I'm sure the same argument was used for telephone numbers when technical folk were arguing against number portability. Oh come on.
Where are we going?
You know perfectly well that phone numbers are not the same as IP.
Yes. I was making an analogy about what I suspect the technical arguments used during discussions on telephone numbering portability were.
No one knows me by my IP address.
Debatable (I'm sure if you engaged in sufficiently criminal activity over the Internet, you would be tracked down by the IP address you used). However, that is irrelevant. While you personally may not be referenced by IP address, the network interfaces used to reach you are known by IP address and those addresses cannot be changed without interrupting communication.
They know me by my email address(es). Heck, even I don't know my own IP address without running ifconfig and I installed it and maintain the system.
I have been told on numerous occasions that one of the reasons IPv6 has not seen significant deployment is because enterprises do not want to obtain their address space from their service provider due to (among other reasons) the cost of renumbering. Are you indicating you believe that renumbering is not an issue? Rgds, -drc