That silly argument boils down to the very simple observation: Authorithy should be in hands of those who can _enforce_ and _verify_. I.e. InterNIC shoudl go out of address allocation business completely and ISPs should step in. Can they enforce? You bet. If you try to announce network 1.0.0.0 as a SprintLink's customer you'll see filters in place before you say "amen". Can they verify? Sure. I'm declining lots of bogus requests for address space -- and then proceed with explaining how to use subnets or whatever. I can always check how the access link is loaded, what routes are really announced etc. Recently somebody asked me to route, like, 12 class Bs, over a 56k link. Turned out they need three class Cs, but grabbed lots of Bs back then when InterNIC was very liberal. The allocation should be performed by service providers in the "food chain" order -- to ensure reasonable aggregation. I.e. nation-wide and world-wide service providers should allocate blocks to regional ISPs, etc. Do "big" service provider need to be "checked" by users? I don't think so because they bet millions on the future of the Internet and won't willingly destroy the market. The fierce competition in the area also ensures that they won't use the address allocation as means of sqeezing small service providers out. And at least two of them fear anti-trust litigation more than coming of Antichrist. You may like it or dislike it but nation-wide backbone providers effectively run the Internet nowadays. It is a rare case when big businesses actually introduced some common sense in the way things are done architecture-wise. Why not to do the same with the address allocation? --vadim