Why not to restrict first-level domains to companies which can demonstrate that they have 1000+ hosts? Companies with 200+ hosts then should use .A.COM -- .Z.COM (i know, some of them are taken, but that can be fixed). Smaller companies should use .xx.COM (and xx is NOT choosen by the companies -- it is just the random seed and/or registry ID). What we should worry about is number of first-level domains/number of hosts ratio. It is the same problem as with routing. The solution is also the same -- aggregation, with subsequent Toxic Waste Dump (aka legacy allocation) cleanup. That kind of defeats the "menmonic" value of names but still beats telephone numbers (and then, what kind of mnemonic can be used to distinguish between thousands of nearly identical small businesses?) --vadim PS. Obviously if IBM registers 100 domain names it is still a lot less damage than a small ISP (with 1000 dial-up customers) which registers a domain name for every such customer. Big folks registering POISONOUS-BURGER.COM and SHIT-ON-TV.COM aren't really a problem. Zillion of MOM-AND-POP.COMs is.