Per,

This is the second time in just a couple of weeks I've seen mail from people apparently believing that unregistered addresses are supposed to work in the Net. Has the Net come so far that ignorance and cluelessness is so widespread among people trying to manage boxes that they think officially allocated addresses is a refinement? A kind of dotting of i's and crossing of t's, not really necessary? Like cars drive just fine without licence plates?

Heaven knows there's enough people who think the whole thing works by some strange magic, but the current apparent trend is verging on the absurd.

Don't you (only sometimes) think that the number of weekend drivers on the Internet-road is increasing, just like the number of prefixen in the default free routers of the Internet (hint for weekend drivers: these are the routers that have a clue)? BTW, see ftp://ftp.nic.surfnet.nl/surfnet/net-management/ip/nets.ps for the latest update on the number of prefixen. :-). __ Erik-Jan.