible, it's just not an easy change to do.  Heck,
one ISP opted to leave a couple of analog modems at a deprecated POP
for 6 months just because they couldn't get the users to change the
phone number they were dialing...  ;-/

Sean
-- 
 There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
                 -- Heisenberg
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python