On 7-jul-2005, at 22:03, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
Are there hidden pockets of yet undiscovered address space?
Undiscovered? No.
But unless the situation has changed since I last looked (which is possible), there are some sizeable clumps that will never get used by the people who "own" them, which it has not been practicable to reclaim.
Right.
The tighter the vise, the higher the fence it will be worthwhile to jump to reclaim that space... just like prospecting for oil.
Right again. And like prospecting for oil, at some point you're burning it up faster than you can prospect it. There are some 45 - 50 /8s assigned to single organizations. Let's assume for simplicity that those can all be reclaimed. That's 4 years at a /8 a month. So far so good. Then there are 40 - 45 /8s in class B space. That means 256 times as much effort to reclaim the address space, or reclaiming about 10 class Bs a day... Predicting is hard, especially when it concerns the future. But one thing is certain: we live in interesting times.