First, may I ask that when you reply to a message from the nanog mailing list, you edit the headers so that they say "To: nanog@merit.edu" and have no CC? Right now there is a strong penalty for anyone who adds to a thread, since we will be on the CC list forever (getting two copies) even when it moves to a different topic. We are all on the nanog list, no need to CC us. Second, I've seen Karl and now Alan misuse a term. I'll pick on Alan since his message is right in front of me, but the complaint is general (sorry Alan!):
Taking a relatively small chunk of the remaining address space (say, 210.*.*.*) gives us 64k addresses to hand out in convenient
That's 16M addresses, not 64K addresses. We should not equivocate "addresses" and "Class C networks". 210.*.*.* has 2^24 (minus subnet zero and broadcast lossage) addresses -- 16M. 210.*.*.* has 2^16 "Class C networks" -- 64K. We must not assume that every customer will get a Class C -- many will get just a subnet since they will only have a handful of hosts. I know of several providers who are chopping things up on nybble boundaries (16 hosts/net, or actually 14 with the subnet zero and broadcast taken out).