On Wed, 30 Apr 2003, Jack Bates wrote:
IPv4 address space, while adequate to currently meet our needs, is limited. The reason it is adequate is because we do require justification. Take away justification and put on a $ value, and the big money makers will buy it all, lease it out to people at variable rates, and watch the money roll in. Never underestimate greed. It's the foundation of business.
Well considering a good proportion of the ipv4 space has already been given away to large companies, institutions and government bodies without any sort of oversight. Lets assume that one of the companies currently holding a Class A decides to go into the ip business. I can't see it being too hard for them to setup a small website, whois server etc where you can pay online and get a network at around $100/year per /24. This is cheaper for smaller organisations than signing up to ARIN and the lack of paperwork (and potential quick service) will probably attract others. Companies will always have the alternative of going via ARIN,RIPE,APNIC so the commercial register will have an incentive not to jack up prices too high. The networks advertised will be a legitimate as old /16s and /8s allocated years ago to organizations 1% of the size that would justify them. Even better if people are actually paying hard cash for the netblocks then they are more likely to only get what they want and efficiently use them. It would seem to be a better use that the Class A is actually getting used by people rather than being largely (99%) unused by the company concerned. It's not like IANA is going to ask for Ford, HP or Xerox to actually justify their allocation any time soon. Of course I'm sure some people here will refuse to accept the announcements and mutter about routing table size. One the other hand the same people seem to be happy with the current inefficient legacy allocations. -- Simon Lyall. | Newsmaster | Work: simon.lyall@ihug.co.nz Senior Network/System Admin | Postmaster | Home: simon@darkmere.gen.nz Ihug Ltd, Auckland, NZ | Asst Doorman | Web: http://www.darkmere.gen.nz