Provisioning: how fast can your ISP turn on your service?
Starting up new leased line Internet connections is pain. It's
pain for the users and a pain for the ISP. It's slow, error prone
and manual labor intensive.
For leased lines it would be nifty if the ISP would run PPP and
force the remote side to "log in". Once logged in it seems like
the ISP router could use RADIUS to assign the IP address to the
line and add any static routes. The router would then have to
'remember' the config and the associated leased line connection.
The pay back is that turning up new lines would be automagic and only
require a human if it did not work...
It would require that the remote router be able to identify itself
with some sort of "secret", but that's not hard. The identity should
also be tied to billing information so the 'back end' systems at
the ISP can start billing for the line when the initial log-in
occurs..
So what? Why is this important? Well, if the CLEC's (a nifty
acronym of the new wave of phone-company-like companies which
can rent copper lines from the existing RBOCs) appear like everyone
seems to think they will, and they start selling T1 lines to
mortals like you and me for $60/month, they won't be able to
turn the lines on fast enough to satisfy the demand. (sorry for
that run on - I got carried away).
Some folks believe that $60 T1 lines will cause explosive growth.
If one of the barriers to growth is how fast one can provision
new lines, automated provisioning will become very important.
I think there's a new protocol here, or at least some extensions
to RADIUS.