On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, Hannigan, Martin wrote:

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Is it reasonable to think that numerous /24's from L3's IP space could be reassigned elsewhere without causing significant trouble for L3 and others? Even if it could work, what would be the justification for taking L3's property?

Depending upon the circumstance, yes:

http://www.cctec.com/maillists/nanog/current/msg01880.html

I think that is not entirely correct comparison. Original poster did not not say that the current L3 customers would entirely leave L3, but that he asked if they could do something to get other type of connectivity if they have L3 ip space.

The answer is that if they have /24 or longer and have router then they can turn on BGP and announce that /24 both to L3 and to another ISP and in this way have full connectivity. This would not be an attempt to take ip ip space away from L3. But this is not something they could do within couple days if they do not run BGP and do not have ASN (takes at least a week to get it from ARIN).

For a minute there, I thought you might be right since I'm browsing for clue factor and may have missed something, but, it appears you are inaccurate in this as the poster did say: --QUOTE "If a single-homed network moves from L3 to Cogent, how would they benefit? Would they not still be cut off from a significant percentage of the Internet? Is it reasonable to think that numerous /24's from L3's IP space could be reassigned elsewhere without causing significant trouble for L3 and others? Even if it could work, what would be the justification for taking L3's property?" --END QUOTE That quote is asking if someone can take Level(3)'s PA space assigned with them to another providers network. The answer is yes, it's possible. IANAL