At 5:06 PM 26/9/95, David Conrad wrote:

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I'm arguing that economics have to enter the picture for any application for IP address space a registry receives.

See RFC 1744 for more details. Note that option c is theoretically not available -- according to current and likely future guidelines, buying/selling of addresses is essentially disallowed, addresses should be returned to the orgininating registry to be reallocated as criteria are met. I would be very interested in hearing people's opinions regarding this aspect of current allocation guidelines.

I would observe that option c) happens today - its just that the parties involved don't inform the InterNIC (becuase if you try to undertake the transfer of title the InterNIC simply takes the address space away. The picture is somewhat complex in so far as IP address space has intrinsic value _as long as it is routeable_. Given the interaction between the costs of renumbering, vs the cost of establishing an entry in the routing tables, vs the cost of dynamic address translation then its not obvious whether pricing policies should apply to address space allocation, routing table entries or both!