As many as it takes, This is just something you are going to need to deal with. We started with small blocks and had to renumber several times so far. It is just part of growing, until you are a large NSP connected to all the NAPs you will just need to start will small blocks and renumber over and over until you get /18 or smaller.
This strikes me as being discriminatory against the smaller ISPs. The customers are looking for stability and, from their point of view, being forced to renumber several times along with the ISP is unstable and costly. They'll look to ISPs who will not force them to renumber, the ones with a /18 or smaller already.
Do you truly believe there is no way to avoid the forced renumbering problem for the smaller ISPs?
-David [Kovar]
If the ISP is stupid, then yes, they will be in a bad position. If they are smarter than their competition, they will help their customers bring up their networks intelligently such that there are as few static addresses used as possible, and the rest is all DHCP magic. They will work with their customers to find easier ways to renumber networks, and in turn, those larger customers will bang on their product vendors to better support dynamic addressing needs. It's not difficult to do, it just takes an understanding of what's going on out there, and a committment to follow through. Dave -- Dave Siegel Sr. Network Engineer, RTD Systems & Networking (520)623-9663 Network Consultant -- Regional/National NSPs dsiegel@rtd.com User Tracking & Acctg -- "Written by an ISP, http://www.rtd.com/~dsiegel/ for an ISP."