People keep sending me e-mail asking for my ideas on alternatives to renumbering and CIDR. Here is a very rough strawman idea just posted to the CIDRD-WG. There are similar variations on this ASN routing paradigm that also could be considered: I'd suggest that those considering this proposal also peruse the archives of the IPAE mailing list, since IPAE (IP Address Encapsulation) was, at least in its earlies form, precisely this - a mechanism for encapsulating IP addresses in such a way as to create an inter-AS routing scheme using a separate, 32-bit address space. If memory serves, there have also been other earlier proposals for doing AS-to-AS routing using either a separate address space or using IP options - I believe the Big-Internet mailing list archives contains volumnous discussion of these techniques. Re-inventing a square wheel doesn't make it roll any better... --Vince