...

Portable addresses is an illusion, as it does no scale.

Give me a call when you convinced the phone_company to make my phone number work in California.

--Peter -- End of excerpt from Peter Lothberg

The California PUC has approved local phone competition within California, with the requirement the phone number portability (between carriers) be fully implemented as soon as possible. Making your phone number stay the same no matter whether you're a PacBell or MFS or TCI customer is exactly the same problem as making IP addresses portable... just wait until ISPs are regulated, and they get the same mandate.

-matthew kaufman matthew@scruz.net

Not quite. If I move today from San Francisco to San Jose, I have to renumber because of area codes. This provides first level hierarchy, which the Internet doesn't have (actually second, country codes are the first). The phone companies also have settlements worked out, such that a cutout costs the group getting the cutout, not the group who has the base or the IXC. Phone routing are vastly more restrictive than IP routing. Jerry