nanog@daork.net (Nathan Ward) writes:
That also doesn't take into account how many /8's are being hoarded by organizations that don't need even 25% of that space.
Unless you're expecting those organisations to be really nice and make that address space available to other organisations (ie. their RIR/ LIR, or the highest bidder on ebay), ...
first, a parable: in datacenters, it used to be that the scarce resource was rack space, but then it was connectivity, and now it's power/heat/cooling. there are fallow fields of empty racks too far from fiber routes or power grids to be filled, all because the scarcity selector has moved over time. some folks who were previously close to fiber routes and/or power grids found that they could do greenfield construction and that the customers would naturally move in, since too much older datacenter capacity was unusable by modern standards. then, a recounting: michael dillon asked a while back what could happen if MIT (holding 18/8) were to go into the ISP business, offering dialup and/or tunnel/VPN access, and bundling a /24 with each connection, and allowing each customer to multihome if they so chose. nobody could think of an RIR rule, or an ISP rule, or indeed anything else that could prevent this from occurring. now, i don't think that MIT would do this, since it would be a distraction for them, and they probably don't need the money, and they're good guys, anyway. now, a prediction: but if the bottom feeding scumsuckers who saw the opportunity now known as spam, or the ones who saw the opportunity now known as NXDOMAIN remapping, or the ones who saw the opportunity now known as DDoS for hire, realize that the next great weakness in the internet's design and protocols is explosive deaggregation by virtual shill networking, then we can expect business plans whereby well suited shysters march into MIT, and HP, and so on, offering to outsource this monetization. "you get half the money but none of the distraction, all you have to do is renumber or use NAT or IPv6, we'll do the rest." nothing in recorded human history argues against this occurring. -- Paul Vixie