NANOG, I enjoyed Yakov's presentation on charging for network route announcements. However, I seem to have a rather significant problem with it. According to Yakov, increasing the cost of network routing announcements will decrease the overall number of routes, and increase aggregation. Introducing dollar-fixed cost to network announcements would provide a fair and equitable system in which desire would not run rampant, but be tied to a fixed sum, ie money. In a standard capitalistic model, when supply is fixed, cost will create an inverse relationship with demand. However, the 'supply' of network routes is not fixed. One could make a good point that it is fixed by saying 'Oh yes, for so many dollars routers can only handle X number of routes in their table optimally'. If we were to buy this (which I actually do) then we would ask 'Who is it that determines what percentage each provider/nsp gets of those X routes?' If there were an autonomous 'Internet Company' that 'owned' the abilities of the Internet, and could claim ownership of 'routing' then they could determine that routing was worth 1 Frobozz. This would determine that a 'valid' router could handle X number of routes, therefore each route cost 1/X Frobozz. However, we've not such a standard, nor a body to enforce it. Akin to Lothberg's argument, we've not a supply, governed by an entity, or set of entities. While the routing tables of the internet connections points are analagous to gold in many ways, in supply and control, they are not. How would this be enforced in today's system? -alan