Sounds like your company is suffering from a serious lack of knowledge about IP allocation procedures and policies. The only solution to this is to educate yourself, get your internal procedures and policies in order, and integrate your knowledge of IP allocation procedures into your planning processes.
I happen to know Matthew and quite a few of his companies procedures. He's also been an active participant on this list for some years, as well as a number of other ISP management and cooperation discussion areas. Describing the scruznet internal knowledge or IP allocation policies as uneducated is an incorrect statement. They have consistently been better about this than any of the Tier-1 or below ISPs whose net allocation strategy I have been able to observe in practice. I hesitate to think how truly ignorant bottom level ISPs are being treated if this is what's happening to rapidly growing, well educated, active-in-the-community ISPs when they start to hit Tier 1 status. This should not be happening. Matthew should not have to fly out to Virginia to tell someone at InterNIC face to face what he's been saying in email. I have heard nothing but horror stories about dealings with the NIC in the last month or two, including the domain my day job is at being shut down 3 times in one week and not being able to get through on the phone or fax literally all day for several days last week. There is something monumentally wrong at InterNIC right now. I don't know if it's just a bad month or if they've finally fallen and can't get up, but if this doesn't improve it's going to be a horrific winter for all of us. -george william herbert gherbert@crl.com